After two decades of negotiation, the new master-planned town of Centennial has been cleared for 12,323 acres of the 270,000-acre Tejon Ranch, a parcel of rolling hills and grasslands located at the northern edge of Los Angeles County.
Top 10 Urban Planning Books – 2018
Planetizen’s annual list of top books covers subjects in all varieties of planning: urban planning, community planning, environmental planning, and more.
Beating the Amazon Con
In short, cities should quit wasting money on corporate welfare and, if they’re going to proactively pursue economic development programs (itself a measure of dubious value), they should stick to homegrown assets. The pursuit of Amazon in particular, though, was as ironic as it was perverse.
New General Plan Seeks to Banish Stockton’s Demons
Not long ago, the City of Stockton could hardly have paid for the paper to print a new general plan, much less actually craft the plan. Since the city declared bankruptcy in 2012 after a long slide, its finances have changed for the better. A new general plan update seeks to do the same for the city’s built environment.
The Social Importance of Public Spaces
Palaces for the People takes a meandering journey through what Klinenberg calls “social infrastructure.”
The Clarity of Robert Venturi
Robert Venturi, who died last week at 93, was not an urbanist as such. But in rejecting modernism and bringing honesty to discussions about aesthetics, Venturi deserves a debt of gratitude from planners and other architects alike.
Scooters Propel Cities Toward New Regulatory Approaches
In the perennial race between technology and public policy, the electric scooter got out to a serious head-start last year. But urban planners are catching up.
Opportunity Zones Look Promising For California
The federal Opportunity Zone program promises, according to supporters, to direct tens — and possibly hundreds — of billions of dollars of private investment capital into some of the nation’s most needy communities, including over 800 Census tracts in California.
SPUR Head Metcalf Bids Farewell to Transformed, Challenged Bay Area
President and CEO Gabriel Metcalf joined SPUR in 1997 — the year before Google’s first search engine came online — and became executive director in 2005. In the intervening years, he has witnessed, commented on, and helped shape the region’s economic and demographic growth ever since.
Book Review: State of Resistance
Pastor acknowledges the urgency of the housing crisis and its relationship with — for better or worse — California’s new politics.
Overcoming Affluence: How Students of Modest Means Can Defy the Odds
Every topic under the sun can be studied, and enjoyed, in a million different ways, in a million different environments.
Suit Attacks Greenhouse Gas Scoping Plan in Name of Social Justice
A coalition of advocacy groups has filed a quixotic, aggressively worded lawsuit against the California Air Resources Board’s 2017 AB 32 Scoping Plan, claiming in part that its encouragement of VMT reductions and other strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will unduly restrict development of new housing and victimized poor and minority residents of California.
Regions Contemplate New, Tougher Carbon Emissions Targets
Targets differ by MPO, but they all stick to the original formula of a percentage reduction in per-capita greenhouse gas emissions compared to the 1990 baseline. Generally, the new targets for 2020 are 1-2 percentage points higher than the current targets, and targets for 2035 are 3-4 percentage points higher.
Balancing Act: Richard Sennett’s “Building and Dwelling”
City life always wavers along continua that are bounded by unattainable poles, and so dualities run throughout Building and Dwelling.
Urban Utopias Under African Skies
An exhibit by Congolese artist Bodys Isek Kingelez at the Museum of Modern Art invokes urban idealism at the same time that it serves as a foil for poverty and deprivation in the megacities of the developing world.
Eviction Is Only Part Of The Housing Crisis
I think I was the only reader in the country unmoved by Evicted, Matthew Desmond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning inquiry into the dark heart of America’s eviction crisis
Seattle Planning Director Pursues Equity Amid a Pro-Growth Agenda
An interview with Seattle Planning Director Sam Assefa for the latest installment of the “Planners Across America” series.