Now, as California’s urban resurgence continue apace, several cities are considering reconstructive surgery.
Pursuing Inclusion, Equity in the Nation’s Capital
Senators, secretaries, and presidents scarcely concern Eric Shaw. Director of the D.C. Office of Planning since 2015, Shaw is dedicated to an aggressively progressive agenda.
America’s Largest Suburb Flirts With Urbanization
Planners Across America: John Wesley leads the charge to introduce urbanism into mega-suburb of Mesa, Arizona.
Post-Recession, Master Planned Communities Come Back to Life
Ontario Ranch is but the most massive of a new generation of large master planned communities that are in various stages of development statewide. Technically, Ontario Ranch is an annexation, consisting of nine master-planned communities that are enormous — on the order of several thousand residential units — in their own right.
New Planning Initiatives Strive for Equity in Baltimore
The Planners Across America series visits Maryland for an interview with Baltimore Planning Director Tom Stosur.
Kings, Despots, Dictators, Cities and the End of History
Recent history suggests that Fukuyama’s theory faces peril, if not outright obliteration. What this world will look like—figuratively and literally—in a generation or two is anyone’s guess.
Cities Zero In On Road Road Safety
Ambitious, Rapidly Expanding Vision Zero Movement Seeks to End Vehicular Deaths
What If Houston Fell in Love With Planning
Houston’s expansion is going in two directions at once. While development on the suburban fringe continues, there is intense focus on the urban core.
Ballot Initiative Takes Aim at Planning in Los Angeles
The number of people who would likely vote in favor of the city’s current system of long-range planning and project approvals in the City of Los Angeles hovers around zero. But that is not exactly the question at hand.
Atlanta Has Plans to Lead the New South
The latest installment of the Planners Across America series interviews Charletta Wilson-Jacks, director of the Atlanta Office of Planning, who focused on new strategies to engage community members in the city’s planning efforts.
Making By Seeing: New (and old) visualization tools change the face of landscape architecture
Visioning exercises, in which designer-activists seek to change the public’s thinking about a landscape, if not to change the place itself, are blurring the lines between technology and earth and between designer and public.
Planners Across America: Philadelphia on the Rebound
Garry Jastrzab, executive director of the Philadelphia Planning Commission, explains how a new comprehensive plan and a focus on the public realm guide the city as it searches for a balance between the old with the new.
Crises and Innovation Converge on San Francisco Planning Director John Rahaim’s Watch
The latest installment of the Planners Across America series interviews John Rahaim, planning director for the City and County of San Francisco, about the heightened passions and perpetual controversies of planning in the City by the Bay.
Planners Across America: Josh Whitehead Helps Memphis Live Within Limits
Josh Whitehead, planning director of the Memphis and Shelby County Office of Planning & Development (OPD), discusses competing with suburbs, implementing a new zoning code, and redeveloping, for a second time, historic streetcar corridors.
Planners Across America: Brad Buchanan Shepherds Denver’s Explosive Growth
In this interview for the “Planners Across America” series, Denver Planning Director Brad Buchanan details Denver’s efforts to reactivate the urban core with strong planning, transit investments, and new residential and commercial developments.
Ride-Hailing Apps Go the Extra Mile
By some accounts, Uber and Lyft, which are each operating in dozens of metro areas around the country, have only one major challenge left to overcome. It is the one that has baffled transportation planners, highway builders, soccer moms and weary executives for generations: mobility in the suburbs.
If You Build Startup Row in the Desert, Will They Come?
Through it all, the city’s famous slogan — “The Biggest Little City in the World” — remains harmless kitsch, for sure. But its essential meaninglessness also speaks of a city unsure of itself.