An interview with Houston Planning Director Patrick Walsh, conducted after Hurricane Harvey ravaged the city and reduced its planning and infrastructure to a talking point for pundits.
Conquering Fears of Public Space on Halloween
The scariest thing about Halloween is that it illustrates just how un-neighborly many communities are and how averse to pedestrianism they are on the other 364 days of the year.
Searching for Los Angeles in Blade Runner 2049
For all the theorizing about Blade Runner, it’s worth asking not what Scott was saying about the future of Los Angeles (or of cities in general) but rather why he chose Los Angeles in the first place.
Battle Brews over ‘Bodega’ and Bodegas
Residents of California can be forgiven for wondering what a bodega is.
Planning Director Susan Anderson Separates Fact from Fiction in Portland(ia)
Planetizen’s “Planners Across America” series continues in the city that put many contemporary best planning practices on the map: Portland, Oregon.
Google Goes Urban: Campus for 20,000 to Rise in San Jose
Tech giant plans huge campus near Diridon Station in Downtown San Jose.
A Missed Lesson in the Heart of California
Kerman, Calif., teeters on the edge of Red and Blue, making it, paradoxically, an electoral microcosm of the country. And yet, with polarization and geographic sorting, it is near unique among American places.
The Work of Architecture in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
The totality of architecture encompasses structures, setting, relationships, uses, and even ideas that, in combination, create a landscape.
Freeway Caps May Reshape California Urban Areas
Now, as California’s urban resurgence continue apace, several cities are considering reconstructive surgery.
Los Angeles Learns to Play Ball: Review of City of Dreams
The all-time championship of uncertainty, politicking, and contentiousness surrounding a Los Angeles sports team goes to none other than the Dodgers.
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.
Radical Left Burns Bridges amid Quest To Build Housing
Honesty and compromise remain admirable values and effective political tools — especially on the local level where policymakers, community members, and activists are literally rubbing elbows with each other.
L.A. Tower Reveals Downside of Skyscrapers
In a city that remains famously horizontal, it’s fun to get excited about something vertical.
How Photography Profoundly Reshaped Our Ideas About Cities
For all the primacy of the way we move through cities, we must also consider how photography changed the way we saw cities and, by extension, the ways we build and experience them.
Death by Gentrification: Review of ‘How to Kill a City’
A few weeks ago, Richard Florida assured me and a roomful of other journalists that “not everything is a neoliberal plot.” Tell it to Peter Moskowitz.
America’s Largest Suburb Flirts With Urbanization
Planners Across America: John Wesley leads the charge to introduce urbanism into mega-suburb of Mesa, Arizona.
Why Cities Should Back Off of Setbacks
For all their popularity, setbacks have little basis in engineering or architecture. They are simply regulatory whims.