It's been a hard day's night And I've been working like a dog It's been a hard day's night I should be sleeping like a log

After raising the question of how to achieve social equity and inclusiveness in urban planning, within our previous post, Global Site Plans’ The Grid and the Center for Social Inclusion turned to Twitter and #thegrid for a thought-provoking conversation on the topic. From this fast-paced one hour chat, four emerging trends appeared:

When asked “what does equity mean to you?” participants of the chat clearly believed that it meant “access to critical services for all,” as Joe Peach (@thisbigcity) said. Meg Mulhall (@megmulhall) seconded that opinion by noting th[...]

As the years pass, there are certain areas in every city that tend to be neglected. But what happens when the nightlife industry intrudes in those areas and changes their whole vibe?

This is exactly the case for Valaoritou and Sigrou Streets in Thessaloniki, Greece. The area around these streets were the city’s old shopping mall many years ago.  Today when you visit this area, you can easily discover the two faces of the neighborhood. In the morning, you can find many shops ideal for cooking lovers, since there are more than 30 different shops with spices, tea leaves, special oils, many different types of honey, and e[...]

“Walkers are 'practitioners of the city,' for the city is made to be walked. A city is a language, a repository of possibilities, and walking is the act of speaking that language, of selecting from those possibilities. Just as language limits what can be said, architecture limits where one can walk, but the walker invents other ways to go.” Rebecca Solnit, author of Wanderlust: A History of Walking, struck me with this quote. The European Union has aggressively been working towards a goal of building walkable cities. At the moment, Paris is on pace to reach said goal by 2017. In the United Kingdom, Nottingham, a city with [...]

Charles (Chuck) Marohne, Strong Towns

Chuck Marohne, Executive Director of Strong Towns, said that the mechanisms of growth we have become accustomed to are waning. Local governments are forced to absorb the costs of new standards and requirements set by the powers that be. He argued that the current pattern of development is not sustainable without large tax increases and/or large public service cuts.

Marohne shared the photo below of his hometown of Brainerd, Minnesota in 1905.

In the midst of rapid technological innovation, our cities are becoming “smarter.” We may have passed the first part of the digital revolution, but the fact stands that technology is now an inseparable part of our lives. Smart cities around the globe are adopting new digitally based infrastructure and introducing new services in this arena to maintain global competitiveness.

Recognizing this trend, the European Union has founded the European Commission for Smart Cities and Communities. Realizing that cities are key to future sustainable development, the commission seeks to address crisis-era problems of an aging population, unemployment, and [...]

Rob Milam, Fehr & Peers

Ron Milam, Principal-In-Charge of Technical Development at Fehr & Peers, discussed the effect of big data on transportation planning and engineering.

He began by lending us some perspective: If you were to purchase a hard drive with the intent to store all music ever recorded by man on it, you would spend just $600.

Milam presented his wisdom pyramid. From base to top, the pyramid was labeled: data, information, knowledge, and wisdom. He said that the goal of wisdom is to make better decisio[...]

Mike Lydon, The Street Plans Collaborative

Mike Lydon, Principal at The Street Plans Collaborative, opened the session with, “It’s time to redesign the project delivery process… to make urbanism legal again.”

He suggested that those who wish to see change should set-up a mock up of your desired redesign with traffic cones. This cone redesign hopes to promote the installation of pedestrian bump-outs. However, police have been known to “crack down” on these installations:

James Alfandre, Kentlands Initiative

James Alfandre, Executive Director at the Kentlands Initiative, opened the session by defining crowdsourcing. He thinks of crowdsourcing as an “open call to an undefined group of people.” It’s essentially Wikipedia’s open source model applied to urban revitalization and development.

Alfandre said that there are two major steps to creating the ideal neighborhood: creating the neighborhood as an idea, and then creating the neighborhood as a reality.

The Granary District is a 99-ac[...]

This past May 2013, New Orleans received a Bronze Bicycle Friendly Community award from the League of American Bicyclists. Undoubtedly, the award was well deserved. New Orleans now has almost 2% of its population commuting by bike, and the city has gone from fewer than ten miles of designated bikeways before Hurricane Katrina to approximately fifty-eight miles of designated bikeways today.

As the city celebrates the recent recognition as a bicycle friendly community, it is imperative to continue building momentum for bicycling in New Orleans. While we have all heard much fanfare about the goo[...]

Hands down, I live in biking Mecca. From taking in the scenic overlooks from the view of my road bike, to getting lost in nature on all the different mountain bike trails that the area has to offer, Tahoe is truly a dream for a bicycle enthusiast. In the Sierra Region cycling of all sorts, from commuting to recreational, is growing. Once the snow melts the tires are rolling, calling city officials and planners to work towards fostering a safe cycling environment for their community members.

But despite being a Mecca for cycling, Tahoe isn’t necessarily the friendliest or most encour[...]

In 2011, San Francisco put Shoup’s theory to the test through SFpark, a $23 million program using new technology to implement a form of congestion pricing for curbside parking.  The underlying idea is to increase/decrease park[...]

The Camlica Mosque, or Çamlıca Camii in Turkish, is located at Istanbul, Turkey’s Çamlıca Hill. Upon completion, the project will have a 110,000 square meter (1,184,030 square feet) footprint, serving 29,700 people from the surrounding Kisikli Mahallesi. While there has been a great number of individuals who support, and oppose this project, we would like to hear your opinion. Please visit the following videos, images, and articles to learn more - and then weigh-in through our anonymous four-question survey available in both English and Turkish. Your opinions are valued and we look forward to utilizing the[...]

Who’s afraid of the Buenos Aires’ new popular habitat act?

The answer: everyone. The recently enacted law of the Buenos Aires province proposes a compact, dense, diverse, and accessible city, aiming to reorient the urban land market. This law is shaking the fundamentals of planning in a metropolitan area that to a great extent still follows the dogmas of urbanism during the twentieth century.

Greater Buenos Aires’ growth produced in the last two decades an uneven and fragmented archipelago of gated neighborhoods, settlements, villas miseria and residential complexes. The expansion[...]

This is a very appropriate week for me to be writing a blog post about bicycle theft in Montréal. Last week, someone took my bell and my lights right off of my bike in the middle of downtown. I am an avid cyclist; I bike to work, to run errands, and to go out to restaurants and bars. That evening, I had biked downtown for my dance practice and, although hesitant, parked my bicycle near the dance studio, in a well-lit public space, to a bicycle rack, with two locks. I thought it was secure, but little did I know someone with a screwdriver would come along and remove my bicycle accessories.

I use this personal anecdote [...]

Rob Spanier, LiveWorkLearnPlay

Rob Spanier, Partner and Principal of LiveWorkLearnPlay, began with the analogy that planning is the hardware, and activation is the software. He said that there are ways to activate a community in ways that don’t need to rely upon huge capital investment.

So why farmers’ and public markets? Spanier said that markets become powerful regional drivers, they act as anchors, and that they are the heart of most communities that have them.

He explained that local businesses keep money spent at [...]

Dan Solomon, Mithun | Solomon

Dan Solomon, CNU co-founder, author, and Principal at Mithun | Solomon, opened the session by saying that in the context of new urbanism concepts being introduced to developing countries, “We can’t exactly declare victory, but we’ve made our presence strong.”

Overall, he explained the urban planning struggles in China. He described the extensive and intense need for new housing due to the overcrowding issues in the country. He said that each Chinese individual has about 2 square meters (or about 22sqft) to themselves.[...]