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urban planning

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    As suburban office parks lose steam, Apple unveils the ultimate example

    Back to the future in the Apple spaceship.Screenshot: Apple via YouTube The old-school suburban office park seems to be having a midlife crisis. A special report in Crain’s about Chicago-area businesses such as Sears, AT&T, and Sara Lee looking to relocate from the suburbs to the urban core — along with the news that Swiss […]

    Sarah Goodyear Buildings

  • An Indian boom city grows without planning, at its peril

    In Gurgaon, gleaming residences, malls, and office buildings are like islands unto themselves.Photo: iamgurgaonYou hear a lot of people talking these days about small government. About letting the free market drive development. About how city planners are trying to do some kind of sinister social engineering. About how the feds and the states should just […]

    Sarah Goodyear Buildings

  • How smart growth reduces emissions

    Cross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council. Rob Steuteville has posted a terrific analysis on the New Urban Network rebutting the claim by the National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB) that “the existing body of research demonstrates no clear link between residential land use and greenhouse-gas emissions.” Rob responds with Todd Litman’s excellent research and writing […]

    Kaid Benfield Buildings

  • Great places: reorienting progressive politics for the 21st century

    This is part one in a series on “great places.” Read parts two, three, four, and five. I asked a while back what new vision or principles could unite the left’s fractious coalition. As you probably guessed, I’ve got a pet idea along these lines. It’s a bit out in left field, at least in […]

    David Roberts Culture

  • Fat city: The way your neighborhood is built could be killing you

    Road to ruin.Photo: Alfonso SurrocaCrappy urban development isn’t just ugly and noisy and dirty. It is turning out to be lethal. One Toronto study looked at how the quality of a community’s streets can affect people’s health, factoring into drastically reduced life expectancy. It’s the focus of an article in The Globe and Mail that […]

    Sarah Goodyear Buildings

  • Not just better for bikes: New York completes its streets [VIDEO]

    Something has been lost in the recent kerfuffle over bike lanes in New York City. The rethinking and redesign of the city’s streets is not just about bikes (and it is not a terrorist plot). It’s about what is known in the land of urban wonkery as “complete streets,” and it is a concept that […]

    Sarah Goodyear Buildings

  • Detroit mayor celebrates demolition of 3,000th building

    Who's ready to party like it's 12/12/2012? Detroit mayor David Bing, that's who! In an announcement made via Twitter, his office proudly declared that the city had demolished its 3,000th building of 2010. That's 10 times the rate at which the city demolished buildings in 2009. Bing's stated goal is the erasure of 10,000 blighted, […]

    Christopher Mims Buildings

  • Take a ride on a Barcelona streetcar in 1908 [VIDEO]

    Sometimes, on a Friday, all you want is to look at something that is just plain wonderful. To that end, I submit this film, shot from a Barcelona streetcar back in 1908. It’s a delightful artifact of a time when streets functioned very differently than they do today — with bicycles, pedestrians, horsedrawn carriages, trams, […]

    Sarah Goodyear Culture

  • The EPA chooses sprawl over urban sustainability

    Cross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council. In defiance of the environmental values it supposedly stands for, the federal Environmental Protection Agency is moving its regional headquarters from a walkable, transit-rich, downtown Kansas City (Kan.) neighborhood to one of the worst examples of suburban sprawl it could have possibly found, some 20 miles from downtown. […]

    Kaid Benfield Buildings