Urban Planning

Mansplaining the city

Why are men driving the conversation about the future of our neighborhoods?<p>“I know that it’s people like me that started this shit show,” wrote tech worker Chris Tacy in a 2013 essay. “I was part of the gentrification that started the whole trend of startups being centered in this neighborhood. I …

Group Calls for Big Changes to New York Mass Transit Projects

State and federal agencies should rethink multibillion-dollar rail and bus projects in the New York region amid a “growing crisis” in trans-Hudson transport, according to a report released Wednesday by an urban planning group.<p>The Regional Plan Association called for changes to some of the region’s …

Mass burials for Sierra Leone flood victims

The first mass burials of victims of Sierra Leone’s devastating floods and mudslides take place on Thursday, as blame grows over government …

Towering ambitions

The apartment neighbourhoods of the mid-20th century house millions of Canadians – but their outdated planning stands in the way of street life and economic opportunity. Advocates and planners are trying to change that, <b>Alex Bozikovic</b> reports<p>What sort of city do you want to live in? One full of …

Search

art<p>human-machine interaction<p>health<p>learning<p>consumer electronics<p>architecture<p>kids<p>networks<p>entertainment<p>artificial …

Why Jersey City Missed Out On Being the Big Apple

Because those living, working and playing in Manhattan were trapped between the East and Hudson Rivers, intellectual cross-fertilization was almost inevitable.<p>In the years following the American Revolution, not everyone expected New York to emerge as America’s preeminent city. Philadelphia had …

The week in TV: Eden: Paradise Lost; Citizen Jane; Utopia: In Search of the Dream; Trust Me; Diana: In Her Own Words

For a year, the Scottish wilderness was lost on the tiresome contestants of Eden, who in turn went unseen by us<p><b>Eden: Paradise Lost</b> (C4) | All 4<b><br>Citizen Jane (BBC4)</b> | iPlayer<b><br>Utopia: In Search of the Dream</b> (BBC4) | iPlayer<b><br>Trust Me (BBC1)</b> | iPlayer<b><br>Diana: In Her Own Words</b> (C4) | All 4<b>Eden</b>, the Channel 4 …

A STEM competition that connects urban planners with next-generation thinkers: students! |

BIO<p>Natalie Coleman is a TED-Ed Innovative Educator, a US military veteran, and a K-8 administrator in Illinois. As the Science and Social Science …

My Family, Partition and Me review – like Who Do You Think You Are? but better

The cataclysmic event is retold through the stories and families of those who escaped. Plus: Citizen Jane: Battle for the City<p>Assad has gone back to see his childhood home and he’s not finding the experience easy. “I can’t help crying,” he says. I know, Assad: I can’t drive past my old house. Too …

How Safe Are Public Spaces For Women?

Of hundreds of cases of crime against women, this year three landmark judgement in cases needs special mention. The first verdict was by a city trial …

How to harness Insurtech's disruptive powers (via Passle)

<i>InsurTech will both save the industry if we embrace it and call it innovation, or it will destroy the industry as we know it today... if we ignore it</i> …

Designing San Francisco

<b>A major new urban history of the design and development of postwar San Francisco</b><p><i>Designing San Francisco</i> is the untold story of the formative postwar …

The Geography of Innovation

The suburbs generate more patents, but cities generate more unconventional innovations, a recent study finds.<p>Which type of place is more innovative—dense, diverse cities or sprawling, homogeneous suburbs? For most self-described urbanists, the answer would seem obvious. The density and diversity of …

The Beats And Rhymes Of Hip-Hop Are Changing How We Design Our Cities

From Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five rapping in their 1982 classic “New York New York” about “Staring at a skyscraper reaching into heaven / …

Leading Digital Transformation Is Like Urban Planning

Most companies want their businesses to keep pace with digital startups, but end up bogged down by the need to fix the daily challenges that their decades-old IT systems create. How do you redesign and rebuild major infrastructure while keeping the day-to-day work going? This kind of challenge is …

Harvard Business Review

New York is spending $1 billion to tear down a one-mile highway with a controversial history

Sarah Jacobs<p>The Sheridan Expressway may seem like a typical, six-lane highway — but for decades, residents in the South Bronx have called for its removal.<p>The highway has become a symbol of ruthless 20th-century planners who built the US' interstate highway system at the expense of lower-income …

From Blackout to Priced Out in New York City

It was almost as though the Williamsburg I remembered had been bombed out and replaced from scratch.<p>Bemoaning the disappearance of the New York is a time-honored tradition: no one has ever arrived here early enough to experience the city at its greatest, and everyone who comes after you has arrived …

Mexico City is kicking its parking addiction. Can U.S. cities do the same?

By dropping rules that mandate more parking spaces, the largest city in North America will become more affordable and transit-friendly<p>This week, Mexico City took a big step towards making housing more affordable and transit more efficient. Did it pass a new budget that funded new apartments, or …

Who has the right to thrive in Toronto? Micallef

What kind of a city tells young people to leave?Toronto, apparently.Radio host Matt Gurney received a considerable amount of scorn after he wrote a …

No Small Plans, a graphic novel illustrating urban planning of the past, the present and the future Chicago

<i></i>No Small Plans is a graphic novel that follows the neighborhood adventures of teens in Chicago's past, present and future as they wrestle with …

Chicago Public Schools

A changed perspective: San Antonio's more than downtown

<b>SAN ANTONIO</b> - <i>This story was contributed by Ben Olivo on behalf of FoloMedia.org, where it was originally published. Folo Media reports on the</i> …

Connecting Palestinian cities for a more sustainable future

Hebrew (pdf)<p>Cities expand in the blink of an eye, and with such rapid growth come corresponding issues. This is immediately apparent when you drive …

Widening I-70 in Denver is a social injustice. It’s also poor urban planning.

Denver Post fileInterstate 70 passes over the Swansea neighborhood of Denver on March 10, 2012.<i>Re: “Ditch the delay on Interstate 70 expansion,” July</i> …

Philly Streets Get Test of Jane Jacobs’ “Eyes on the Street” Effect

In the five-and-a-half decades since Jane Jacobs published “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” her core contention — that urban vitality …

Boston’s Unparalleled Effort to Incorporate Racial Equity Into Urban Planning

Leaders in Boston released what they say is the most racial equity-focused resilience strategy of any city to date, outlining steps to reduce …

Edmonton looking to protect boulevard trees from construction damage

'These trees have a lot more value than just the esthetics,' says Parkallen resident<p>The City of Edmonton is looking at developing new rules to …

The Tate Modern and the Battle for London’s Soul

I recently found myself staring into a stranger’s living room, waiting for something beautiful to happen.<p>I was standing on the 10th-floor viewing terrace of the Tate Modern’s new wing, a twisting ziggurat of perforated brick and mortar that rises above the museum’s home in the old Bankside Power …

Artists give Jasper Avenue the gift of the strange

So you’re walking down Jasper Avenue. You’re not paying much attention to the street signs. After all, they’re always the same. Don’t park here. …

Why a city block can be one of the loneliest places on earth

Even entire apartment buildings can lack a sense of community<p>Recently, a Grist reader wrote to ask Umbra whether apartment buildings are designed to discourage interaction with neighbors. It struck a chord.<p>In the spring, I moved to my first solo apartment in a downtown building, and I have yet to …

Coloured canopy and street style portraits among the artworks coming to eight TTC subway stations

Twenty-five of 69 stations currently incorporate public art. It brings ‘joy to the journey,’ TTC art consultant says.