• City Planning
• Healthy Cities
• Vital Urban Communities

Overcoming Oppositional Politics through Connecting with Values

NIMBY, BANANA, PROGRESS, SPECULATION, GENTRIFICATION!

Steve Rhodes, CC

• City Planning
• Economic Development
• public space
• Sustainable Economy

Urban Mathematics: Big Data Can Help Us Design Better Cities

“…Patterns of idea flow…are directly related to productivity growth and creative output. Individuals, organizations, cities and even entire societies that engage with one another and explore outside their social group have higher productivity, greater creative output and even longer, healthier lives…

• City Planning
• Climate Change

Lowering the Temperature: Strategies for Cities

In an industrial area of Chicago, a new street actually eats pollution. Using titanium dioxide as an additive to ordinary cement, the road surface can actually destroy nitrous oxides at ground level. In addition, the lighter color of the cement reduces heat absorption during the day and lighting requirements at night. Chicago added rain absorbing […]

• City Planning

Zoning Gone Wild: Where Marijuana Can–and Can’t–be Sold in Clark Cty. Washington

Initiative 502 in Washington legalized the growing, selling and using of marijuana. But counties and cities have the job of zoning for marijuana operations. Because of laws restricting sales of drugs and alcohol away from parks, schools, childcare centers, etc. this won’t be easy. Take a look at this Draft Zoning Map for Clark County, […]

• Bicycle Advocacy
• City Planning
• Economic Development

Biking in Montreal?

Portland State’s Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation invited Jean Francois Provenent of Velò Quebec to speak on cycling in Montreal and Quebec. This was my preconception of biking in Montreal… Creative Commons: Mikeygottowa

• City Planning
• Healthy Cities
• Vital Urban Communities

We Knew Poor Urban Design is Unhealthy, but Anti-American?

] Paul Krugman (NY Times)
Urban planners and social critics have been pointing out how sprawling, auto-dependent development patterns have created the fattest generation in America’s history, and led to the appearance of new diseases like juvenile-onset diabetes, directly linked to children being unable to walk or bike in their communities, now Paul Krugman, fearless economics columnist for the NY Times, lays out the case that sprawl severely limits social mobility–in short, it’s un-American…

• Agriculture
• City Planning
• Healthy Cities

Healthy Cities: Learning from Dr Richard Jackson

If you don’t know of Richard Jackson and his work, you should.

Source: Nike, Designed to Move

• Bicycle Advocacy
• City Planning
• Climate Change
• Economic Development

Who Killed the CRC?

CRC is dead, says Oregon Governor Kitzhaber… Who will claim the kill?
WA state Senator Don Benton (R) or Robert Liberty, ex-1000 Friends of Oregon

• Bicycle Advocacy
• City Planning

Les Francais et le Velo: The French Go Cycling

The French and bicycles bring so many conflicting images to my mind. The iconic photo of the Frenchman riding a country road with the obligatory baguette sticking out of the basket, in stark contrast to Daniel Behrman‘s horror stories of 1960s Paris in his classic, The Man Who Loved Bicycles, of the scurrying bicycle mounted serfs scattering before the car-crazed on the Champs Elysees. Then I read of Paris, Paris!, putting in a massive Bike sharing program, following the lead of Lyon and then being joined by  Nice, Toulouse, Rennes, La Rochelle, Orléans, Montpellier, Lille and Aix-en-Provence.

I was intrigued.

What is bicycling really like in France today…

• City Planning
• Vital Urban Communities

As if its news: Smart Growth Saves Taxpayer $

Growth in Las Vegas, NV. 1972-2010
Courtesy NASA Goddard Space center. Creative Commons
A new report out from Smart GrowthAmerica lays out how smart growth, simply directing development and public investment within existing cities and towns rather than sprawling into the countryside, is the most prudent fiscal approach…