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A Global Urban Agenda: Highlights from the 2005 World Cities Forum
A Global Urban Agenda from the Urban Land Institute highlights issues discussed at ULI’s World Cities Forum in June 2005.
A Guide for Collaborative Action
This report examines how community development organizations often overlook the importance of involving youth and delinquency prevention in their programs.
Aging in Place Reading List
The National Aging in Place Council (NAIPC) publishes an Aging in Place Reading list featuring recommended books and articles. Featured titles include ''The Senior Solution: A Family Giude to Keeping Seniors Home for Life'' and ''Retirement Life By Design.''
AMPO -- 2004 Conference Presentations
Presentations from the 2004 Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations Conference are available online as PowerPoint files through the AMPO website.
APA Affordable Housing Reader
With the support of the Fannie Mae Foundation, the American Planning Association (APA) has assembled more than 100 documents and articles from APA publications that examine the affordable housing problem in the U.S. and identify and evaluate various solutions.
Beyond Gray Pinstripes 2003
Beyond Grey Pinstripes 2003: Preparing MBAs for Social and Environmental Stewardship highlights six cutting-edge schools preparing future executives with a solid training in environmental and social impact management.
Bicycle Friendly Community Grants
The Bicycle Friendly Communities Campaign is an awards program that recognizes municipalities that actively support bicycling.
Build Smart
This article from The American School Board Journal challenges the notion that bigger schools are better, a trend that has dominated the education landscape for decades.
Building Cities in the Virtual World
Planning Magazine from the American Planning Association (APA) discusses new Internet technologies -- specifically, the social networking capabilities referred to as Web 2.0 -- that are providing new ways to design and plan.
Bye, Bye Suburban Dream.
Newsweek, May 15, 1995. Lead article introducing the new urbanist movement, principals, practitioners and vision. Also includes a set of 15 steps needed to fix the American suburb from the viewpoint of new urbanists
Can Landscape Architects Make Schools Walkable Again?
In the April 15, 2008 edition of LAND online, the landscape architecture news digest of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), editor J. William ''Bill'' Thompson discusses the challenge of getting kids to walk to school.
Choice Neighborhoods Funding -- 2009
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan announced the availability of $113 million in HOPE VI funding in a July 14, 2009 keynote address on the future of urban revitalization at the National Press Club during the Brookings Institution's event, ''From Despair to Hope: Two HUD Secretaries on Urban Revitalization and Opportunity.''
Community Action Grants
The Gannett Foundation supports local organizations in communities served by Gannett Co., Inc.
Community Involvement Grants
Small differences in a community can make a large difference in the world. Tom's of Maine supports and encourage your efforts to get involved with its Community Involvement Grants program. In November 2009, Tom's of Maine will award five 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations with $20,000.
Community Land Trusts: Leasing Land for Affordable Housing
This article from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy's Land Lines newsletter discusses how a community land trust (CLT) can be a useful tool for lower-income families to help purchase and finance housing.
Community Planner Pro
The Community Planner Pro™ CD-ROM, included as part of The Enterprise Foundation's Community Development Library, helps nonprofit, community-based organizations engage neighborhood residents in the process of developing practical action plans for their community.
Community-Based Habitat Restoration
The Five-Star Restoration Program provides modest financial assistance on a competitive basis to support community-based wetland, riparian, and coastal habitat restoration projects that build diverse partnerships and foster local natural resource stewardship through education, outreach and training activities.
CUI Brownie Awards -- 2007 Award Winners
Winners of the Canadian Urban Institute's (CUI's) annual Brownie Awards were announced at a presentation dinner on October 18, 2007 during the 8th annual Canadian Brownfields Conference in Montreal.
Delaware Valley Smart Growth Alliance Recognized Projects: April 2009
The Delaware Valley Smart Growth Alliance has added to its list of recognized smart growth projects: Kardon Ponds in Chester County, Pennsylvania; and Zurbrugg Mansion Redevelopment in Burlington County, New Jersey.
Delmarva Farmland Strategy Project
American Farmland Trust (AFT) initiated the Delmarva Farmland Strategy Project to bring new tools to communities that are struggling with how to accommodate change and growth while retaining a profitable agricultural sector.
Downtown Planning for Smaller and Midsized Communities
''For so long we were floundering and taking ad hoc measures, but the minute I understood what a downtown plan really was I said 'We need one of those!' As it turned out, it was the most fantastic vehicle I've ever seen,'' said Susan Moffat-Thomas of New Bern, North Carolina. Her hometown got a much-needed shot in the arm from a good downtown plan. Does yours need a similar boost?
Philip L. Walker, an experienced downtown-planning consultant, offers practical tips for preserving a sense of place, improving fiscal efficiency, and enhancing quality of life in Downtown Planning for Smaller and Midsized Communities.
Planners and revitalization officials will learn how to address physical components of the downtown, as well as economic development. Walker, an experienced downtown-planning consultant, also explains how to develop an organization to implement a downtown plan; how federal, state, and local policies may influence the planning process; and how to fund a downtown revitalization effort.
Driven to Action: Stopping Sprawl in Your Community
Driven to Action encourages communities to reshape urban areas by helping to set the rules and making plans for sustainable cities.
EcoIndustrial Strategies
Eco-industrial Strategies explores the key issues involved in eco-industrial development and identifies the stakeholders and their roles in such projects.
Economics, Equity and the Environment
Economics, Equity, and the Environment, by Stephen M. Johnson, examines major economic incentive and market-based environmental protection programs that are being implemented by governments, including pollution taxes, pollutant trading programs, regulatory waiver programs, subsidies, grants, loans and favorable tax treatment, and deposit/refund systems.
Elder Friendly Communities
Elder Friendly Communities is the third component of the Successful Aging Initiative of the Cleveland Foundation, a multi-phased program that supports and promotes the assets and positive aspects of aging. The Successful Aging Initiative is focused on establishing elder-friendly communities, lifelong learning and development centers, and increased prospects for civic engagement, including meaningful volunteering and post-retirement employment opportunities.
Expanding Housing Opportunity in Washington, DC
Expanding Housing Opportunity in Washington, DC: The Case for Inclusionary Zoning uses data compiled from hundred of localities where inclusionary zoning has made a critical difference in providing affordable housing to low- and moderate-income families.
Facing the Urban Challenge: Reimagining Land Use in America's Distressed Older Cities-The Federal Policy Role
Recently released by Alan Mallach, Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program of The Brookings Institution, this paper touches on the history of economic decline of American cities, noting that while many urban areas enjoyed a significant resurgence during the 1990s, others, such as Detroit and Cleveland, have continued to struggle.
By focusing on five keys areas (strategic planning, reutilizing urban land, investing in transformative change, revitalizing neighborhoods, and addressing affordable housing) Mallach identifies how federal lawmakers can play a major role in shaping the future success of older industrial cities.
Funders' Network: Looking Back
To acknowledge and celebrate its 10th Anniversary in 2009, the Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities commissioned Looking Back: Influencing, Networking, Facilitating, a retrospective on the efforts undertaken by the Network and its members over the past ten years.
Funders' Network: Looking Forward
To acknowledge and celebrate its 10th Anniversary in 2009, the Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities Looking Forward: Perspectives on Future Opportunities for Philanthropy, a compilation of essays from leading thinkers in the movement for smarter growth policies and practices that challenge philanthropy to think about its role over the next ten years.
Funding Brownfield Redevelopment
The Community/School Partnership for Brownfields Development offers an online guide to funding brownfields redevelopment. The guide is part of the school curriculum developed by the Purdue EPICS team for the ''Our Town Project'' (OTP).
Grants to Promote Farmers Markets
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns announced 20 grants totaling $900,000 to establish, expand or promote local farmers markets, roadside stands, and similar agricultural ventures under the new Farmers Market Promotion Program (FMPP).
Green Building
In the last few years, there has been a greater recognition within the green building field that sustainability is not just about buildings, but includes a focus on where and how we site our buildings, how the buildings are served by transportation, and the overall health of the communities that these buildings shape.
Greyfields into Goldfields: From Failing Shopping Centers to Great Neighborhoods
This report reveals how abandoned or obsolete shopping centers are ideal
sites for transit-oriented, mixed-use development.
Growth Management for Florida’s Future
Growth Management for Florida’s Future is a position paper from 1000 Friends of Florida that analyzes the growth management practices the state has used for the past two decades, and offers recommendations for how the state can be more instrumental in helping to build better communities.
High Performance Schools School Planning Kit
The Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS, often pronounced ''chips'') aims to increase the energy efficiency of schools in California by marketing information, services, and incentive programs directly to school districts and designers. The Collaborative offers a School Planning Kit promoting the design of high performance schools: environments that are not only energy efficient, but also healthy, comfortable, well lit, and containing the amenities needed for a quality education.
Holding The Line: Urban Containment In The United States August 2002
Policies designed to deliberately control the spread of urban areas are
increasing in popularity throughout the United States. Several states,
and many local governments in the west, are adopting urban growth
boundaries and other containment measures in their land-use planning
laws and legislation. Whatever the primary purpose, it is clear that the
precise impacts of containment policies are not well understood. This
paper reviews the research on urban containment generally, and also
examines the experience of such policies in particular metropolitan
areas. It discusses some lessons learned and raises relevant research
questions for practitioners as well as policymakers at the state
and local level.
Housing and Transportation Affordability Index
The Housing and Transportation Affordability Index, a pilot pilot project led jointly by Reconnecting America's Center for Transit-Oriented Development and the Center for Neighborhood Technology, integrates housing and transportation costs into a single measure, correcting a pervasive information gap. The index will help local and regional planners understand the housing costs and ''location costs'' of building housing and transportation. Potential home buyers and renters, finance agencies, public and private-sector real estate developers, housing lenders, and secondary market actors can use the index to better understand the full cost of the homes they purchase.
In Chicago, A Green Economy Rises
This essay by Keith Schneider of the Great Lakes Bulletin News Service reviews how the city of Chicago has successfully used a ''green'' smart growth strategy to blossom into one of America's finest cities.
Land Trust Standards and Practices
The newly revised Land Trust Standards and Practices reflect the lessons learned in conservation over the fifteen years since they were first created and recent changes in nonprofit law.
Main Street Conference -- Call for Presentations
August 1, 2007 is the deadline for educational educational session proposals for the 2008 National Main Streets Conference. Share your experiences, raise your visibility among industry professionals and help us explore this year's conference theme, ''Enriching Main Street Through Entrepreneurship and Diversity,'' by submitting your proposal today.
Making Educated Decisions: A Landscape Preservation Bibliography
The second edition of this resource offers a comprehensive listing of publications for those involved with preservation planning and stewardship of significant landscapes.
Marketing Smart Growth
This series of articles from On Common Ground, The National Association of Realtors® Smart Growth Magazine, attempts to grasp this subject of supply and demand for Smart
Growth.
Mississippi Renewal Forum
Mississippi Renewal Forum -- Final Reports
Final team reports have been released from The Mississippi Renewal Forum, held October 11-17, 2005. The Renewal Forum was a gathering of design specialists from across the nation to help provide rebuilding visions for communities devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
Moving Beyond ''Best Practices'' to Truly ''Living Practices''
Reprinted from citiwire.net
The fifth World Urban Forum (WUF5), held last week in Rio was pulsing with energy. More than 13,000 attendants attended plenaries featuring popular Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Ana Tibaijuka, director of UN-HABITAT, Shaun Donovan, U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Deputy HUD Secretary Ron Sims, Assistant Secretary of State Esther Brimmer, Director Adolfo Carrion of the White House Office of Urban Affairs, Judith Rodin, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, and many others.
New knowledge abounded at this meeting. Slum Dwellers International told how its members are conducting census enumerations of informal settlements. The World Bank reported on its new urban outreach and new diagnostics to test the success of its urban investments. Scholars presented papers, including Janice Perlman who has tracked the way that houses are bought and sold in Rio's favelas given that nobody owns the land beneath them.
In many instances, the presenters were putting forward best practices in one form or another. And a team of doctoral students from the University of Pennsylvania – our ''Global Urban Commons Research Group'' — was in attendance, lapping it all up. They have spent the past seven months evaluating the theory and application of the concept of best practices, analysing the UN-HABITAT Best Practices Database and contributing to thinking about a new form of communicating information, ''Living Practices,'' that UN-HABITAT launched in beta form at WUF5.
Indeed, after reviewing more than 75 journal articles, 10 reports and conducting 15 interviews, the team was armed with fact and perspective as it presented its findings to a packed room at WUF5. The team members will soon have a white paper to share. Here the essence of what they have found:
First, best practice has a long history in the United States. It originated with agricultural extension programs to improve farming. Then it emerged in 1934 as a way to address urban issues when the American Society of Planning Officials created the Planning Advisory Service (PAS) to advance the practice of city planning (as the profession switched its focus from private consultancies to public service in the New Deal). Others, especially business, medicine/nursing and education have since engaged in promoting best practices in their fields.
Second, UN-HABITAT launched a global approach to collecting and promoting urban best practices in 1996 after Habitat II in Istanbul – a step called for in the Habitat Agenda (a precursor to the Millennium Development Goals). Under the leadership of Nicholas You, a skilled staff member, Habitat initiated its Best Practices and Local Leadership Program starting an on-line Best Practices Database and inaugurating the biannual Dubai Award for Best Practices to Improve the Living Environment, enhanced by well-funded prizes for 10 or 12 lucky winners.
The program blossomed, guided by a steering committee drawn from around the world with representatives from the Brazilian Institute for Municipal Administration (IBAM), several universities including Pratt Institute and Harvard, the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) and others. By 2009, the database had more than 2,000 entries; with every announcement of the Dubai award hundreds more poured in. The Dubai Award had been given seven times to much fanfare. In addition, the program gave rise to several regional best practices hubs to spread the word and offer supplementary programs. The Vienna-based effort is exemplary. In addition, from the database, UN-HABITAT commissioned best practices briefs, some case books and case studies used at conferences and training sessions.
Third, while the general literature suggested that to be really effective, best practices data need to fill a few basic requirements, many best practices databases – UN-HABITAT’s included – did not comply. Lacking were neutral third party validations: no one was checking to determine whether the activities reported were actually occurring, with defensible and comparable metrics of success and contextual discussions of the political, social and financial conditions and resources that enabled the work. Further, the best practices tended to be static – once described, that was the end of the story — and they were in only one voice, that of the nominator or author. In other words, while the UN Best Practices database was a huge step forward in presenting information from around the world, the system was not perfect.
None of this was lost on Nick You. He had already concluded that more could be done and he had a big job in front of him because in September, just as the students were beginning their research, Ms. Tibaijuku had charged him with devising a World Urban Campaign to be launched at WUF5. Describing him to the UN-HABITAT governing board as being ''a man of new ideas…a free spirit, sometimes difficult to find and follow, but someone whose capacity to work defied imagination,'' she had full confidence that he could deliver.
And that proved to be true. Between September and March he assembled and convened an advisory team not only spelled out steps to a continuing, impact-designed World Urban Campaign, but gave its blessing to such companion efforts as the Citistates Group’s new project – www.citiscope.org – to highlight city advances reported by journalists worldwide, and a new 100 Cities Initiative to tap and motivate city government and civic initiatives. The 100 cities initiative aims to create a new process being called ''Living Practices,'' an evolution from best practices to a dynamic, Internet-based information exchange. Each living practice story highlights the ongoing progress of selected initiatives and has a third party ''champion,'' who regularly verifies and updates the work.
So armed with their research and participants in developing the 100 Cities initiative, the Penn students then successfully nominated Philadelphia as one of the 100 cities and began to develop the web presence according to desired standards. They have a team of undergraduates who are working with city and civic officials to flesh out six, notable ''green'' initiatives ranging from stormwater management to creating community gardens to provision of local fresh food to disadvantaged communities. They will help develop success metrics and find a variety of stakeholders who through video interviews will add their voices to story, providing depth and context. As the students complete their dissertations and move on with their careers, our Penn Institute for Urban Research will take up the role of monitoring the Philadelphia story. We’re motivated to stick to the exciting task of assisting on the research side to help develop sustainable communities of lasting value – serving, we believe, the cause at the bottom of the UN-HABITAT mission.
Moving Communities Forward: AIA Study on the Design of Transportation
Moving Communities Forward, a project by the American Institute of Architects and the Center for Transportation Studies, measures the benefits that well-designed transportation projects bring to communities.
National Park(ing) Day Stories
National Park(ing) Day is an opportunity to celebrate parks in cities and promote the need for more parks by creating temporary public parks in public parking spaces. In 2008, National Park(ing) Day was held Friday, September 19, 2008.
Nature in Neighborhood Capital Grants -- Portland, Oregon
Metro Portland (Oregon) seeks applications for capital projects that re-green and re-nature neighborhoods.
New for Members -- Getting Smart, the Newsletter for Smart Growth
The June 2003 issue of ''Getting Smart'' is available in the Members Section. Features in this issue include
Land Use and Substance Abuse in Northern New Mexico; Letter from the Editor;
Living in Paradise?; Toolbox: Resources for Smart Growth;
Considering Residents’ Needs in
Planning for Higher Density Housing; Spotlight On: National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration; Partner Updates.
New for Members -- Getting Smart, the Newsletter for Smart Growth
The February 2003 issue of ''Getting Smart'' is available in the Members Section. Features in this issue include Managing Urban Transportation Systems: The Need for a New Operating Paradigm; Transportation Reform and Social Equity: An Agenda for Smart Growth; and a feature on Enhancing America’s Communities.
Not Yet a Member? Click Here for a list of benefits.
New Orleans Poll Reveals Support for Reuse of Charity Hospital
New Orleans voters favor mayoral and City Council candidates who support reusing Charity Hospital as the new Louisiana State University teaching hospital, according to poll cited in this August 10, 2009 Smart Growth for Louisiana news release.
New Partners for Smart Growth: Jan. 27, 2005
The 4th Annual New Partners for Smart Growth: Building Safe, Healthy and Livable Communities conference was held January 27-29, 2005 in Miami Beach, Florida. View the entire program and PowerPoint presentations from select events, or order audio files.
New Partners for Smart Growth: Jan. 28, 2005
The 4th Annual New Partners for Smart Growth: Building Safe, Healthy and Livable Communities conference was held January 27-29, 2005 in Miami Beach, Florida. View the entire program and PowerPoint presentations from select events, or order audio files.
New Partners for Smart Growth: Jan. 29, 2005
The 4th Annual New Partners for Smart Growth: Building Safe, Healthy and Livable Communities conference was held January 27-29, 2005 in Miami Beach, Florida. View the entire program and PowerPoint presentations from select events, or order audio files.
New Urbanism Articles
Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) has prepared a 13-page bibliography listing of academic articles about new urbanism.
New Urbanism Resources
Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) has an Education Task Force that has compiled new bibliographies of journal articles and dissertations written about New Urbanism.
New Urbanism, Smart Economics Rejuvenate an Old River Town
The people have spoken in Owensboro — an Ohio River city of just over 50,000 souls in mostly rural western Kentucky. They want to hitch their town’s star to a dazzling waterfront and downtown agenda.
The turning point was a ''21st Century Town Meeting'' in 2007, organized with help from the national nonprofit organizing group ''We the People'' and supported by the Public Life Foundation, funded and chaired by veteran Owensboro publisher and philanthropist John Hager.
Neal Peirce and Curtis Johnson, who'd authored one of their Citistates reports on regional challenges for the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer in 1991, returned for the kickoff town meeting. Back then they’d written that ''Owensboro must pledge itself to an intensive campaign to recreate downtown with character and attractiveness, a true meeting place for the region's people and visitors from afar.'' They urged the waterfront to be reinvented as the ''living room'' of Owensboro.
That is exactly what Owensboro is doing today. Since the 2007 meeting — and notwithstanding the recession — Owensboro has almost $120 million underway in public and private developments for its downtown and river front.
Let me confess: I'm no ''objective'' outsider on Owensboro's big step forward. My firm, the Gateway Planning Group, was hired by the Owensboro Economic Development Corporation to facilitate a placemaking initiative. We've been in the thick of the effort to give Owensboro a strong fresh start.
There was, in fact, lots to work with. If you are a bluegrass fan, or if you're a big-name performer not-too-distant Nashville, you remember Owensboro's now defunct Executive Inn Showroom, a famous place for music and show on the river. The slow death of the Executive Inn ushered in a new era of culture in Owensboro with a nationally recognized symphony, an ''off-Broadway'' River Park Performing Arts Center, and a new reputation for festivals including the nationally recognized Mystery Writers' Festival.
But there was a problem. People would visit downtown for an event — and then leave. A better place making formula had to be found for a full-fledged, day-and-night center of attraction.
My associates and I think we helped find it. But only because of key local leaders had been waiting patiently, itching for a breakthrough. Two top examples: Terry Woodward of Waxworks and Benny Clark of Benny Clark Homes. Woodward had kept his international media business downtown and positioned an adjacent parcel for a mixed use complex in the heart of an emerging arts enclave on downtown's east side. Aiming to be a key downtown developer, Clark and his partner Paula had purchased land on the blighted west side and transformed it into Sycamore Square, a now-successful high-end town home neighborhood. A few others, such as restaurateur Malcom Bryant, had continued to invest time, money and reputation in downtown.
These trail blazers understood that their future would lighten from the promise to profit by building on downtown’s history and authenticity. But they needed the certainty and predictability that only a public sector partner could deliver.
Concurrently, Nick Brake and Madison Silvert of the Owensboro Economic Development Corporation were also tired of waiting, hungering for a process leading to real action.
My colleagues and I, taking advantage of a dozen prior plans and a new waterfront park under design, aimed to generate investment in downtown as a true neighborhood. Joined by the firms Kimley Horn, CityVisions and TXP, we enabled Owensboro to take advantage of its history of arts and culture, not just for tourism but as a driver to attract people who can live and work anywhere they choose.
Engaging the business and banking community early on was critical; we believed a complete reinvention of the traditional business model for downtown was necessary. In many downtowns, the inability to predict the future use of adjacent parcels stunts investment potential. After analyzing the blocks and streets of downtown, we developed a community-driven and we believe realistic building-scale master plan. The plan set a a strong neighborhood vision for downtown but also identified elements of the broken street network that needed to be healed from years of suburbanization. Following the master plan, the firm Entrans is completing the comprehensive reinvention of a walkable street network.
The master plan then guided the development of a form-based code for the rezoning of downtown — reversing, in effect, guidelines of the prior code that had fostered decades of development more suburban than truly urban. For example, incorrectly located surface parking lots and disconnected private lot frontages had resulted in large voids.
The new code resulted in 20-plus applications soon after its adoption. It sets design and development standards that link Owensboro's historic courthouse square, redeveloped loft buildings along its historic Second Street, its waterfront, its successful but isolated performing arts center, and its disconnected adjacent in-town neighborhoods through a new convention center, a new convention center hotel, an emerging cultural arts district, and mixed use residential buildings along the waterfront.
Mayor Ron Payne and County Judge Reid Haire were encouraged to convene the City and County Commissions — in official joint session for the first time ever — to commit to investment in key catalytic projects. That, in turn, meant the private sector no longer had an excuse to ignore downtown’s prime investment opportunity.
Downtown investors or property owners now know they can count on quality public and private development down the street or a block over. That gives bankers strong rationale to underwrite loans. In an era of tightening credit, this de facto ''master developer'' context has elevated downtown as a much lower risk. One indicator: the local banking community has now created a joint loan pool for downtown redevelopment.
Marveling today at cranes in the sky, the director of downtown development, Owensboro native Fred Reeves, observed recently that the ''attention to the not-so-sexy aspects of the downtown plan — such as infrastructure, regulation and financing options — has built a strong framework to catch the public's attention and gain its support.''
Owensboro is proof that every community, analyzing realistically and setting realistic new development rules, has the capacity to move aggressively into a new economy of place.
Reprinted from Citiwire.net
New Urbanist K-12 Teaching Resources
The Congress for New Urbanism's (CNU) K-12 Initiative has produced a bibliography of resources for primary and secondary teachers to introduce students to the concepts of New Urbanism, Smart Growth, and traditional town planning. This provides teachers with curriculum suggestions, teaching modules, videotapes, books, and games that are grade and age appropriate.
No Vacancies
This article from the Summer 2005 edition of On Common Ground, the newsletter from the National Association of Realtors, reviews the challenges that vacant properties pose to cities throughout the U.S.
North American Cities and Smart Growth
A special issue of Local Environment, an international refereed journal, is now available online. Articles include ''Smart Growth in a Small Urban Setting the challenges
of building an acceptable solution,'' by Henry J. Mayer, Christine M. Danis,
and Michael R. Greenberg; ''Taking Sustainable Cities Seriously a
comparative analysis of twenty-four US cities,'' by Kent E. Portney; and ''Local
Government and the WSSD,'' by Mike Ashley.
Oakland Pedestrian Master Plan
The vision of the Oakland Pedestrian Master Plan is to promote a pedestrian-friendly environment where public spaces -- including streets and off-street paths -- will offer a level of convenience, safety, and attractiveness to the pedestrian that will encourage and reward the choice to walk.
Op-Ed Argues for Fiscal Benefits of Smart Growth
This commentary by Bruce Katz and Mark Muro of The Brookings Institution in The Detroit News contends that fostering more compact development in Michigan and elsewhere makes even more sense in hard times, since reform can save taxpayers money.
Overcoming Impediments to Smart Growth
Overcoming Impediments to Smart Growth: Finding Ways for Land Development Professionals to Help Achieve Sustainability examines why, despite knowledge of problems associated with sprawling patterns of land use, successful development projects using principles of smart growth are not more commonplace.
Pathways to Healthy Living
Pathways to Healthy Living is a two-page brochure produced by the National Park Service to promote its nationwide initiative to encourage healthful outdoor physical activity in National Parks and local communities.
Placemaking Around the World
The August 2008 issue of Urban Land, the magazine of the Urban Land Institute, features a special report on Place Making and how asking the right questions of a community will be one of the most difficult aspects of shifting to a place-making perspective in development projects around the world.
Planning for the Unexpected
Planning for the Unexpected, published by the American Planning Association's Planning Advisory Service, describes the tools planners have to identify and manage risks related to land use.
Planning Magazine, March 2010
The March 2010 issue of Planning finds a ray of hope in the national economy. Read about economic diversity in Michigan, the supermarket as a neighborhood building block, and an excerpt from a new Planners Press book about the essential elements of sustainable design. Members may read the entire issue online. Everyone is invited to read this month's featured article on Maryland's second generation of smart growth.
Rail~Volution 2008 Presentations Online
Rail~Volution 2008, held in San Francisco, California, October 27-30, offered more than 60 on-site and mobile workshops, two plenary sessions, and networking events addressing nearly every aspect of building livable communities with transit. These activities featured many thoughtful policy overviews of livability issues, as well as hands-on, specific strategies that can be used and applied in conference attendees' own communities.
Regional Equity and Smart Growth, 2nd Edition
Regional equity seeks to ensure that individuals and families in all communities can participate in and benefit from economic growth and activity throughout the metropolitan region--including access to high-performing schools, decent affordable housing located in attractive neighborhoods, living wage jobs, and proximity to public transit and important amenities, such as supermarkets and parks.
Regional Prosperity Initiative Grants
To strengthen the voice of regions in Michigan, People and Land (PAL) has launched its Regional Prosperity Initiative. The goal of the initiative is to foster multi-sector and multi-jurisdictional collaboration at the regional level as a means for advancing economic, social, and environmental progress in Michigan.
Rehearsing the Future
The Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities commissioned this series of Scenario Thinking Products to help nonprofit groups envision the possible consequences of their current activities, and plan strategies to meet possible needs created by today's actions.
Report on Public Health and Urban Sprawl in Ontario
This report from the Ontario College of Family Physicians summarizes pertinent information on the relationship between urban sprawl and health. It serves to identify the key issues that are relevant to the growing number of sprawl-related health problems in Ontario, which is comparable to U.S. situations and is far worse compared to Europe.
Resourceful Communities Program
Established in 1991, The Conservation Fund's Resourceful Communities Program blends innovative techniques to help North Carolina's underserved communities create new economies that protect and restore, rather than extract, natural resources.
Safe Routes to School
Transportation planner Hannah Twaddell provides a primer on SR2S -- Safe Routes to School -- in the Fall 2004 Planning Commissioners Journal, a publication designed for citizen planners, including (but not limited to) members of local planning commissions and zoning boards.
School Food and Institutional Purchasing: Portland, Oregon
The City of Portland, Oregon's Bureau of Planning and Sustainability maintains a School Food and Institutional Purchasing page on its website that provides tools for economic development and healthier eating.
Smart Growth for Better Schools
The Winter 2005 edition of On Common Ground features a series of articles on how smart growth principles can help create better schools.
Smart Growth on the Edge
The Winter 2006 edition of On Common Ground focuses on the far suburbs, the exurban areas beyond the edge of major metropolitan areas, and the smaller non-metropolitan cities.
''Smarty'' Awards -- 2008 Smart Growth BC Awards
Smart Growth BC presented the third annual Smarty Awards at its annual conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, on April 18, 2008.
Sprawl as a Civil Rights Issue - a Mayor's Reflections
Washington, DC: GW Center on Sustainable Growth. March 2002. In this paper Mayor William A. Johnson, Jr. of Rochester, NY, argues that sprawl is fundamentally a civil rights issue and that the emerging smart growth movement can be harnessed to advance equal opportunity.
Sprawl: The New Manifest Destiny
From the August 2004 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives journal, Sprawl: The New Manifest Destiny discusses the current state of sprawl on both national and international levels. This article includes listings of the Top Ten Sprawling U.S. and World Metro Regions, details the effects of sprawl, and discusses how sprawl continues, despite a growing knowledge of its effects.
Symposium 2005: Twenty Lessons from Maryland’s Smart Growth Initiative
John Frece, former spokesman for Maryland’s Smart Growth Initiative and currently with the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education at the University of Maryland, reviews the events that led to Maryland's Smart Growth Initative and the evolution of that landmark policy in the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law (VJEL).
The Built Environment and Health
The Prevention Institute offers this publication that highlights examples of neighborhood-level successes in altering elements of the built environment to improve health behaviors and outcomes.
The Farm Around the Corner
In “The Farm Around the Corner,” Detroit Free Press writer Heather Newman reports on the surging popularity of locally produced food -- organic and otherwise.
The New Urbanism: An Alternative to Modern, Automobile- oriented Planning and Development.
New Urban News, May 21, 1999. This article is a good introduction to New Urbanism and includes a list of principles and prototypes
The Obama Urban Vision: Can It Come To Pass?
An Indianapolis-area ex-CEO of a hospital group called me the other day — not about health care policy, but rather regional planning in central Indiana. He wasn’t interested in some way to force unified regional government — to expand the geographic scope of Indianapolis’ Unigov system, which Dick Lugar (now Indiana’s senior senator) founded in 1969-70 and I later led as mayor for 16 years. This ex-CEO’s concern was different: How do we get the region’s top players on the same page when it comes to such critical issues as land use, transportation and housing.
The call was heartening because it demonstrated to me how America’s business leaders are starting to grasp that in this new, mobile, wired age of ours, boundary lines are relatively meaningless and obsolete. And that some are willing to take the lead to create new ways of approaching regional problems–quite far ahead of most political leaders, I might add, who too often are little more than self-protecting institutionalists, or so rigidly ideological that pragmatism has fled them.
But the new light’s not just coming from business leaders. President Obama ''gets it,'' even though between understanding and implementation, between the cup and the lip, slips can occur and good ideas can die. But in remarks made to a delegation of the U.S. Conference of Mayors last week, the President talked about the importance of rebuilding and revitalizing our cities and metropolitan areas. This was not a point he made in his State of the Union address, having other pressing matters he had to deal with. But to the mayors he did outline his administration’s urban vision of creating ''economically competitive, environmentally sustainable, opportunity rich communities that serve as the backbone for our long term growth and prosperity.''
The president outlined three important components of the strategy, which will be backed up with dollars in the new budget he presents in a few weeks. First, ''build strong regional backbones for our economy by coordinating federal investment in economic and workforce development.'' He pointed out that what’s good for a central city is also good for the region: ''Today’s metropolitan areas don’t stop at downtown.'' A strong Denver means a strong Aurora and Boulder in Colorado, he said. ''Strong cities are the building blocks for strong regions, and strong regions are essential for a strong America.''
Second, the president talked of creating livable, sustainable communities through smart growth policies that discourage sprawl, congestion and pollution: ''When it comes to development, it’s time to throw out old policies'' that lead to sprawl and the isolation of communities from each other. ''We need strategies that encourage smart development linked to quality transportation that bring our communities together.'' And he pledged partnership between federal agencies (HUD, EPA and DOT) and cities so that ''when it comes to development, housing, energy and transportation policies go hand in hand.'' He commented to applause that ''we will build on the successful TIGER (''transportation investment generating economic recovery'') discretionary grants to 'put people to work and help our cities rebuild their roads, their bridges, train stations and water systems.''' (In the same week he announced his $8 billion federal high-speed rail grants–also a plus for connected metro areas.)
A third administration strategy, the president told the mayors, is to ''create neighborhoods of opportunity.'' He acknowledged that the causes of economic distress in many neighborhoods are ''deeply rooted and complicated,'' but he also spoke of ''simple'' things that could address neighborhood needs: ''access to good jobs, affordable housing, convenient transportation that connects both, quality schools, health services, safe streets and parks, and access to a fresh, healthy food supply.''
I like that approach–encompassing, as it does, the ''efficacy of the little good.'' Because, truly, it is the ''little'' things that count, not so much big endeavors like a sports stadium or convention center (which I also believe in, and supported as mayor). The fact is there’s no magic bullet for urban revitalization. The best strategy is to mind the store well, to focus on the the basics—street lighting, sidewalks, trees, trails, corner grocery stores, pubs, police horse and/or bike patrols, newspaper stands, parks and green space, and on and on–that can make a neighborhood livable and sustainable. Combine those strategies with sensible and conserving regionalism, and you have a really powerful package.
So will the comprehensive, connected urbanism–the urban vision the president articulates–ever become reality? Will Congress and the American people support the urban vision and program? Some will say it’s too much, some say it’s not enough. Everyone wonders where the money will come from. But–if the urban initiatives the President Obama speaks of are supported in the new federal budget, the vision will be furthered, maybe historically. Let’s hope so.
Reprinted from citiwire.net
The Path (Plan) Not Taken.
Planning Commissioners Journal, Summer 1998. Lessons from the defeat of a mixed use, high density plan, by neighborhood opposition.
The Purpose Prize Nominations -- 2009
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The State of Smart Growth
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Turning the Rust Belt Green
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Urban Ills: No American Monopoly
ATHENS — Each city is a unique blend of history, culture and architecture. But put three dozen urban planners and scholars from around the globe into one room and you discover that their concerns sound astoundingly similar.
In June I spent three days in Athens with a group of former International Urban Fellows from Johns Hopkins University, holding their annual conference this year in the Greek capital city of almost 4 million. I asked those in attendance — most from Britain and Europe, but others from Mexico, India and Turkey — to pinpoint the biggest problem their city faces.
Despite major differences in history, urban form, customs and governance between their cities and U.S. metros, their answers might easily have come from planners in Atlanta, Cleveland, Charlotte or Chicago.
In the U.S., with our primitive rapid transit, our expensive — and expansive — large-lot suburban neighborhoods and our rapacious appetite for oil-based energy, we're apt to imagine that other countries' cities have found more effective solutions to problems that bedevil our urban areas. Europe is like a gigantic, well-planned Portland (though with better French fries), we think, while the U.S. is more like sprawling Phoenix.
But if we assume all that, listening to conference attendees from places such as Rome, Edinburgh, Paris and Bern, Switzerland, is a bit like getting ice water splashed in your face.
Some of the problems they listed and talked about:
- Under-developed or unused infrastructure
- Mobility and car-focused development
- Accommodating immigrants and/or different ethnic groups
- Corruption or maladministration
- The difficulty of infill development, compared with growth on the urban edge
- Gentrification and other housing problems
- Economic troubles and unemployment
- Sprawl
- Lack of regional cooperation or regional governance
Not everyone listed all those problems, except, sadly, an architect from Calcutta and one from Mexico City who said, in effect, ''all of the above.''
Mexico City, an urbanized area of 20 million (or maybe 24 million — apparently even population measures there are contested) suffers from ''overpopulation, pollution, sprawl, corruption, etc.'' architect Alvaro Arellano Farias responded to my informal survey.
And while cities around the globe are worrying about climate-change-induced sea rise, Mexico City can go them one better. Built upon ancient lakebed drained by the Spanish conquistadors, it is sinking at the rate of an inch a year.
As Arellano described the region’s complicated governance, with four boroughs inside Mexico City, 16 boroughs and a mayor in the Federal District, 41 more municipalities in greater Mexico City, 18 more in the larger urban valley — which is, itself, divided among a federal district and two states — I was attempting to make sure I understood this complexity. ''Is there any one …?''
'' … In charge?'' He laughed ruefully. ''No.''
They all compete for economic development. The industrial areas in the state of Hidalgo send their air pollution into Mexico City. But with its sewage disposal going to Hidalgo, the city gets its pollutant revenge.
Unlike Mexico City, France is a place many American planners eye with envy for its compact centers, efficient public transit and strict urban growth boundaries. Yet two Frenchmen, one a planner from the northern region and the other an Athenian architect now living in Paris, complained about greenfield development, the lack of cohesive regional governance ''and the usual NIMBY attitudes,'' as architect Panos Mantziaras put it.
Although French planning is much stricter and more nationalized than in the U.S., nevertheless, the Paris metro region has 500-some governments. France has 36,000 mayors, more than any other European country. But starting with the next election, a new national law has created a direct elected body for the urbanized area of French cities, said Lille-based planner Jean-Marie Ernecq.
Naturally, for such a regional body to be created, it had to be imposed from above.
Calcutta's problems probably dwarf those of most other urban areas. ''Calcutta is a large exploding metropolos tending to megalopolis,'' noted Biplab Sengupta, a professor of planning and architecture in Kharagpur, India. He listed slums, traffic congestion and inadequate physical and social infrastructure.
Yet plenty of other cities grapple with those same problems — so many that a planner can get discouraged. As Mantziaras put it, ''You create all kinds of tools to foretell the future — and you never can.''
Georges Prevelakis, a Greek urban planner and professor of geopolitics at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris, described the idealistic goals of the Modernist movement, launched in the 1933 Charter of Athens. It was, he said, an idealism married to a lot of arrogance: ''It has been an enormous disappointment. We failed. … Who speaks of trying to contain the growth in cities in Africa?''
Athens' version of explosive population growth in the mid-20th century created many industrial areas, including land along the ancient Sacred Way, which ran between the city of Eleusis, now a suburban city called Elefsina, to the Acropolis in central Athens. Hellenic Open University Professor Lila Leontidou noted one result — that as runners traced the storied route from Marathon to the Acropolis during the 2004 Olympic Marathon, television viewers around the world saw mile upon mile of undistinguished suburban sprawl until the runners entered the center city.
Like Mexico City and Calcutta, or even Los Angeles or Philadelphia, Athens has urban issues that range far beyond its official municipal boundaries.
Mantziaras spoke with visible affection about growing up in Athens, about yearly birthday parties atop Filopappos hill. ''I can close my eyes, and in my mind describe the skyline of the mountains,'' he said.
But Athens is in crisis. And in today’s world, to regenerate an urban area one must deal with a city at the supra-urban scale, he said, remembering always that the future of the sprawling industrial and suburban areas is inextricably linked to the historic, tourist-filled center city.
What cities need, said Ernecq, is restored political debate. ''We need to have a vision and real political leadership and civic participation.''
That, I'd add, is an important recipe, no matter where in the world you are.
Reprinted from Citiwire.net
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Wet Growth: Should Water Law Protect Land Use?
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What Works, What Doesn’t in Smart Growth Policy
This news analysis by Arlin Wasserman of the Great Lakes Bulletin News Service looks at the Michigan Smart Growth Council's efforts to make permanent, meaningful land use changes. It also reviews how research by the Michigan Land Use Institute and the Sierra Club/Mackinac Chapter can help the Michigan's Smart Growth Council avoid the pitfalls -- and implement successful strategies -- employed in other states.
When Main Street Is a State Highway
''Blending Function, Beauty and Identity.'' 60-page handbook for
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Your Town Alabama: Community-Building Workshops
Despite the crucial importance of planning and design, small communities rarely have good access to professional assistance or information regarding the application of planning and design to their communities' issues. The YourTown Alabama program is a first step in meeting these needs.
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