What are /r/urbanplanning's favorite Products & Services?

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America also has a long history of anti-urban intellectualism. The suburbs, and equally as much the car, were seen as 1) an escape from the dirty and dangerous city, 2) a status symbol, since widespread homeownership was the hot new thing, and the developments only allowed the "right" (read: white) people to live in them. But really there was just no appreciation for the classic main streets of yore, and no conceptualization around the fact that they are essentially impossible to recreate when everyone has to drive to it.

This is a great book on this subject if you or anyone is interested: https://www.amazon.com/Crabgrass-Frontier-Suburbanization-United-States/dp/0195049837

Sure more density will have more impact. But is it worse than the same number of people spreading out in sprawling suburbia--not even close.

Using environmental concerns in the service of protecting single family homes is one of the tricks Fischel mentions in Zoning Rules!. Interesting to see it here so plainly!

I recommend reading Politics of Resentment by Katherine Cramer. It is specifically about Wisconsin, but it is relevant for all of rural America.

Rural folks get a lot of their identity from where they live. Their town is essentially their identity, so they can't ever fathom leaving. And that's fine - they grew up there, they were educated there, they got married there, and they worked there for decades with no problems. And then all of a sudden, they start noticing people moving out. They're noticing roads aren't being fixed, they're paychecks aren't getting any bigger, and the town no longer seems like the same one it was decades ago.

But what IS growing? That big city a couple hundred miles away. They're getting all the big infrastructure projects, all the news headlines, all the recent graduates. Even worse, they see urban places trying to increase taxes when their rural town can barely even keep itself afloat. So that's partly where the sentiment that urban people don't know what it's like to live in rural places comes from, along with the sentiment that urban people are being subsidized by rural communities.

This is also compounded by a lot of social and racial sentiments, because for a long time, urban was code word for poor communities of color and crime. Well, still is, but at least it's changing, and this isn't necessarily true everywhere (Cramer explicitly states there wasn't that much racist sentiments in 90% white Wisconsin, for example). It doesn't help that the US has essentially encouraged people to spread out as much as they can, so people think this happened naturally even though it was mostly policies doing this. Because all you really need to do is look at pretty much any example in the history of the world to disprove the claim being made.

i didn't know this until i read The Color of Law, but back in the early 20th century the popularity of personal automobiles skyrocketed to such a size that cities simply weren't able to keep up with the congestion they caused. the number of people who owned cars essentially doubled every year for a while and traffic was a plague. it's one of the reasons why cities embraced the idea of widening roads and eventually building highways so much in the first place, even back then they thought doing so would solve congestion

20-35 year olds don't out-earn older people. Having a median age of 31 would suggest a lower income.

https://www.fool.com/retirement/2017/01/02/americans-average-income-by-age-how-do-you-compare.aspx

The age doesn't explain the earning difference. The earning difference is explained by the economic value created by cities.

This is much of the south and it comes down to you guessed it RACISM. Durign slavery, It was way harder to controll black people who lived in cities. In fact many of the more promenent blacks we hear about today from that time period like Fredrick Douglas grew up in a city. City life automatically comes with a host of freedoms that event the brutal instituion of slavery couldnt control. For example, the afformentioned Douglas learnt to read thanks to street kids he meet in the city of Baltimore. So many of the wealthy whites in the south along with the wealthy policians they often either controlled disregarded investing in cities. So much soo that at what by 1870 fewer than 5 Southern states had a city over ten thousand people. cite

That picture isnt lack of demand. Its lack of investment becuase the people who demand it arent white.

Neither, New Orleans is going to be underwater, Phoenix is going to be without water.

You should read The Water Knife, its fantastic.

My God, those article comments are cancer. Complete misunderstanding of how supply and demand work. This is an excellent article.

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Very glad to see the Edward Glaeser quote, his book "Triumph of the City" is an absolute must read for any urbanist.

If you like this -- I can't recommend Cronon's Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West enough -- though he has a much more complex take on the idea of "natural" advantage.

That "bible" already exists in a variety of formats, most recently as Walkable City Rules--so why don't we have better outcomes?

I would argue that it is because the system now is actually working perfectly fine--not for creating human-friendly built environments, of course, but rather for ensuring stability in property/housing commodity markets. Until we have a society-wide discussion about what cities, land, and housing are really for, most things are unlikely to change. A standardized landscape is a lot more bankable than a diverse one.

Republicans are more likely to just say “leave me alone” and gtfo of cities. They take their votes with them. Although I’m registered as an independent I generally prefer to vote republican. However in my city (Baltimore) republicans are utterly unelectable because all the conservative voters left Baltimore 50 years ago. They moved south, they moved west, they moved to the suburbs. Political ideology dictates that conservatives are going to go to places where they can feel autonomous.

As for me I’m definitely a YIMBY. Half my mission in life is convincing my conservative family and friends that building walkable cities and passenger railways isn’t just some communist conspiracy to take away their cars (except that it is in some ideological circles, let's not be naive).

I plan on writing a thinkpice this summer called something like “the conservative case for walkable cities”. A big part of my argument will be that walking and biking encourage autonomy and make it easier for people to help themselves by removing the need to spend thousands on a car just to get the simplest job.

EDIT: It also doesn’t help that a lot of urbanites bully conservatives and libertarians. Conservatives have certainly done their oopsies, bet let's not forget that Progressives in the late 1800s and early to mid 1900s supported eugenics which was the foundation of red lining.

It's flagship social housing still exists, and is currently being adopted in Dublin. It didn't die; it reshaped the city in lasting ways.

If you haven't already, I highly suggest you check out A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

Try to get past the title, since the author tries quite hard to build an objective, data-driven case for how Baby Boomers have handled their time in charge of the country.

It's an outdoor shopping mall which is trying to recreate the feel of pedestrian-oriented urban streets. In actual urban streets, there's other uses above or nearby, but here the only other use is parking. But the feel of those streets is a selling point for these "lifestyle centers".

Some places like this actually do incorporate other uses, e.g. Fairfax Corner.

A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America (yes I know the title is a bit cringy) actually works through this in rather solid, data-backed detail.

Of course any individual has the possibility of being convinced or shifted from their position, but on a large-scale the boomer generation has caused, and are still causing, a LOT of damage due to actions of mass-sociopathy.

Were you inspired by Trains, Buses, People? He has a very similar map for every city in the US served by rail with the addition of highlighting job centers.

According to this national survey conducted in 2016, just 37% Americans said they would never cycle:

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Revisiting-the-Four-Types-of-Cyclists%3A-Findings-a-Dill-McNeil/fe682ed7f9dcb4c0b897e9525dcc20bb9f8f721c

About telework: https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/07/11/535398716/some-employers-are-rethinking-telework-citing-a-need-for-better-collaboration

IMO, I'm not a fan of teleworking. Teleworking loses a sense of space of where is work is and where home is. It's similar to the argument of privatizing public space. Another factor is the lack collaboration with co-workers as the article describes above.

Here is Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/

There is an online class through University of Pennsylvania titled "Designing Cities". Jonathan Barnett, Professor of Practice in City and Regional Planning, University of Pennsylvania made that specific quote.

Maybe the person who wrote the wikipedia article used the wrong term.

> "Fleet: a number of buses, aircraft, etc. under the control of one person or organization: Example : He owns a fleet of taxis."

Source: Cambridge dictionary

> A number of vehicles or aircraft operating together or under the same ownership. ‘a fleet of ambulances took the injured to hospital’

Source : Oxford dictionary

You can edit your own neighbourhood in OpenStreetMap, which is like the Wikipedia of maps. It has a strict on-the-ground rule: what matters is how people there call a place.

Apps like maps.me let you use OpenStreetMap offline anywhere. Apple Maps uses OpenStreetMap where it’s the best available map, for example in Denmark or the Philippines.

Apple's proposed new campus reduces the surface parking at its proposed site and will bring back some of the orchards the current suburban development wiped out. I'd say that Apple is at least taking steps in the right direction.

>Or does reflect something else entirely—the lure of nostalgia and the anxieties of longtime residents facing demographic and economic change?

Is that bad? People have a preference for their ingroup. It's not evil.

>Allport (1954) recognized that attachment to one’s ingroups does not necessarily require hostility toward outgroups. Yet the prevailing approach to the study of ethnocentrism, ingroup bias, and prejudice presumes that ingroup love and outgroup hate are reciprocally related. Findings from both cross-cultural research and laboratory experiments support the alternative view that ingroup identification is independent of negative attitudes toward outgoups and that much ingroup bias and intergroup discrimination is motivated by preferential treatment of ingroup members rather than direct hostility toward outgroup members. Thus to understand the roots of prejudice and discrimination requires first of all a better understanding of the functions that ingroup formation and identification serve for human beings. This article reviews research and theory on the motivations for maintenance of ingroup boundaries and the implications of ingroup boundary protection for intergroup relations, conflict, and conflict prevention.

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Appendix-A-The-Psychology-of-Prejudice-%3A-Ingroup-or-Brewer/6a773d4e73794ebfe7e0a82dd24ba51727a4fbd0

Very interesting perspective. In France, the city of Lyon has been foreseeing this issue. The way they address it is a tad complicated, but very interesting:

• they fund an infrastructure to capture more precise data on traffic: traffic cameras and detectors, remote controlled traffic lights offer a much clearer picture on traffic conditions than sampling individual cars, when rightly done.
• they fund an open data portal http://data.grandlyon.com to deliver that information for free. But there's a catch: using this data binds you to allow the GrandLyon to fully audit your systems.
• the GrandLyon allows private businesses to develop added value services on top of this data portal, such as the Optymod Lyon application: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.cityway.android_v3.optymod&hl=en

This has started last summer, so far, the sales figures show the application is profitable. The hopes are to generate a 2% modal report from cars to public transportation.

Yes, and while we're here I'll add that anyone with even a passing interest in urban planning that find itself in Paris should absolutely go to the Pavillon de l'Arsenal.

It's entirely free, the first floor tells you everything you need to know about the history of planning in the Paris area (in English) and the exhibits are usually top notch. Plus it's extremely central, just by the Seine.

Go to Indeed and look for current openings in urban planning. While those will be filled by the time you're looking for a job, it will give you an idea what employers are generally seeking. For instance, I think you will find a need for comprehensive computer skills including reports, presentations and GIS.

Something you won't likely find just yet that will certainly come into play in the next decades for most of the Gulf and East Coast states is a need for urban migration away from sea level rise and subsidence. This is going to be a big deal in S. FL.

High-rise residential buildings are being built all over the place, but mainly downtown. Everywhere else, we're seeing a lot of duplexes, triplexes and townhouses pop up.

TOD projects have been announced pretty much all along the line(s). Here's one example already under construction . It's mixed-use with office, retail, residential, restaurants, hotel, etc.

The project is directly connected to the transit station via an elevated walkway. https://solaruniquartier.com/en/

It's not perfect. There are some problems with this design, but it certainly beats more suburban sprawl. A step in the right direction!

The most fascinating, complex, contested, and studied answer to your question:

Portland, Oregon's Urban Growth Boundary:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=portland's+urban+growth+boundary&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ei=7nkrUdGzEsWDywHQroH4AQ&ved=0CC4QgQMwAA

Are you legally able to work in the US? A quick search on indeed pops up 262 internships nationwide.

http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=urban+planning&jt=internship

You might have better luck with this site - tend to be a fair amount of summer gigs. http://www.ecoemploy.com/

Cover letter seems fine, although it should be tailored to each job.

Resume might want to have a bit more about your relevant studies, since you're a student, but is generally fine.

Good luck!

Take a look into the satelite link, IMO, even though it is a stretched surface, it is clearly big enough to build a city grid.

Houten, The Netherlands comes to mind. Its streets are designed so it's a pain to get from one quadrant to another by car unless you go around a ring road, so it's easier to go by bike. Plus, there's a train line running right through the town, and it leads to Utrecht, the nearby major city.

Its density is 819/km2. By contrast, Spring Valley, a suburb of Las Vegas, has a density of 2,100/km2 and has an overall Walk Score of 51.

Google maps

something... something else

tl;dr google better (hint: memmott transportation)

If you have not done so yet, you can get a free 30 day trial with Esri products that will give you the time you need to practice and touch up your skills. If you've already done this then download QGis. It's a free open source GIS platform and can certainly give you a way to practice your GIS skills some more. It doesn't make as pretty maps as ArcGIS but it gets the job done.

And as someone else mentioned already, Getting to Know ArcGIS is a really helpful book.

That's not really true: EA has marketed SimCity as an educational tool.

"In the classroom, SimCity will be more than a game - it will be a way for the next generation of leaders to hone their skills through urban planning..."

The first book I thought of was City by David Macaulay (of The Way Things Work fame). It’s a story of a fictional, but representative Roman City, And he goes into its construction thoroughly. It’s not super technical at all, but it got me into urban planning (along with his Underground book).

And look, it’s only $11 on amazon

People blaming design problems on user error is a common issue. The example used in "The Design of Everyday Things" (a great book, btw) is doors where you can't easily figure out whether to push or pull, or whether to do it on the left or right side. The design of the handles ought to make it obvious, but often it doesn't. People feel stupid when they get it wrong, but really it's the fault of whoever designed the door.

Original Washington Post article
Full HackerNews Thread

Covers the same material as https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236825193_Street_Rivals_Jaywalking_and_the_Invention_of_the_Motor_Age_Street in case you want to read rather than listen. Eye-opening (figuratively) in either case!

For this kind of problems, Tokyo seems to often be a step ahead in trying things: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1305889

As it went out, people prefered to get away and develop taller buildings in the suburban area, less than 30min of the town center by train.

I had a friend living in a 10m2 room in a very urban area, and the main pb was less the practicality of it than the fact he was paying a pretty good money for a room that he'd have to leave as soon as he has any serious relationship with someone, or any hobby that requires space, or if he wants a pet etc. Basically if anything substential changes in his life.

Gand (fr) / Ghent (en) / Gent (Dutch) in OpenStreetMap : https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/897671#map=14/51.0499/3.7245

The city is also well connected with the rail network:

• A light rail line linking Liège–Bruxelles–Gand–Bruges–Ostende
• Another light rail line linking Anvers–Gand–Courtrai–Lille
• Connections with high speed train network via Lille (TGV) and Brussels (Thalys)

Regressions are a good start, it really depends on the program but my MPA program made us take a research statistics course. For brushing up on skills maybe a MOOC would be a good start. I found this one on coursera that may be of interest.

https://www.coursera.org/course/statistics101

I do not find myself using a ton of stats in the job I have now but the knowledge will be good to have in future jobs/all around life.

really sorry for the late reply. I use bypass paywall script on github to access wsj. The link is here: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome

I can't speak for architecture, but the Linked-In Planetizen group had a discussion about land policy resources and search terms for macroscale planning. A lot of organizations I think about are here: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Does-anyone-know-any-websites-1961663.S.5956973980203180032

This is an opposite:

Stockholm

Rinkeby: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=stockholm&hl=en&ll=59.387627,17.930374&spn=0.012653,0.038581&hnear=Stockholm,+Stockholm+County,+Sweden&t=h&z=15

Östermalm: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=stockholm&hl=en&ll=59.335816,18.085041&spn=0.012673,0.038581&hnear=Stockholm,+Stockholm+County,+Sweden&t=h&z=15

Rinkeby is kinda segregated, mostly immigrants and low income. Östermalm is probably the most expensive area to live in in all of Sweden.

Plot.ly is a popular graphical library. It ties in somehow with the Googlemaps library. I've never used it for a map, but it works really well for other plots.

I think the Tesla example is close to what you're talking about:

https://plot.ly/python/maps/

Maybe, but prob not in the way you would hope.

You can fight for your principles, for principles of justice or decency or whatever, but I would not ever expect to win any of those battles, especially early in your career.

Its kind of like I suggested to a kid about whether he should follow up w a company that contacted him again after they had ghosted him a few months earlier

I said you could have a job or your dignity

While allowing for some wiggle room in case there was a really insane mixup or miscommunication, etc. Those once in a lifetime misunderstandings happen a whole lot more than once in a lifetime.

Racsim/classism/caste system don't just exist in urban planning

They're everywhere always and may always be

So you can still study urban planning and do it as a profession and be a psedo-activist in your spare time and do legit meaningful useful work to try to counteract reactionary and conservative forces, both within urban planning and without.

A lot of learning activism imo is learning how to manage your expectations, emotions, learn or create an activist mentality/philosophy that allows you to do work and achieve achieve goals in spite of the myriad ongoing disappointments you will face.

I think trying to always learn 'how the world actually works' is important

That's necessary if you want to be effective as an activist

Which is supposed to be the point

Looking at institution analyses about urban planning and society and business and government and media and activism are all on the table.

One is this I just found -- I can't vouch for it except to say it looks serious, even if both authors are Ford professors -- I saw a mention of Rawls which is a positive sign:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.amazon.com/Profession-City-Planning-Challenges-1950-2000/dp/0882851659&ved=2ahUKEwjs-d-mqcjwAhXDop4KHTYjCJQQFjARegQIHBAC&usg=AOvVaw3fJ-kt93VfTd79sTuBzg6d

Clicked and delivered :) I have to find a place to read it somewhere between 700 pages of Land Use Law, as well as Every Day Ethics for Practicing Planners, Planning Theory for Practitioners, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Getting to Yes, The Tipping Point, How to get your point across in 30 seconds or less, Listen Up!, And a couple dozen pages in a planning-theory reader.

I'd start with the NPPF and then the Local Plan of wherever you are working as these policy documents shape all development decisions in your area. I'd also recommend the below book which is a bit dry but provides good introduction to planning:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Essential-Guide-Planning-Law-Decision-Making/dp/1447324463/ref=asc_df_1447324463?tag=bingshoppinga-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=79920808416451&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-4583520385028707&psc=1

The Practice of Local Government Planning is referred to as “the Green Bible” and is probably the closest thing to a universal planning textbook out there.

yeah, I'd imagine so. I read it a while ago, but her main thing was eyes on the street. any place that's empty at any time is potentially dangerous. Her actual ideas for making a park more appealing, I don't really remember. The only thing I remember is you're supposed to situate parks amongst business/residential/retail/etc. Parks are a place you'll never go to if they're not amongst places you go to anyway, according to Jacobs. This again speaks to the fact that you need to make sure a park isn't just for kids. she focused a bit on kids acting out of control and parks being the place for them to do it because there's no adults around.

On the off-chance you've not seen it, I'll share the video summary of the social life of small urban spaces. It's fantastic. it's less about crime in parks and more about social life in plazas. but Idunno, I just like it. This type of behavior science is fascinating https://archive.org/details/SmallUrbanSpaces

I don't where he stands on urbanism but the British conservative thinker Roger Scruton has written on the conservative case for protecting the environment.

This is an outstanding question.

My first thought is the very dull-sounding but actually very readable "Bureaucracy" by Wilson. https://www.amazon.com/Bureaucracy-Government-Agencies-Basic-Classics/dp/0465007856?ref_=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=cb3e0863-20f4-4887-952e-d2bc0fd1534a

And the classic James C Scott "Seeing Like a State" - which is not directly relevant to contemporary institutions but very theoretically insightful.

I'm definitely with you on freshly-squeezed lime juice. The bottled stuff is rubbish.

Usually for me the ratio is 1.5:1.0:0.75 tequila, Cointreau (or occasionally Grand Marnier), lime juice. Shake with ice and then strain into an old fashioned glass with a salted rim (sometimes blended with homegrown, dried, finely-minced cayenne pepper) and a block of ice. I bought one of these for the ice and am pretty happy with them.

I bounce around from tequila to tequila with no great loyalty. Whatever is both good for mixing and not outrageously expensive at Total Wine I'll give a shot to. Currently I'm working through a bottle of El Padrino blanco which is OK, though I probably won't buy it again. Not much there there, as the saying goes.

I bought a Food & Wine cocktails recipe book at my local library's Friends of the Library book sale and there's some fun stuff in there. Biggest problem is all the mixers I don't have. That and it encourages me to drink more than I ought to. :D

There's literally book called a Citizen's Guide to Planning you should check out: https://www.amazon.com/Citizens-Guide-Planning-Fourth/dp/193236465X

It's more like the legitimate problem of a lack of affordable housing and the search for solutions being harmed by progressive policies. Author Michael Shellenberger's discussion of what happened in San Francisco is useful: San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities.

It is true that most places, especially Connecticut, don't have the homeless problems that S.F. does, but the book discusses the excess of criminal justice reform. That is affecting more and more parts of America. Big Sacred Cow there -- criminal justice reform.

Basically just give them Strong Towns: A Bottom Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity and Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town by Charles L. Marohn Jr.

Buffered bike lanes do have a lot of issues if the buffer doesn't have a physical element like bollards. It only keeps cyclists save from people who want to, understand the concept and are able to. What I mean by that is, that people can easily park there, maybe genuinely mistake it for a parking lane (confusing signage and stupid people are not rare) or lose control of their car due to a crash or medical emergency.

That being said buffered bike lanes are a great short to mid term solution. Installing a proper bike lane with physical barriers is expensive and a routine street renewal is often times the easiest way to make it happen. When given the choice of no bike lane for 5 or 10 years until the street gets a redo or a buffered bike lane right now, the buffered bike lane is definitely the better choice.

But when designing a new street or redoing a street design because of a renewal we should opt for more appropriate solutions than a buffered bike lane.

Dude. There’s probably only recreational paths here, the German suburbs are all quite walkable. These are not because the only pleasurable way to walk, without the cars going 65 kph, is by taking back roads. Also, I’m basing my argument on the data presented in Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town by Charles L. Marohn Jr..

The US suburbs need actual bike infrastructure otherwise you have to deal with walking over 30 minutes down a main stroad without any walking paths.

>How are we supposed to change zoning in favor of optimal density if we can not measure it?

There is no a priori optimal density for any particular lot at any particular time, certainly not one that can be preemptively reduced to a simple formula.

There is a large and compelling literature on the economics of high-rises that you might want to engage with.

Not really specifically job-prep, but something nice to give you some theoretical background might be Order Without Design. It's pretty consistent with and you could say builds on what Jane Jacobs writes about

One of my friends recommended the book 'Who Plans the Planning?' by Lucius Burckhardt. I think it talks about how planning and design are political. I have been meaning to buy it for sometime but it's expensive in my country. https://www.amazon.com/Who-Plans-Planning-Architecture-Politics/dp/3035619018

Not specifically planning, but Door to Door is a good ground-level read on transportation, and how goods and people move around

Great list! Don't know if it's by a marginalized group, but I'd also add Order Without Design to this. https://www.amazon.com/Order-without-Design-Markets-Cities/dp/0262038765

Kept blowing my mind over and over.

It’s beyond the scope of what I asked in this post but I imagine some variation on this sequence potentially working out; 1. Get a large investor to back the project or do some large scale crowd funding that says once we pass X% of our funding goal it will trigger the purchase of land. 2. Give our land grant to people who are willing to commit to building on the land. Ideally you could go full Georgist here and charge a land value tax or a vacancy tax that kicks in if the land sits undeveloped 3. Work out some light easements with the state to allow for looser building codes (design codes, not safety codes) and maybe even waive or deduct income taxes. Make the land value tax, vacancy tax, and parking fees the primary sources of municipal revenue 4. Commit to a list of my own ideosyncratic political values like welcoming refugees and immigrants, high privacy, low censorship, school choice, energy self sufficiency through nuclear/solar/geothermal works, limited city capacity for new public initiatives without supermajorities - all the standard public choice school fan boy stuff (though I’d definitely prefer to keep these open ended and not highly scripted). 10% less democracy type stuff. 5. Let ‘er rip. Hopefully the founders get enormously wealthy from the growth of the city and inspire similar movements nationwide

I'm fortunate enough to live in quick walking distance from work at city hall so I don't typically carry much anything, but when I do:

1. Saddleback Leather Thirteener Thin Leather Briefcase in dark coffee brown;
   Kaweco Sport fountain pen with blue ink;
   Slim Padfolio;
   Writing Pad;
   Phone
2. My hands if between meetings with the padfolio, writing pad, and pen;
   Saddleback Leather Thirteen Thin Leather Briefcase
3. No. Large plans may be a problem (we still require full size plan prints) or old maps (I work in historic preservation as part of my job) but those are not day-to-day concerns
4. I carry these either walking or biking or in my car if needed or longer distance
5. I strongly, strongly recommend Saddleback Leather. I waited until my current job to purchase it and have been very impressed by the quality. Of course now I don't need to use it much. Sad times.

Ehm - not quite, the moral of the story is that we need more and more energy [1.15], while the infrastructure growth [.75] declines. That's not immortality.

http://www.ted.com/talks/geoffrey_west_the_surprising_math_of_cities_and_corporations.html

This led to some interesting discussion on Hacker News (be careful, there are quite a lot of libertarian talking points). On the whole I tend to agree with the author of the article though.

You need to wait and watch first. At least be evidence based if the scientific method isn't feasible on legal systems or infrastructure development.

It will take a few years before you see the results of these policy changes. So far our (NZ) house prices have risen even more and now hit an average of $NZ1 million average, nationwide, and our real-estate, banking and construction industries are fried.

Have you tried Zotero? You can assign tags to papers and add them to "collections" (I usually have a collection for each project I'm working on), and the Chrome extension downloads PDFs to local storage automatically when available.

Okay, got a little curious... According to this, Boston has grown 50k housing units since 1950 and an increase of only 5k more vacancies. I'll admit the growth is pretty pathetic but it is still a true statement that housing stock has grown and there aren't 100k extra empty apartments laying around.

https://www.amazon.com/Public-Transportation-Land-Use-Policy/dp/0253346827

Pushkarev and Zupan answers this question in 1977, and I can't think of anyone who has devised a better answer. Newman and Kenworthy looked at this again and settled on the same.

35/hectare.

35 what? People. Whether at work or living, generally anyone making an outbound and inbound trip each day. If a city can string together a connected line of 35/h it can run high quality transit frequently with an expected ridership.

So, denser than most post 1970 suburbia of complete car dominance, 1950's era barely cut it but with some 3 storey apartments on arterials, and certainly most prewar (pre WW2) suburbs achieved this mostly through less space occupied by driveways and garages, and smaller homes with more people in them. 35/h is denser, but not unfathomably dense.

From Keflavík International Airport, bus 55 serves Keflavík, Reykjanesbær, Ásbrú, and Njarðvík, bus 89 serves Garður and Sandgerði, and bus 88 serves Grindavík. It's also running from early morning to late evening, so unless your hostel was well away from any village or town, it seems unlikely there was no bus there. You might have to change buses in Keflavík town, though.

Conversely, in the US, I've been to several airports with very poor or no bus connections at all. When I visited my wife in Iowa City, I could usually only get there from Eastern Iowa Airport by taxi/shuttle, unless one of the rare buses per day happened to be running when I was arriving.

Brisbane, Australia, has a pretty comprehensive bus network that covers most of the City limits quite well. Frequency is an opportunity for growth for the System, but overall as a resident, it is a clean, respectable service.

Brisbane is a low density city that comprises of Single Family Homes on 405sqm (4400 sqft) blocks. Most subdivisions were built after World War 2, on former farmlets, the main arteries are continuous, and the subdivisions themselves have a grid layout.

Attached is the hourly Night Bus service that runs on weekends. You can reach the outer limits of the City in less than one hour.

https://translink.com.au/sites/default/files/assets/resources/plan-your-journey/late-night-services/150708-brisbane-pocket-pal.pdf

Map of Brisbane, Australia

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=10/-27.4675/153.0684

We had a landslide in Croatia, well, it was rather a rockfall than a landslide. Some 8 months later we made a tunnel that went besides the rocks.

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> The findings acknowledge human behavior is impacted by the street environment, and narrower lanes in urban areas result in less aggressive driving and more ability to slow or stop a vehicle over a short distance to avoid collision.

The whole study is really good. Note that extremely narrow roads are called out, as well – the point is not that wider is always bad, but that we need to design roads in their appropriate context. Increased enforcement is fine, too, but it's impossible to surveil every road at once, and it makes drivers feel attacked instead of safe.

since you guys are interested in this.. im working on a way to find more transportation options for seniors. So i need survey results that defend this. IF you want to help out, feel free to take this quick survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/93YVBRB

It’s good that you’re asking the question!

I’m in the US and my city, Austin, Texas, has a group of very vocal cycling advocates who believe the weather is never too hot or humid for cycling. We’re definitely not Malaysia or Singapore, large parts of the year are close to ideal, but there are also significant parts that are awful. I’m a transit advocate, but also believe transit modes need to be appropriate. Poorly considered options create ill will that makes it difficult to advance transit-friendly agendas.

I think the Netherlands’ idea of heat and humidity may be different than Texas’ 😂. It is true though that lots of people here commute in summer too.

https://weatherspark.com/y/8004/Average-Weather-in-Austin-Texas-United-States-Year-Round#Sections-Humidity

Oaxaca has some:

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https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/oaxaca-mexico-dec-10-2015-taxi-539658223

Bridges are expenisve. So probably not unless you have a specific set of circumstances that would call for it.

So what you're doing is that you're funneling the traffic that wants to change motorways into a junction that is not grade seperated, probably one with traffic lights or a roundabout. The through traffic stays on the motorways, right? Your concept makes sense if the traffic on your motorways mostly goes straight and you don't have alot of space to space left or right of the motorways. But instead of using two bridges on the middle level, you would simplify it to one, so the middle lanes go straight and the outer lanes leave the motorway.

So maybe it's more of an intersections with a double flyover than a true grade seperated interchange. Those do exists.

This one in Beijing also uses this concept.

There are e-bike mechanics at bike shops. It's a market that is getting huge. https://electrek.co/2021/10/05/electric-bicycle-sales-are-growing16x-higher-than-general-cycling-heres-why/

These bikes motors last for thousands of miles and when you do have to replace a bike, they're cheap compared to a car. I'm not spending money monthly on gas, insurance, car payment, parking, tolls, pricy repairs (much less than a car). Charging the battery is on par with charging a few laptop batteries

In winter months, people can still ride. It's like skiing/snowboarding, or snowmobiling, you dress for it and bring hand warmers

Yep! Playing “where was this actually filmed”, “is that a real location”

Last show I watched that I went down this rabbit hole was “Glitch”. Set in a rural Australian town but with some good iconic locations to hunt down.

You might also like https://www.geoguessr.com/

I wonder what picture they're going to use for Calgary… much of the inner city east of Centre St is parking lots.

We're fixing downtown, at least, with the East Village.

The Stampede grounds, and the Saddledome, have tons of parking around them. 95% of the community of Victoria Park, already adjacent to some contaminated/unusable empty land near the CP railway, was torn down less than 10 years ago to make way for Stampede expansion.

it used to be on netflix, but then it was gone before i could watch all of it, so i ended up getting the dvds. https://www.amazon.com/Utopia-Season-1-4-Collection-DVD/dp/B07X53KWGZ

My favorite scene is from this episode "Protected Species" https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6kqo40?playlist=x71fvp at the 12 minute mark where Tony has a "meeting about the grass" which is a protected plant species growing on a major development site. There's a bunch of environmental agency personnel with green sweaters in various shades that make for a good visual.

Walkable City

https://www.amazon.com/Walkable-City-Downtown-Save-America/dp/0865477728/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=walkable&qid=1634741922&qsid=144-3936431-4407231&sr=8-1&sres=B00B9NT350%2CB07MK5CKD8%2CB08XQVTL5F%2CB07GQ1FQFX%2C1550652435%2...

Separating by class is not separating by race.

There are books on this subject. I suggest you start reading some. Let me start you on one:

https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segregated/dp/1631494538/

Maybe attach one of these to it? https://www.amazon.com/Anti-Theft-Vibration-Motorcycle-Waterproof-Electronic/dp/B07D1Z263T

Could also hide an Airtag in the pannier so if someone still manages to steal it, you can track it.

You can probably find some free syllabi from schools of public administration for MPA programs and start there. There are so many good (great) books that should be mandatory for everyone in democratic free society to understand what government does. Its hard to choose one for a practitioner... BUT

If I had to recommend one book, I'd probably recommend James Q Wilson's Bureaucracy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465007856/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_ZEHK507J4SW3FVMRMY1W?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

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Other than that, and since this is /r/urbanplanning I would be remiss to not recommend the Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. That is mandatory reading, or at least skim for thematics, for anyone in public urban planning.

You can't beat Jane Jacobs, it is the OG of planning books.

I also like the book Reinventing Government. https://www.amazon.com/Reinventing-Government-Entrepreneurial-Spirit-Transforming/dp/0452269423

It taught and provided examples of how a different mindset and way of thinking can transform the types of problems we solve, and the quality of the solutions. At the end of the day, being planner is about DOING, more than just PLANNING...IMO. This book will help you do both.

You might like this one: amazon link

It's available on german amazon so you can get it easily

There are two broad categories of the type of development you describe. Both are common throughout the country, although more in some areas than others:

1. Streetcar suburbs. These are suburbs built roughly in the first half of the 20th Century, and usually have detached houses in a grid of streets, with a traditionally walkable main street at the center.

2. New Urbanism. These are suburbs built roughly since 1990 that attempt to rearrange the components of suburbia into a more walkable form. The book Suburban Nation describes how this is done, and a simple google search for "new urbanism" will show you several results. .

Don’t settle. I would not let my kids bike in buffer protected lane if it had parking because it creates unnecessary opportunities for traffic at higher speeds to cross the lane. I totally see the conflict with pedestrians that it avoids, I just choose that kind of conflict over conflict with cars, every time. Buffered lanes repel me as a non-confident cyclist (confidence being in society’s ability to accommodate bikes, not skill)

I haven't read this myself yet (planning on it some day), but I've heard of Copenhagenize: The Definitive Guide to Global Bicycle Urbanism by Mikael Colville-Anderson. Seems like it might be light reading? I'm not sure.

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Cyclescapes of the Unequal City: Bicycle Infrastructure and Uneven, by John G. Stehlin, seems less well-known, but nonetheless intriguing and perhaps more topical. I think it's focused on the United States, which may or may not be what you're looking for.

As the other poster mentioned, the local APA chapters are a good resource for material.

The practice exams on planningprep.com were also really helpful.

The only material I actually purchased were these flashcards: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1609711513/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fabc_NW0VD7C69MNT02X8CTRC

The flashcards and practice exams were definitely the most helpful for me. I don't think I would have passed without the flashcards. Good luck!

The Regional District structure in British Columbia, Canada, is pretty unique in Canada, so it might be tough for folks not familiar with the location to provide meaningful input here. As well, I have heard that in the states metro regions have many more municipalities than in Canada, so it might also be tough for our southern neighbors to provide input.

On fair case study in Canada would be Winnipeg, which I believe consolidated in the '70s and might have had somewhere in the neighborhood of 13 separate municipalities.

Otherwise, I think that this is the definitive text on local government in Canada, so it may have some good information for you (if you are a student your uni should have it): https://www.amazon.ca/Local-Government-Canada-Richard-Tindal/dp/0176582975

If we're doing Amazon links:

• Neil Smith - The New Urban Frontier: https://www.amazon.com/New-Urban-Frontier-Gentrification-Revanchist/dp/041513255X
• Lees, Slater, and Wyly - Gentrification: https://www.amazon.com/Gentrification-Loretta-Lees/dp/0415950376

Try amazon smile to donate to a charity of your choice automatically at no cost to you!
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I've not used it, but sounds like this one provides real-time status, don't think relies on being crowdsourced.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.citymapper.app.release&hl=en_CA