Does City Living Make Us Happy?
Cover for Charles Montgomery's "Happy City".
Urbanists have often touted the notion that city living makes us happier and healthier, but is there any real science to back this up? After all, historically ci...
Places in the Making: New MIT Research on Placemaking Reveals the Power of Community Engagement in Design of Public Spaces
Today a new white paper was released by the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the subject of Placemaking. The team is headed by faculty Susan Silberberg, w...
How to choose a graduate school for an Urban Planning degree.
Lately I’ve been fielding a lot of questions about planning schools from prospective students curious as to how to choose a program, what to look for, what to expect, and all the other odds and ends that come w...
Cities and Free Markets: The Manufactured American Dream
For some reason or another people seem to associate cities with socialism and suburbs with the capitalist American dream. The notion that the strong middle class created American suburbia has been engraved in o...
The History of the Coffeehouse Conversation
Next time you enter into a coffee shop, just stand up and dive into political discourse by speaking out loud to all the welcoming patrons. This is apparently doing it old school, as London historian Dr. Matthew...
The Hipsterability Index
If you have thought recently 'I wonder how hipster my city is,' hoping that you are catering to this segment of the population, think no longer. With no better judge of hipsterability than Austin, Texas, we ar...
Are days numbered for one-way streets?
While for years many people have favored one way streets as a quick way to get in and out of town, they have come under recent fire as being ineffective and confusing, but new evidence shows that like roundabou...
5 Takeaways from “Defend Your Ride”
Towards the end of last year I had the opportunity to produce a blog feature for CBS Detroit called Defend Your Ride (which is why there was a bit of a lull in posting for a while). The segment is being done in...
Perceptions on Density: Is it too crowded in Big Sky Country?
Out west lies a massive state with a relatively low population - the big Sky State of Montana. With the population of Montana officially crossing over the 1 million person hurdle, you wouldn't think there would...
The Best GOP candidates on High Speed Rail are Newt Gingrich….and Ron Paul?
Later on this evening, Iowa republicans will start to caucus for their nomination for president on the republican ticket. An issue that has been avoided among the candidates thus far has been transportation, so...