© OxnardRenaissance.org Roy’s Oxnard Renaissance Placemaking Newsletter 2018 ~ #39 ZONING is the Greatest Impediment to Great Placemaking “”Summer in the City: Hottest Design Elements for Placemaking in the Public Realm,” featuring Susan Henderson of Placemakers and Victor Dover of Dover Kohl & Partners.” click the image below to…
The Commons in Downtown Ithaca. Wikimedia Commons Historic street grids can handle greater traffic of all kinds—so why aren’t we building more of them? ROBERT STEUTEVILLE JUN. 28, 2018 As far as I have been able to determine, no one has ever scientifically compared the capacity of historic street grids with modern road systems. If they…
The greater choice offered by well-connected street networks leads to more capacity and efficiency, according to pioneering smart growth engineer Walter Kulash. ROBERT STEUTEVILLE JUL. 31, 2018 I recently posted “The copious capacity of street grids” making the case that traditional street networks are not just better for walking, biking, and livability, but also offer far greater…
JULY 23, 2018 BY CONNOR NIELSEN 40 years ago this summer, voters in California approved Proposition 13, a law that initiated sweeping changes to the California property tax system and permanently re-shaped the dynamics of property ownership in the state. Prop 13 is known in California and beyond as the rule that protects low-income, elderly property owners…
“NIMBYs are not necessarily the problem. They are behaving normally for humans. The problem is politicians and other decision-makers who know better, who don’t do the right thing because of NIMBY fear. If you’ve had a long process, heard from thousands of people, investigated and understood the technical issues, know your aspirations as a city,…
JULY 12, 2018 BY STRONG TOWNS “Our country was built on place, built on neighbors, built on people helping each other… I think people are yearning for that again and that’s what a downtown does.”— Quint Studer Quint Studer is the founder of the Studer Community Institute, a nonprofit organization in Pensacola, FL focused on improving…
“Every car driver ought to pay for the parking space they use—whether it’s in the public or the private realm.” By Joe Cortright 16.2.2017 At City Observatory, we try to stick to a wonky, data-driven approach to all things urban. But numbers don’t mean much without a framework to explain them, and so today we…
Image courtesy of the Village of Providence Twelve steps of sprawl recovery In communities across America sprawl is giving way to more diverse places. Here are a dozen keys to that trend. STEVE MOUZON FEB. 13, 2018 The storm clouds of sprawl addiction had been gathering for years, but it took the Meltdown and the ensuing…
June 7, 2018 By Howard Blackson III Today, San Diego is failing to accommodate our growth demands. Due to NIMBY (people who oppose any new building with a “Not In My Backyard” attitude) pressure and fear, only downtown towers and greenfield sprawl sites are far enough away from them to secure any development permits. And these aren’t…
Planning policy is changing. The American Planning Association Board of Directors on March 29, 2018 released the following document… Policy Principles for the Nation’s Housing Crisis Our nation is confronting a housing crisis. This crisis varies in scope and specifics from city to city and market to market, but the reality remains that current policies are…