#ForewordFriday: Biophilic Cities Edition

By Katharine Sucher / On March 3rd, 2017
What if, even in the heart of a densely developed city, people could have meaningful encounters with nature? The idea of a green city, a sustainable city, and even a resilient city are well-understood. Now, the emerging ideal of a biophilic city—which goes beyond green infrastructure to connect urban dwellers with nature on a deeper level—is a useful and necessary addition to the way we think about city planning and design.

#ForewordFriday: Urban Observation Edition

By Katharine Sucher / On February 3rd, 2017
Creating cities that work for everyone means seeing them from different perspectives—literally. In Seeing the Better City, urbanist writer, photographer, and land-use attorney Charles R. Wolfe takes urban observation beyond design review and zoning codes, charting a future where all city-dwellers can contribute to the improvement of their city.
Washburn

Bird Therapy

By Timothy Beatley / On December 21st, 2016
Few things in the world have as much immediate ability to shift me into a different mood, into a different and more positive outlook, than birds—seeing them, hearing them, watching their often frenetic but joyful movements and machinations. Birds, and animals more generally, don’t receive the attention they deserve among urban designers and planners. They are so profoundly a part of the quality of life, and so important to the positive mental health of urban residents, that they ought to be given more attention in planning.

Walkability is a global movement: The Walk21 Conference and Jan Gehl

By Annie Matan, Peter Newman / On December 1st, 2016
Walkability is a global movement. Every year walkability professionals come together at the international walking conference, Walk21. In October of this year for the first time the conference was held in Asia, in Hong Kong, where over 800 people from 38 countries gathered to learn from each other, to share their successes and to share their difficulties.
Photo credit: Shutterstock

#ForewordFriday: Zero Net Energy Building Edition

By Katharine Sucher / On November 18th, 2016
Around the country, interest in Zero Net Energy (ZNE) buildings is growing—this fall Santa Monica passed the world’s first ZNE building requirement for new single family homes and Boise unveiled Idaho’s first commercial ZNE building.

WATCH: Alex Garvin at The Skyscraper Museum

By David Hall / On October 17th, 2016
Founded in 1996, The Skyscraper Museum is a private, not-for-profit, educational corporation devoted to the study of high-rise building, past, present, and future. Located in New York City, the world's first and foremost vertical metropolis, the museum celebrates the city's rich architectural heritage and examines the historical forces and individuals that have shaped its successive skylines.

Climate Change and Preservation: Where Do They Intersect?

By Stephanie Meeks / On October 5th, 2016
Summertime brings picnics, baseball games, family vacations, and, increasingly, record-busting temperatures. Each of the 10 hottest years on record has happened since 1998, including the hottest of all, 2014. As a preservation community, we are starting to grapple with the effects of this changing climate in very concrete ways.

Why My Twitter Stream is Singing about Placemaking

By Charles R. Wolfe / On September 13th, 2016
My Twitter stream is alive with the sound of placemaking.  While those are not the exact Sound of Music lyrics we remember, I am as guilty as anyone for hyping Placemaking Week in Vancouver, British Columbia (which begins September 12), using the increasingly popular twitter hashtag, #placemaking.

Pages