Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Urban Planning

What Can an Algorithm Tell Us About How People Perceive Streets?

By Angie Schmitt | Aug 8, 2014 | 6 Comments

What makes people feel that a street is safe, and what do those perceptions tell us about different streets? A group of researchers at MIT have developed a formula designed to approximate people’s subjective reactions to the way streets look. They hope it will help chart shifts in the quality of city environments over time and […]

Talking Headways Podcast: Poor Door Von Spreckelsen

By Tanya Snyder | Aug 4, 2014 | 2 Comments

In this week’s podcast, Jeff and I take on the infamous New York City “poor door,” designed to keep tenants of affordable units segregated from the wealthy residents that occupy the rest of the high-rise at 40 Riverside. In the process, we take on the assumptions and methods that cities use to provide housing, and […]

Talking Headways Special Episode: Walt Disney, City Planner

By Tanya Snyder | Jul 1, 2014 | 28 Comments

While most people know Walt Disney as the creator of lovable characters like Mickey Mouse and movies like “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and “Fantasia,” Disney doesn’t get as much credit for his design of Disneyland. Turns out Disney made himself an expert on the subject. This podcast isn’t a typical Talking Headways conversation. It’s a 45-minute […]

New Urban Love and Loathing in Buffalo: Jeff Speck Responds

By Jeff Speck | Jun 16, 2014 | 21 Comments

As a charter member of the Congress for New Urbanism, I’ve now attended twenty of the organization’s annual conferences. This month’s event may have been my favorite yet, mostly thanks to its location in downtown Buffalo, a place that reminds us so poignantly of both the successes and failures of city planning, as first lovingly […]

Lakewood, Ohio: The Suburb Where Everyone Can Walk to School

By Clarence Eckerson Jr. | Apr 29, 2014 | No Comments

The inner Cleveland suburb of Lakewood (population 51,000) calls itself a “walking school district.” Lakewood has never had school buses in its history, and kids grow up walking and biking to school. Mornings and afternoons are a beehive of activity on streets near schools, as kids and parents walk to and from classrooms. You can feel […]

Parking Craters Aren’t Just Ugly, They’re a Cancer on Your City’s Downtown

By Payton Chung | Apr 10, 2014 | 12 Comments

Streetsblog’s Parking Madness competition has highlighted the blight that results when large surface parking lots take over a city’s downtown. Even though Rochester, winner of 2014’s Golden Crater, certainly gains bragging rights, all of the competitors have something to worry about: Cumulatively, the past 50 years of building parking have had a debilitating effect on America’s downtowns. […]

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