The urban planning questions we should be asking about these businesses. I have been involved in many downtown community plans professionally and have been active in my own neighborhood on economic development concerns and the question that I hear asked most often is along the lines of Why can’t we get a Starbucks (or Trader…
I would like to follow-up on my Planning for People in Jefferson Park post and expand a bit on what it means to “plan for people”. For at least the past 60 years, the architecture, planning and engineering professions have fundamentally changed the way they designed cities. Cities, a creation of the human race for…
I’d like to add a little more to the comments I posted on Grid Chicago regarding the speed cameras ordinance passed by the City of Chicago earlier this week. As usual, the guys at Grid Chicago did an excellent job of reporting on the legislation and what it will (or won’t) do and I don’t…
About 10 days ago the New York Times ran a fascinating Room for Debate topic asking: Should Los Angeles New Yorkify? I think this is a fascinating debate and it is very prescient considering that the American Planning Association is hosting their annual conference in LA this week. Unfortunately for me, I am unable to attend…
Veering off a little from previous topics, I’d like to discuss the issue of suburban poverty, which has been in the news lately, and what it means for metropolitan regions and transit service providers. The impact of the Great Recession will be felt for decades and some of the long-term problems are only now just…
Of great interest to this site is the connection, or nexus, between transportation and land use. One prominent example of this failure of this nexus is at the southwest corner of Ashland Ave., Division St. and Milwaukee Ave., historically known as the Polish Triangle. Now part of the East (Ukrainian) Village neighborhood, this site is commonly…