planning

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No One Can Stop Leaking Oil

Katie Valentine and Ryan Koronowski of ThinkProgress uncover what oil companies (and snow) have been keeping secret. A Canadian oil company still hasn’t been able to stop a series leaks from underground wells at a tar sands operation in Cold Lake, Alberta.
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The Compelling Promise of Urbanism Without Effort

As urban stakeholders -- residents, pundits, developers, associated professionals, and politicians -- we like to discuss and debate aspects of urbanism and how cities should change to meet new challenges. But when we talk about urbanism, I think we often forget the underlying dynamics that are as old as cities themselves. As a result, we favor fads over the indigenous underpinnings of urban settlement and personal observation of urban change.
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#ForewordFriday: Good Urbanism Edition

Planners and urban designers have reached a consensus about what constitutes "good urbanism;" however, there remains a yawning gap between this theory and reality.
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Island Press Staff Picks

This week's pick is from the Managing Editor of CAKE, Livia Kent: Every day more devastating news emerges about the impacts of climate change, particularly during this summer of extreme weather events and the subsequent media frenzy around new floods, wildfires, infrastructure damages, biodiversity loss, sea level rise—the list goes on. As the managing editor of the Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange (CAKE) this kind of stuff spackles my screen constantly.
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#ForewordFriday Planning as if People Matter

The environmental justice movement is closely tied to urban planning and development. But, while planners and urban designers have made great strides in embracing the sustainability movement, social justice issues have not been getting the same attention. Of the three "e"s of sustainable planning—environment, economics, and equity—equity is the one most often left behind. This week's selection for #forewordFriday is from the new book by Thomas W. Sanchez and Marc Brenman, Planning as if People Matter.
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On My Dinner with Andrés

Twenty years ago New Urbanism was launched as a big idea. And like other powerful ideas, it has mutated as it has metastasized and gotten weird in multiple ways. Like other assaults on orthodoxy, it has become an orthodoxy (or several). I called my recent talk at the Congress for the New Urbanism, My Dinner with Andrés, because I wanted to talk to Andrés Duany and about him.

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