urban planning research

Introduction to Urban Planning: Books, Pamphlets, and Tweets

randall Crane — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 00:32:04 +0000

On Aug 4, 2010, at 4:20 PM, Professor Johanna W. Looye posted this message to the Planet (academic urban planning) listserv (which for some good reason you must be a member of to reach the archives):...

Cars, Parking and Planetizen: A Mess of Externalities

randall Crane — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 22:17:03 +0000

Planetizen has two early July 2010 essays and two comments on road and parking externalities and subsidies that are as good examples as any of (a) how fundamental the concepts of externality and...

Smart Growth and One of Its Mad Men

randall Crane — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 22:09:56 +0000

USC’s (and before that, during her formative years, UCLA’s) Lisa Schweitzer has a concise, incisive take on smart growth evangelist Jeff Speck’s commentary on academic Robert...

Dowell Myers on Proposition 13, Demographics and Housing: The New Reality After the Crash

randall Crane — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:27:45 +0000

Proposition 13 is the infamous tax limitation initiative passed in California in 1978. It launched a nationwide tax revolt and also laid the structural basis for Californian’s continuing budget...

Urban Design After Oil

randall Crane — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 02:06:38 +0000

On the 50th anniversary of the historic and influential Rockefeller funded conference on urban design criticism at the University of Pennsylvania, attending by such current and future urban stars...

Ferguson on Quantitative Research Methods in Planning: A Comparative Assessment of ‘Teaching’ versus ‘Practice’

randall Crane — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 21:56:00 +0000

Quantitative research methods (QRM) arguably are important in planning, but perhaps not strictly speaking necessary....

Blog Memoir: My Youth as an Urban Economist

randall Crane — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:26:00 +0000

I am an urban planner; an urban planner am I. Two graduate degrees. Even did a bit of planning here and there, in addition to merely teaching or thinking about it. Married to a planner. (That’s...

Xavier de Souza Briggs on Failed Urban Policy and Proposals to ‘Tear Down HUD’

randall Crane — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 14:30:00 +0000

This post is about federal housing policy and its reform, and features comments by Professor Briggs (and further commentary by Peter Dreier and Dowell Myers below), but first a bit about its genesis....

People or Place: Revisiting the Who versus the Where of Urban Development*

randall Crane — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:29:00 +0000

One of the longest standing debates in community economic development is the face-off between “place-based” and “people-based” approaches to combating poverty, housing affordability, chronic...

Cities: The Missing Presidential Campaign Issue*

randall Crane — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:00:00 +0000

I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. Cities. That's what I'll tell the presidential candidates when they call for career advice, any day now I expect. Cities. Because the downtowns and...

Migrating to El Norte

randall Crane — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 19:27:00 +0000

When things go bad, many Americans commonly blame someone else for their problems. Historically, immigrants have been convenient scapegoats: They not only "take away" jobs from "hard-working"...

NPR Report on Environmental Action in Old Cairo by UCLA’s Culhane

randall Crane — Sun, 11 May 2008 20:33:00 +0000

The version of this story I like best is that a National Public Radio producer saw my blog posts (Egypt’s Zabaleen & Competing Visions of Privatization, Cairo Itinerary, & Medieval...

On Bruegmann on Sprawl, Smart Growth & Accessibility

randall Crane — Thu, 01 May 2008 18:07:00 +0000

There is little doubt that Robert Bruegmann's Sprawl: A Compact History (2005), did transportation and urban development researchers a great service. He situated contemporary discussions of “sprawl,”...

Environmental Justice in Transportation: Profile of Lisa Schweitzer

randall Crane — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 17:26:00 +0000

Plenty of UCLA planning related profiles lately, gathered here for the faithful. Today’s is UCLA PhD Lisa Schweitzer, who now teaches and does whatnot at USC somewhere across town. This is...

Parking as a Verb: Donald Shoup on Video

randall Crane — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 20:30:00 +0000

My colleague* with the most celebrity cachet these days is, by far, Donald Shoup, profiled here in Planning magazine. His 2005 The high cost of free parking is APA‘s best selling book ever, I...

Work as a Verb: UCLA’s Alvaro Huerta and the Invisible Economy

randall Crane — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 21:32:00 +0000

2006 UCLA Urban Planning MA graduate Alvaro Huerta is now a PhD student at UC Berkeley, our sister campus somewhere to the north where, in short order, he has been up to some good, winning a high...

Work in Progress: Human Impacts of Global Climate Change

randall Crane — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 20:21:00 +0000

Until very recently, most climate change studies in the public eye have emphasized the technical causes and weather/geoscience implications of increased greenhouse gas production. Increasingly,...

Ranking Urban Planning Programs

randall Crane — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 22:30:00 +0000

For the sake of argument, let’s set aside the issue of how to evaluate PhD programs and faculty quality as such, to focus on the issue of ranking for the purposes of recruiting professional...

Top 5 Challenges to Integrating Land Use and Transportation — in China or Wherever

randall Crane — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 19:25:00 +0000

Much like the weather, everyone talks about integrating land use and transportation planning but who actually does anything about it? The PRC, for one. They are building cities like gangbusters and...

Designing a Design School

randall Crane — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 02:26:00 +0000

Every so often — more frequently lately — I am forced to reflect on how cloistered a life I lead, at least compared, say, to Richard Florida and other people who keep up with things...