Rarely Taught Planning Skills.
Fundamental Skills for Planners. For the planning profession to survive and prosper, its practitioners need to find a position of strength in a broad range of topics. Typically, planners are taught items 1-6 below plus specialties like historic preservation, pedestrianism and affordable housing; each important but not part of a “core” education program. Items 7-12 are rarely […]
What a Producer Does: The Art of Moviemaking (not the Business) by Buck Houghton
Many professions have valuable lessons for city planners. Movie producers may not come to mind as an instructive profession, but the means and methods used to produce a movie have many parallels for managing a city planning project with many disciplines, budgets, schedules and specific products. Multi-media, multi-discipline and multi-dimensional plans fit the mold of […]
Seeing Trees; A History of Street Trees in New York City and Berlin by Sonja Dümpelmann
“A fascinating and beautifully illustrated volume that explains what street trees tell us about humanity’s changing relationship with nature and the city. “Today, cities around the globe are planting street trees to mitigate the effects of climate change. However, as landscape historian Sonja Dümpelmann explains, the planting of street trees in cities to serve specific functions […]
A Photo Essay of Historic Gas Stations on Highways
RESPECT. There was a day when design was respected,even for gas stations along the nation’shighways. Pure Oil Company led the way with“cottage” designs as depicted herein. The surviving gas station buildings, now adapted for a variety of other uses, serves as witness to the durability of good design. FacebookTweetLinkedInEmail
High Performance Development Corridors
The Thing about Commercial “Strips”. Prevailing conditions. First, let’s be clear aboutour subject. The corridors of which we speak are roadways with blight strewn along their sides in the form of marginal businesses, uninviting restaurants, vacant and poorly maintained buildings, a wide array of gaudy signs, excessive driveway cuts and disorganized parking lots with too few […]
The Design and Content of a Character Main Street
CENTRAL FLORIDA’S CHARACTER MAIN STREETS.The five county Orlando Region is fortunate to have many small cities and towns with character downtowns; towns that are attractivewith successful retail and civic “main streets”. A survey of nine towns reveals an instructive commonality in the length of their main street active zones, the provision of parking and the […]
The Collaboration Calendar 2019
CharacterTowns.org presents The Collaboration Calendar as a link in the website footer. The 2019 Calendar provides the dates and locations of the Annual Conferences of many professional and issue-oriented organizations involved in planning, designing and managing cities. The purpose of the Calendar is: FacebookTweetLinkedInEmail
Multi-Disciplinary Urban Design Studios
Design studios are inherently collaborative. Organization of a multi-discipline design studio is an important addition to any community. Design studios can be sponsored by academic institutions such as the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative described below; or the Chattanooga Design Studio which is “an independent non-profit community resource that promotes excellence in urban design through education, facilitation, […]
How architects and designers collaborate, AIGA Article
Living in an Urban World: how do architects and designers collaborate? Architects and graphic designers have long records of working together. Many large architectural firms offer environmental graphic design services through their own in-house design teams. Firms such as Pentagram and IDEO are confederations of integrated design disciplines. As one examines professional practices, it is […]
My Community.org.uk
This video “cartoon” is a great introduction into town planning. A British take on community planning that adds another perspective to work in American small cities and towns. The breadth of programs offered and the basic approach to planning, especially neighborhood planning, is a useful demonstration of what’s being done elsewhere. FacebookTweetLinkedInEmail