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Popular Ponderings

Book Reviews

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Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

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The Warhol Economy by Elizabeth Currid

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Wikinomics - 5 implications for cities

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The Missing Class: Portraits of the near poor in America by Newman and Chan

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Suburban Transformations by Paul Lukez

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Previous Ponderings



planning policy

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Think small: A non-market housing supply solution?

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

Planners and politicians in many cities — especially those with high housing costs — face a dilemma when it comes to providing non-market housing (sometimes called social housing).  The most cost effective solutions in terms of dollars per unit can be to build a big apartment block in a struggling area of the city where […]

Urban scenarios under high oil prices

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

How much will life in the cities change if gasoline costs significantly more than it does today?
Will the city be able to offer the housing, transportation options or amenities that its residents may prefer if fuel becomes a more expensive item relative to the family budget?
These are some questions I’ve been pondering lately and would […]

Lesson from India on affordable housing

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009

In dynamic, popular urban cores there is a constant dilemma about housing affordability.  Because more people want to live in an area than there are homes, rents and sale prices can be high.
One solution is to demand a certain number of rental units or non-market units for sale when developers build out a new area […]

Car-free communities in the 21st century

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

 Older neighbourhoods in European and some North American cities often work well as pedestrian and cycling zones because they emerged before the automobile existed.   Any new community, by law, typically has to allow for automobiles both in roadway allowances and parking regulations.
But what would happen in the 21st-century if you built a community that deliberately […]

Special civic advocates for walking? cycling?

Sunday, May 10th, 2009

Cities need to offer residents and businesses a variety of transportation options to maximize livability.  Only facilitating automobile travel makes for a polluted, congested, and concrete-freeway-based environment.  Only facilitating bikes or walking in 21st century life and you hamper citizens’ ability to go any distance or carry very much while doing it.   As recently […]

Enough doomsday talk, focus on livability

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

Almost everyday in the newspaper or the blogosphere some group attempts to make headlines forecasting what we could call “eco-doom” for cities.  Whether the prediction is rising sea levels,  fires, plagues of locusts (or killer bees) the result is misplaced attention.
Here’s an example via Planetizen: Sea Levels are Rising: It’s Time to Decide Which Cities […]

Urban Chickens or Pigs Anyone?

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009

It looks like barnyard animals could be making an urban comeback in North America.
The Toronto Star summarized a Dutch  firm’s idea of farming pigs vertically, in multi-storey buildings.  Apparently it’s more ecologically responsible:
Proposed by the Dutch architectural firm MVRDV, the argument is that it’s more efficient to raise swine in highrise farms than on the […]

Transit should be an essential service

Friday, January 16th, 2009

A transit strike has afflicted Ottawa — Canada’s capital city — for over five weeks.   Ottawa usually has a fairly good transit system, relied on by many people who have chosen not to have a car (or a second family vehicle) as well as those who cannot afford one.
People who have made the ecologically and/or […]

Not the time for short term thinking

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

Many smart business leaders and investment managers are taking advantage of the economic slow down to stop, think, and put into place the foundations for the next 5 to 10 year business cycle — and even thinking much further ahead than that.
Unfortunately, it seems that many city governments, and those at other levels that impact […]

Cities as places

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

Well-functioning cities are not just collections of people, places for commerce, or even car-tropolis.   They are collections of “places” — that is, networks of people and services interwoven into the lives of residents.  Cafes, doctors offices, grocers and specialty retailers are examples of ingredients to place — they offer services used by residents and […]

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