Planning Pool

For this final instalment of FAIL Week, we take a look at a few places that you would never want to set foot in. These cities and neighbourhoods are meant to be experienced in a bucket seat, and it shows!

1. Eagle Bend, Jacksonville, Florida (The entrance has no sidewalk.)

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According to Walkscore.com, this is the least walkable neighbourhood in the least walkable major city in America, which I think is saying quite a bit. They rank areas based on proximity to services, stores and transit –  all of which are next to non-existent in Eagle Bend, earning them a flat zero. Based on the Google Map view, it isn’t difficult to see why. The gated community is adjacent to a river but not any … Continue Reading

We all know that outdated legislation can often be one of the largest barriers change. Up until 2009, in the state of Colorado it was illegal to have a rain barrel and still is illegal for a majority of its residents. They would probably not hang you for it and it was mostly unenforced but it still had an effect on how infrastructure in that state could be designed, particularly for large developments. You couldn’t bring a development application which included a rainwater collection system no matter what the planned use for that water.

The reason rain barrels were and still are in most circumstances illegal is … Continue Reading

In tackling the subject of British Columbia’s meat inspection regulations, I must begin by admitting that I am not the likeliest author. For starters, I’m a vegetarian. Secondly, although someday I would love to keep urban chickens, my agricultural experience is pretty much limited to growing herbs and tomatoes on my apartment patio. However, the economic viability of BC farming affects everyone in the province who eats, including urbanites. Draconian provincial meat inspection regulations create a barrier to local economic development in BC’s small towns and rural places, and to food security throughout the province. Local food activists contend that … Continue Reading

Planning fails are often the physical manifestation of misguided perceptions. Though well-intentioned, perpetuating outdated beliefs is irresponsible; green solutions should have green outcomes.

The article ‘Green solutions come from many directions,’ published in the Vancouver Sun on March 9, 2010 refers to a survey in late 2009 that lists “sustainability issues in transportation” as Vancouver, BC’s primary environmental concern among residents. The author, Scott Hardy, interprets “transportation” to mean “fixing traffic problems”, which he claims “not only reduces commuting times, it leads to a greener, cleaner city.” To do this, he writes that “Vancouver needs to better manage the traffic into and out of the city.”

The idea that … Continue Reading

Having made many eastbound trips along I-8 from San Diego to other locations (sometimes Phoenix, other times further), I’m fairly familiar with the subject of this week’s video…

Welcome to Fail Week here on PlanningPool! All week we will be bringing you information about bad planning, lack of planning, and planning generally gone awry.

At PlanningPool, we’re big fans of Twitter, because it’s a tool that combines the less high-tech (cell phones) with the more high tech (internet) and gets people in touch with each other. For planning, Twitter can be used as a public engagement tool, like with Portland’s @PDXplan. Twitter can also be used to mobilize people, as was famously done with the Iran elections.

One of the more complicated aspects of Twitter are hashtags. Hashtags are words preceded by the … Continue Reading

Today, PlanningPool is coming to you live from the Symposium on Resilience at the University of British Columbia, where we just presented a lively panel discussion about Digital Media. (Our slides are online here.) Thanks to Karen Quinn Fung and Frances Bula for participating in the discussion!

An interdisciplinary panel of graduate students and professionals are currently discussing the critical planning issue of “Uncertain Water Supplies: Increasing the resiliency of development to water crises”. Planning graduate student Asrai Ord introduced the panel with the observation that a majority of Canadians believe in the “myth of abundance.” Unfortunately, frequent claims that Canada does not have to worry … Continue Reading

Thanks largely to a local alliance of citizen advocates, the City of Edmonton, Canada, is moving forward with a draft Growth Plan that gets serious about food security. The Greater Edmonton Alliance, composed mostly of churches and unions, has played a key role in shaping the draft plan, entitled The Way We Grow. (A giant PDF file lurks behind the link, but is definitely worth a read.)

Edmonton is located at the northern edge of North America’s wheat belt and is surrounded by a wealth of productive farmland, especially … Continue Reading

If you’re in Vancouver on Friday morning and have some time, drop by the University of British Columbia’s Graduate Student Society building and see us present about digital media & public engagement! Registration is $25 for students and you can find out more information here.

Hope to see you then!

Edited to add:
Our introductory slides for this panel are now available on Slideshare here. Panelist Karen Quinn Fung’s slides will also be made available on Slideshare in the next few days.

Gazing toward the future, and hopefully beyond these dismal economic times, what will cities look like? Though it’s easy to get excited about the technologies that might shape the built realities of civilization, any sociologist will tell you that cities are at least equally defined by their inhabitants…