Society for International Planning & Public Policy

Climate change is widely recognized as the most serious environmental threat facing mankind and has diverse local, regional and global consequences. Among the most significant environmental challenges of our time are global climate change, excessive fossil fuel dependency and the growing demand for urban energy, are being the major challenges of 21st century and one of the greatest problems facing humanity.

Good background on TOD infrastructure finance and funding in new EPA report

This report examines how the intersection between metro areas and trade is motivating a new—yet old—approach to economic growth in an age of increasing international exchange and rapid urbanization.

Read the Brookings Institution Article on Political Challenges to Economic Stabilization in Egypt and how the current political turmoil—following the November 22nd constitutional decree that gave the president powers over the judiciary—will probably make implementation of an agreed IMF program more challenging

HermanL. Boschken,San Jose State University - Donald and Sally Lucas Graduate School of Business(October 31, 2012)

Worldwide, most global cities are located in coastal zones, but a paradox of sustainability is especially striking for American global cities. This article examines such paradox drawn between globalization-induced development and coastal ecosystems. It focuses on two developmental components found principally in global cities: (1) the agglomeration of foreign waterborne commerce and global business services and (2) the accelerated activity and mobility habits of a global professional class. Despite formidable gaps in research, some anecdotal evidence suggests unique hazards exist for the coastal ecology as globalization pressures expand a global city’s urban footprint. 

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UN-HABITAT has launched Urban Planning for City Leaders to provide local leaders with tools for urban planning good practice. This report is a valuable source of information, inspiration and ideas on urban planning that is designed for city leaders and decision makers at a critical moment in human history. (2012)

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Huston, Simon Hugh and Warren, Clive, Risk, Resilience and the ‘Knowledge City’ (May 14, 2012).

The ‘knowledge city’ (‘KC’) enriches regional development with institutional and environmental domains. Its competitors in the new-economy regeneration discourse include the ‘creative’, ‘green’, ‘intelligent’ and ‘smart’ cities.This paper investigates the KC resilience claim, noting conceptual ambiguity, statistical issues and spatial concerns. Preliminary findings suggest that knowledge-city score, however imperfect, does confer some post-GFC economic resilience but no more than a burgeoning middle class.

In this first installment of a series of videos showcasing integrated development in Tanzania, Sean Peoples takes a look at the BALANCED Project’s efforts to combine sustainable livelihood generation, natural resource conservation, and empowerment of women through the provision of clean cookstoves.

Urbanism professionals shared their views on how to plan for sustainable cities, covering topics such as land value, citizen engagement and public transport. View these eight short videos from The Crystal, a sustainable cities initiative.

via: tumblr.thisbigcity.net

urbanrelationsinfo:

In cities today, the possibility of being confined is not only applicable to fixed areas, like work or home, but it may also occur while moving. This is because high levels of mobility, long distances, and extended hours of daily travel, along with monotonous and difficult mobility experiences may lead some to “miss” the city, in a tunnel-like manner. In the context of urban daily mobility practices, this paper argues that although the possibility for expanding places by daily mobility exists, increasingly urban experiences in cities like Santiago de Chile, involve a simultaneous tunneling or confining effect, reducing the possibilities of encounter and interaction, which are the essence of urban experience. Using an ethnographic approach to urban daily mobility practices in Santiago de Chile, this paper discusses how mobility relates to place making and to urban inequality and then analyzes the way place enlargement and confinement occur.

(Source: textbookmaneuver, via urbanrelationsinfo)

Envision Tomorrow puts powerful tools in planners’ hands to design and test land use and transportation decisions. The Envision Tomorrow GIS-based software package can help your city or region examine possibilities at a range of scales. Whether considering how to maximize growth around transit or identify development and redevelopment priorities, Envision Tomorrow provides planners with an easy-to-use, analytical decision making tool.

A Global Development Podcast: What’s the key to good urban planning?
More people live in cities than ever before. How can we ensure urban spaces are able to accommodate changing populations and cope with a climate in flux? To help answer these questions, this podcast takes look at Nairobi, Kenya.
(September 2012)

A very salient article as major urban centers across the east coast of the United States recover from the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy
- This paper identifies strategic resilience indicators for cities and analyzes  four  vectors  which  are  distinct  and  interdependent: urban  metabolism, social dynamics,  the environment and network governance.
- A Definition of Resilience is the ability for a system to recover or adjust to misfortune or change.

FRAGSTATS is a computer software program designed to compute a wide variety of landscape metrics for categorical map patterns. The program was upgraded to accommodate ArcGIS10 (version 3.4). The latest release (version 4) reflects a major revamping of the software, with a completely redesigned architecture intended to support the addition of cell-level metrics and surface pattern metrics, among other things. The purpose of this web site is to facilitate dissemination of the software and to facilitate communication among FRAGSTATS users.

The New Global Economic Geography: The World Economy in the Aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (October, 2012)

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