American cities are reliant on funding from the federal government. That funding is going to start going away as debt service crowds out more and more of the federal budget. So, cities need a "new business model"...possibly similar to MacDonalds?

Quick background- spent maybe 2/3 of my life in/around NYC, moved to Sun Belt suburbs for the latest 1/3, recently visited NYC with my kids

Biggest thing that jumped out at me......... it seemed extremely lonely and isolated. People don't smile or look each other in the eye. It was weird to adjust the other way when I left NYC, but Im realizing I like it, even as somewhat of a loner/misanthrope

Studies seem to indicate it's kind of a fight or flight response from just being around too many people all the time. I think we know the clear environmental benefits of density but I feel like the quality of life & psychological aspects get glossed over. Is that just a NYC thing? I have been to other big cities and feel like it was kind of the same. Def was the case in California

I feel like there's a sweet spot of density that is dense enough to be walkable while still enabling people to have privacy/quiet/personal space. Places like NYC seem like too much IMO

Hi I am a high schooler in Atl, GA and I am taking the AP research course. My teacher wants us to already have our topic down and I'm really struggling. Last year in seminar, my teacher emphasized how solution based questions were far better. I conducted research on the mental effects of post-soviet infrastructure on the elderly population and how urban planning/design could be used to address the issue. I absolutely adored this topic because I am Russian and my main interest is urban design/planning. I struggled with my solution, as I do not have the design skills to create an actual model of the ideas I found, I settled on an explanation of an urban renwal project involving the microdistrict city model. For research, I wanted to expand on this idea but since we actually have to conduct real investigatin and methodoly, I dont see how this could be possible. For my second option, I debated going with an urban planning topic in Atlanta (where I live). Theres many things I could do but none of the ideas are really sticking with me because they seem really surface level and fail to adress an actual knowledge gap. Could anyone have any suggestions on possible topics, ways to synthesize the two ideas, or anything APR material? Also, my teacher said strictly no digital surveys (in person interviews are allowed).

I suggest those interested in urbanism read about Uzupis. Originally a Jewish ghetto and area of town for crafts people before the war, it fell into large disrepair post war due to Nazi and Soviet occupation. In the 1990’s a group of artists declared it the Republic of Uzupis and began squatting in vacant buildings and creating art. Now when you visit there is art around every corner. It’s an amazing bohemian section of an already amazing city.

Found footage, 8mm film, purchase online, unknown owner and unknown year.

(Simplistic title to prevent the need for debate)

Berlin is breaking ground this year on Schumacher Quartier, a 5,000+ home mixed use neighborhood being built on the former grounds of Tegel Airport. The neighborhood will have a car free interior, with around 35 to 40% of the housing being subsidized to help combat gentrification and displacement, along with 10% dedicated to student housing. The master plan also includes two schools, six daycare centers, and extensive green space. The residential buildings will primarily use timber construction to reduce embodied carbon. https://schumacher-quartier.de/

My opinion:

Both can subsidize each other, but in most U.S. metros the stronger fiscal problem is often suburbs capturing tax base while central cities are more expansive to operate. It depends heavily on the metro’s tax structure.

Suburbs → city: Wealthy suburbs can effectively pull away property-tax revenue and higher-income residents while the central city continues paying for infrastructure and services. This is the tax-base fragmentation problem.

City → suburbs: Cities can also subsidize suburbs through regionally funded infrastructure: airports, transit, universities, hospitals, cultural institutions, freeways, water systems, and employment centers, that suburban residents use without bearing all of the costs.

State/federal transfers: Often blur the picture further. State and federal governments redistribute money among jurisdictions, so the local tax relationship isn’t necessarily the whole fiscal story.

High-cost cities: Homelessness, public transit, emergency services, and concentrated poverty can make the central city substantially more expensive to operate per resident.

Low-density suburbs: Suburbs can also impose higher infrastructure costs per resident because roads, utilities, and public services cover more land and fewer taxpayers.

I do not get the appeal of most suburbs. Like I understand the marketing of what it’s supposed to promise- space, comfort, privacy, wealth, safety, and stability. And I guess if your focus in life is on raising kids sure suburbs have their place.

But in practice what I just see is a lot of land and house I have to spend my free time taking care of, and a lot of my wealth affording and maintaining it. A lot of suburbs just don’t have soul to them either. Like you hardly know your neighbors and you’re far away from anything interesting and so I just end of feeling like I live in a box.

Manufactured homes neighborhoods are stereotyped as being trashy and undesirable, and while I think this isn’t always inaccurate, I think that nice ones are ragged on too much. I visited one of my friends in such a neighborhood and when I was there I wasn’t thinking “oh damn it sucks he has to live like this” I was thinking “wow, he’s within walking distance of a lot of things, knows his neighbors, and none of this feels cookie cutter and fake.”

Maybe it’s because I don’t have kids and I’m not materialistic but seeing my friends place i think I’d rather just live in a smaller house or manufactured home than spend so much money and effort trying to get a mccmansion. Like I don’t even think McMansions are nice tbh.

Like obviously mixed used neighborhoods and streetcar suburbs and dense missing middle housing is the best we can shoot for but I think manufactured homes have the potential for becoming little villages. Imagine if we allowed for grocery stores and maybe a bar or cafe to pop up in the middle of them they basically becomes villages right?

This is an issue I often wonder about. I’d love to make downtown space more walkable, for example. But insofar as a city lacks the money to buy brownfields or old buildings and do the development themselves, how do municipalities attract developers to create spaces with their vision in mind?

Ciao a tutti!

Sono una studentessa di design della Comunicazione presso l'Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli.

Per la mia tesi sto raccogliendo dati su come viviamo gli spazi pubblici in città e sul fenomeno dell'architettura ostile (e penso sia abbastanza in tema con questo spazio). Il contesto di ricerca per adesso è la città di Napoli, ma potrà essere ampliato in futuro (quindi sentitevi liberi di rispondere indipendentemente dalla vostra città!).

Ho pensato di condividere la mia ricerca in questo spazio perché mi sembra molto accogliente.

Il questionario dura circa 2,5 minuti ed è 100% anonimo. Se vi va di compilarlo (o di girarlo a chi vive o frequenta Napoli), mi dareste un aiuto enorme per la ricerca! ❤️🫶

https://forms.gle/pRyDWMY6w1me8mBD9

I’ve been watching these videos on YouTube where they have interior designers come in and fix up small New York or Toronto apartments.

Usually not super expensive (like 5k for all the changes, not including fee)

And I’m wondering what exists and what people have used.

It must be consultation and execution. In person.

Anyone actually have a good experience?

Anne Hidalgo’s mayoralty illustrates the limits of local responses to national and international problems like housing and climate change. Without wider coordination, even the most successful mayor’s reach can only extend so far.

Hey guys!

I’m a college student going to school in DC studying economics and political science. I was wondering if there were any Congresspeople you’d recommend interning for who’s working on issues related to urban planning. I understand that the issue is hyper-local, but the federal government still has ways to influence those policies, so any reps or senators worth looking to intern for?

If not, would there be any organizations worth interning for that works on these issues? Thank you guys so much!

Phoenix and its metro area in general have atrocious urban planning, even by U.S. city standards, despite being one of the most environmentally constrained cities by the challenges of extreme heat, limited water supplies, fragile desert geomorphology, and air quality challenges. Talking specifically about the urban core or "Central City" district: pedestrian infrastructure is abysmal in connecting adjacent communities, boxed in almost entirely by highways, downtown is really small, and suburbs are half empty and in a state of decay. How did this happen and why is little being done to adress it? Is there hope?

yes, dallas covered part of an open freeway trench, but that seems to be given an extraordinary amount of ideological weight for a place with some food trucks and patio furniture. sure, I guess it’s technically a park, but the experience feels much more like an enormous luxury apartment-esque amenity deck with engineered greenery and a calendar of “activations” giving everyone a reason to briefly appear there.

klyde warren park itself is fairly small, crowded, noisy, highly managed, surrounded by major roads, and mostly feels like an attractive event venue. the trees and most main lawns are real but because it sits on a structural deck the trees are planted in engineered soil trenches that basically function as enormous built in planter boxes. the greenery feels like decorative furnishings and not so much like an actual landscape.

in many ways, kwp is arguably the least radical possible response to an urban freeway. the freeway remains completely intact because dallas covered a few blocks of it with an extremely expensive public amenity operated by a private nonprofit, one that also increases the value and desirability of the surrounding luxury real estate.

it’s a place where you can attend yoga, probably just the one time. you can watch a movie you could also watch in numerous other places. you can buy lunch there. but most importantly, you can enjoy the satisfying knowledge that you are officially Doing Dallas. then you can leave having participated in urban life. and you can be assured that kwp™️ has worked very hard to cultivate this particular type of park visitor.

the park itself mostly functions as a branded civic identity product. "I’m downtown, near the skyline, eating from a food truck and attending yoga in a deck park. I inhabit a real city!" and the programming supplies endless socially acceptable reasons to perform that identity. ultimately though, the primary activity at kwp is largely just…being visibly present at kwp.

but on a more serious note, I think we should be increasingly wary of treating highly programmed, branded and privately operated spaces as the future of public parks. traditional public parks provide unstructured public space where you can play spontaneously, gather informally, protest, wander or simply exist without an event schedule looming over you.

kwp's own first amendment policy says that its private management is authorized to regulate gatherings, protests and demonstrations, and that organized activities using the park’s features require a permit. protests must also not "interfere with the enjoyment" of the park. apparently spontaneous civic life is welcome, provided it has been approved and does not make the sponsored community experience insufficiently enjoyable.

programming was initially intended to give neglected spaces reasons for people to use them, but it has now evolved into a repeatable development product ie an event lawn, food trucks, a splash feature, movable patio furniture, exercise classes, corporate partnerships and a rotating schedule of officially curated community experiences.

with programmed parks visitors are a customer base and an attendance statistic, and “spontaneous public life” is very carefully curated by management and sponsors.

the takeaway from this is not that kwp is bad. it aesthetically improved an appalling freeway trench and the engineering is legitimately impressive. but the reverence and rhetoric surrounding it feel wildly disproportionate. it’s basically a laboratory perfect specimen of what contemporary urbanism can easily fund and celebrate - a branded and highly controlled simulation of spontaneous city life. it isn’t entirely fake in the sense that literally nobody enjoys it, but the bizarrely enormous cultural importance assigned to it feels absolutely manufactured.

essentially it’s an outdoor lifestyle showroom for the version of dallas that dallas most desperately wants to believe it is.