Inspirational Reads and Looks
We’ve collected some great land use planning videos to watch and articles to read.
Smart Growth Basics:
To Watch:
America’s Great Suburban Experiment
To Read:
This is Smart Growth A great basic guide to Smart Growth planning and development from the EPA and International City/County Management Association
AARP Livability Fact Sheets: A great set of 11 fact sheets—lots of pictures and smart text.
These websites are loaded with resources:
Environmental Protection Agency Smart Growth
Smart Growth and City Finances:
This sounds boring but it’s fascinating! And explains how Oregon’s land use system- which encourage compact cities inside UGBs- helps cities stay solvent and save taxpayers money.
To Watch:
Strong Towns has a great series on how suburban development is a Ponzi scheme that leaves taxpayers holding the bag:
$$ Productivity of Traditional Neighborhoods vs. Sprawl
To Read:
More Extensive is More Expensive from 1000 Friends of Oregon
Walkability:
Walkability is a measure of how friendly an area is to walking. It’s also a key component of successful communities with health, environmental and economic benefits.
To Watch:
The General Theory of Walkability, Jeff Speck, TED talk
The Walkable City, Jeff Speck, TED talk
New York’s Streets, Not So Mean Anymore, Janette Sadik Khan, TED talk
The Important Difference Between a Road and a Street, Chuck Marohn, TED talk
To Read:
Find the “Walkscore” of your home.
Walkability is Good for You, City Lab
Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares: A Context Sensitive Approach,
Institute of Traffic Engineers and Congress for New Urbanism, 2010
Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time, a great book by Jeff Speck, 2012, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Placemaking and Street Design:
To Watch:
Great TED talks from the Planning Director of New York City and James Kunstler’s funny, scathing, irreverent critique of modern buildings:
How Public Spaces Make Cities Work, Amanda Burden, TED talk
The Ghastly Tragedy of the Suburbs, James Howard Kunstler, TED talk
To Read:
National Association of City Transportation Officials, Urban Street Design Guide, Fantastic online guide for transportation professionals and laymen too on the latest thinking on good street design.
These two are especially relevant to the Heights in Hood River:
Cities Benefit from Restoring Two-way Traffic, Public Square, Congress for New Urbanism Journal.
3 Reasons to Turn These One-Way Streets into Two-Ways, Strong Towns.
Sprawl and Public Health:
Urban Sprawl and Public Health, three of the nation’s leading public health and urban planning experts explore an intriguing question: How does the physical environment in which we live affect our health? For decades, growth and development in our communities has been of the low-density, automobile-dependent type known as sprawl. The authors examine the direct and indirect impacts of sprawl on human health and well-being, and discuss the prospects for improving public health through alternative approaches to design, land use, and transportation.
“Driving Makes You Fat, Urban Sprawl Bankrupts You, Other Life-Saving New Urbanist Epiphanies”, Greg Lindsay, Fast Company, May 21, 2010,
“Urban Spawl and Public Health” Dr. Howard Frumkin, Public Health Reports, May-June 2002.
And the book Urban Sprawl and Public Health: Designing, Planning, and Building for Healthy Communities, Dr. Howard Frumkin, 2004.
Farmland Protection and Pressure Points:
Death by 1000 Cuts: A 10-Point Plan to Protect Oregon’s Farmland, 1000 Friends of Oregon
Parking:
Parking is the third-rail of local politics. Here are some thought-provoking reads.
Parking is Hell: Freakonomics Podcast
Parking Policy is Sexy Now Thanks to Donald Shoup, City Lab, 2018
The High Cost of Free Parking, Donald Shoup, APA Press, 2011
A 800 page book that by a traffic engineer and economics professor that will transform the way you think about parking.
Federal Housing Policy:
Learn more about zoning’s dark past with this Fresh Air podcast on redlining and how federal housing policy segregated America.
When people say “subsidized housing” they don’t normally mean $750,000 homes, but the biggest housing subsidies in the US are given to upper and middle income people through the Mortgage Interest Deduction.