Peter Calthorpe | PlaceMakers

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Peter Calthorpe

April 30, 2014 | 1:05 pm

Climate Change: a global commons problem

The report published week before last by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has made it clear that climate change is a global commons problem. The solution is to decouple rising temperatures from economic and population growth. Hundreds of the most prominent scientists with divergent political views from around the world have run thousands of scenarios, and I’m going to take a moment here to extract some of the land use issues woven through the report.

This is practical advice for city planners about how to move in a cleaner direction and pull as many local decision-makers as possible along with you. So “wonk alert” to our less technically interested readers, who may prefer this Yale 360 piece from prominent enviro thinkers about paths forward. Or this older piece by Emily Badger in Atlantic Cities about how reformatting the single family home’s relationship to its neighbourhood will help.

Category Resilience12 CommentsTags climate change, Dhiru Thadini, Duany Plater-Zyberk, global warming, Hazel Borys, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, John Kerry, nature, Ottmar Edenhofer, Peter Calthorpe

April 8, 2013 | 8:27 am

The Future of Municipal Planning: Is John Nolen rolling over in his grave?

This is not the planning profession John Nolen built. A century later, our great recession has sparked a full re-evaluation of what a city’s urban planning department should be ‘doing’ for its citizens. As witnessed in Los Angeles and San Diego, the planning profession is being measured by its eternal conundrum between Forward Planning Departments that plan for future development projects and Current Planning Services that process today’s development applications.

And, it appears that a few radical devolutions are taking place.

Category Development, Economic Development, Planning and Design, Public Policy, Technology14 CommentsTags Agenda 21, Andres Duany, Bill Anderson, Chuck Marohn, Howard Blackson, Joe Minicozzi, John Nolen, Peter Calthorpe, planning, Teddy Cruz

May 3, 2012 | 12:01 am

Pub Shed: Mapping your five minute stumbling distance

Having worked in communities big and small across the continent, we’ve had ample opportunity to test ideas and find approaches that work best. Urban design details. Outreach tactics. Implementation tricks. Many of these lessons are transferable, which is why we’ve created “Back of the Envelope,” a weekly feature where we jot ’em down for your consideration.

Most folks with an interest in planning issues are no doubt familiar with the pedestrian shed or ped shed. The idea is simple. Experience has shown us that the average person will walk, without hesitation or undue kvetching, to destinations they can reach in under five minutes — in practical terms, about a quarter mile — beyond which they begin to consider other modes of travel.