City/Town Planning & Design
What?
What is up with our built environment? Why is there no where to hang out outside of my home? Why is it so hard to make friends? What is the US missing?
Why City Design Is Important - Not Just Bikes
Video: TED Talk: The Walkable City - Jeff Speck
Today’s Building Industry - Building Culture
Podcast: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives - Better Place Project
Article: What Makes a Place Great (4 key qualities)
Webpage: McMansion Hell
Why Public Bathrooms Suck in North America - CBC Vancouver
Is Life Better in the USA or Europe? (Honest Review) - Nathaniel Drew
Why America’s Cities Are Broke - Not Just Bikes
YOUTUBE CHANNELS
Not Just Bikes | City Beautiful | Strong Towns | The Aesthetic City
How Suburban Development Makes Cities Poorer - Not Just Bikes
BOOKS
The Death and Life of Great American Cities - Jane Jacobs
Suburban Nation - Jeff Speck, Andres Duany, and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk
Your City is Sick - Jeff Seigel
Why?
Video: What Makes Buildings Beautiful and Why Does It Matter
Video: Would You Fall For It?
Article: America’s Villages Are Collapsing— So Who’s Raising The Children?
Video: Cost of each Suburban Household on the City | Cost of each Urban per Household on the City
Video: Gen Z is Lonely - Medical Secrets
What Makes for Happy Places? - Create Streets
I’m A Car Enthusiast That Is Starting To Hate Cars - Hello Road
The Cost of Car Ownership - Hello Road
Every Neighborhood Should Have A Corner Store, But Can’t - City Beautiful
Why North America Can't Build Nice Apartments (because of one rule) - About Here
How?
VIDEOS & ARTICLES
How To Make An Attractive City - The School of Life
This Town Did The Impossible - The Aesthetic City
Car Free Streets - Not Just Bikes
The Hidden Benefits of Street Trees - City Beautiful
BOOKS:
Book: Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, 10th Anniversary Edition - Jeff Speck
Book: A Pattern Language - Christopher Alexander
An incredible book that has a place of honor on my desk. The very first book that got me interested in smart design. I purchased it upon being recommended by my Home Horticulture professor at NC State, Ann Spafford. She recommended it to us for inspiration in home and garden design but I took notice of how inspirational the entire book is for designing based on living a good life. It discusses home design from perspectives including circadian rhythms, keeping in mind children’s needs as they grow, community building, the need for parents’ bedrooms to be a retreat, and much more. In discussing the design of communities he mentions elements like having older people everywhere, the benefits that a semi-public workshop can have on elders, the benefits and exact design of street cafes, and the importance of keeping shop spaces small and owned by present locals so the community’s money stays in the community and so entrepreneurs have the opportunity to start up their small business without the huge risk imposed on them by requiring them to rent large buildings on the edge of town.
Book: Small Is Beautiful - E. F. Schumacher
Book: Agricultural Urbanism - Janine de la Salle & Mark Holland
PODCAST EPISODES
Jeff Siegler - Redemptification Podcast
Nick Offerman - The War On Cars Podcast
Austin Tunnell - Modern Craftsman Podcast
THOSE DOING THE WORK
Strong Towns
Website | YouTube | Twitter | Instagram
The Aesthetic City
YouTube | Website | Podcast | Instagram
Building Culture
Website | YouTube | Instagram | TikTok | Twitter | Facebook
Car Dependency Index
Modern Craftsmen
A Better Place Project - “Conversations about all the things, big and small, that we can do to create impactful changes in our lives and in our communities.”
THE FUTURE?
Spring Train Cruise in Fukushima - NHK World Japan
The Korean Subway - AleAlejandro
Rural town inspiration: Japanese Village in the Mountains
If the Dutch can do THIS, Americans can do anything!
DO IT YOURSELF
https://www.moderncraftsman.co/post/midweek-with-tyler-books-that-build
ORGANIZATIONS
Project for Public Spaces
Article: What Makes a Place Great (4 key qualities)
Moda City Life
A Better Place Project - “Conversations about all the things, big and small, that we can do to create impactful changes in our lives and in our communities.”
City Planning Quotes
“The experience of visiting the Netherlands for the first time [is that of] someone who has spent their entire life standing in a cloud of flies.
Life is possible, but the flies are omnipresent. The person can breathe, but they have to wear a mask. They can see, but they have to brush flies out of their eyes to do so. They can hear, but they have to strain to listen. They can stay fairly healthy, but the flies make it harder to do so.
Now imagine a world wear the flies have mostly disappeared…”
— Robert Wheatman
“People argue that sprawl means more space and more green space to enjoy nature with your family. The reality is that there is nothing natural about the monocultured mowed lawns of suburban sprawl.
Where as the truly natural places that can be left untouched if you have high density development clustered around transportation hubs is far nicer. And since it is so often near public transportation, it is also actually accessible to people who don’t own a house and don’t have a giant backyard… If there is a particular park you really want to visit you can take the [rail system] to the other side of the city fairly easily and inexpensively whereas in (Houston) it’s not exactly like you can go to the nicest neighborhood in the city and start walking through peoples backyards…“
— rM transit (nebula: Why transit cities are better for everyone)
If you choose your work very carefully, then you can do very little work and have a tremendous impact
If I start to sound not-humble…I don’t know if I’ve had an original design idea in my whole career, but what I’ve been able to do is collect everyone else’s and share them in a way that people find interesting (to listen to)
— Jeff Speck (On School for good living podcast #137)-?
“After about 30 years, every road needs to be resurfaced and refurbished which typically costs more than the price to build it in the first place, when that time comes, everyone is left footing the bill”
— Not just bikes (video: Would You Fall for it?)
The new Urbanism is rediscovering traditional ways of making places and reinvigorating our traditional cities and building new places that function and feel like the old places that we love.
— Andres Stuani and Elizabeth Veder-zineberg (Firm: DPZ)
People are not loud. Cars are loud. And faster-moving cars are even louder.
— Amy Hottell
“It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.”
— Quote Source
I decided that I am an Epicurian…Epicureanism is about increasing the amount of pleasure in the world, and if you think about what that means, you inevitably get down to the goal of decreasing the amount of pain in the world. That is the most effective way to increase the amount of pleasure in the world…So my philosophy of what life is about is to make it better for everyone else, the best that you can, ideally by making other people’s lives better… But if you frame it within the concept of pleasure, I think you get a broader understanding of what possible
When my kids ask me what’s life about… and I’m not a philosopher… I usually say, you should have as good a time as you can while you are alive…while giving as good of a time to as many other people as you can as well, and, perhaps, giving them less of a bad time.”
— Jeff Speck On School for good living podcast #137
‘This freeways is as wide as a city block’ You know what you can put in a city block? A city block’s worth of homes and businesses that not only can be useful destinations for people, but places that pay property tax to the city; Instead of having a productive city block, [they] bulldozed it to build an expensive maintenance liability which also funnels huge volumes of cars into a city center that wasn’t designed for it.”
— Jeff Speck (On School for good living podcast #137)-?
Urban Design Inspiration!
Inspiring Projects:
Seaside - Florida
Inspirational Places:
Manitou Springs, Colorado: Website
River Walk - San Antonio, Texas (Instagram)
Bricktown Canal - Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (Instagram)
Culdesac - Tempe, Arizona
Inspirational Places:
Manitou Springs, Colorado: Website
River Walk - San Antonio, Texas (Instagram)
Bricktown Canal - Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (Instagram)
