Urban Planning Blog

Urban Growth: Top: Dallas, US 1976 Bottom: Dallas, US 2001 [source].

Americans throw away 12 million oil barrels’ worth of plastic bags every year. And now they are choking us.

Do you know of a national park near New York City? Probably not. The Gateway National Recreation Area spreads over more than 26,000 acres and is located on the New York-New Jersey harbor and coastline. This national recreation area was crated in 1972 and provides recreational opportunities for more than 22 million tri-state area residents [...]

We know that building environmentally-friendly buildings has finally come into vogue when you have more than one accreditation services. Earlier LEED was the gold standard for a building seeking to achieve a ‘green’ status. Well, it still is and thanks to its long-standing and stringent standards, it has gained more importance and credibility in spite [...]

I bet many homeowners have received cease and desist letters from the authorities for an unauthorized construction on their property. More often than not, the ignorance of the homeowner is attributed to the lack of permits. But not so in this case. Read an actual letter sent to a man named Ryan DeVries by the Michigan [...]

Land use planning can be used as an effective tool in reducing the economic and social risks of natural hazards. The local governments provide the better authority to implement planning mitigation strategies due to extensive and comprehensive potential for tapping into community resources and public participation. The local governments are also in a better position [...]

The National Park Service is making its symbols and patterns available for free download in Adobe PDF and Illustrator formats. How long before someone offers stickers? I’ll definitely buy some. Technorati Tags: National Park, maps, symbol, pattern, graphics, art

Disasters have caused tremendous loss of life and property around the world especially in the United States. This trend has seemingly increased in the 1990s. The conflict between natural disaster occurrences and choices of places where people want to live has often proven to be the cause of these losses. The government, at the federal [...]

Now that’s what I call a “green car” [image source: Daily Dose of Imagery] Technorati Tags: green car

(image source: Arborsmith) Ever hear of arborsculpture? Well, I never had until I read this interview with Richard Reames, one of the world’s foremost arborsculptor. Before you cast any befuddled looks my way, let me define it for you: Arborsculpture is the “art of shaping tree trunks to create art and functional items through bending, [...]

Thanks to global warming and climate change crisis, beachfront property might not seem like a feasible option in the future. Increase in sea level will definitely impact such properties as the world’s geography undergoes some serious changes. The New York Times mentions that: According to a 2000 report by the Heinz Center for Science, Economics [...]

We finally heard back from the EPA’s P3 [People, Prosperity, and Planet] Request for Proposals and sadly, they rejected our grant application. The reason – too ambitious and infeasible for the allocated grant money. Well, they are right. We had submitted a proposal suggesting developing a sustainable model to rebuild Southern Louisiana by seeking to [...]

Library design with “reclaimed fuselages of 727/737 passenger jets”. Cool and cheap manner to recycle when it is expensive to do so in traditional ways.

The American Institute for Architects has announced its list of Top Ten Green Projects. I have seen the UT School of Nursing and Student Center in Houston but haven’t had the pleasure to have walked through it.