Changing Places: The Science and Art of New Urban Planning

the ability of municipalities to establish rules on land use through zoning is now a settled legal matter. In 1926 the US Supreme Court case of Village of Euclid, OH v. Ambler Realty Company settled the legal power of municipal governments to regulate the use of land. This case unfortunately also set the stage for the development of single-use zoni

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New Urbanism at its core promotes higher residential densities, a mix of residential and commercial land uses in close walking proximity, and a grid street pattern that promotes closer distances between residential and commercial destinations.22 Grid street patterns that have more intersections and smaller blocks also provide for multipurpose uses,

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A good demonstration of the environmental health and safety benefits of interventions is Philadelphia’s green stormwater infrastructure program. The program was designed to mitigate the consequences of major flooding events by allowing water to collect in catchment areas that had natural vegetation in place of pavement. While the environmental bene

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In the early 1990s, a long-simmering urban planning movement finally found its legs. For thirty years, a small group of urban advocates had grown weary of merely expounding the virtues contained in Jacobs’s book and decided to get organized. In 1993, the Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) had their first meeting. Its founders included the influential

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BIDs tend to report on their outputs by focusing on the direct services they provide in their areas, rather than larger community outcomes like health and safety. For various political and legal reasons, BIDs neither study nor advertise their impacts on crime or health. If BIDs claim to have a general public benefit, they can run into legal trouble

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The evidence of the effects of park improvement on park use and physical activity is not terribly encouraging. One careful study conducted by public health scholar Deborah Cohen and colleagues at the RAND Corporation charted what happened after five parks were significantly upgraded, for over $1 million, as part of larger scheduled improvements by

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A basic analysis of the changes in BMI and physical activity before and after the opening of the transit line found that using LRT was associated with reductions in BMI. Light rail users reduced their BMI by an average of 1.18 kg/m2 compared to similarly situated car commuters over a twelve-to-eighteen-month follow-up period. For a person who is 5′

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An analysis by the study team found that average vehicle miles traveled per day were reduced by eleven miles for the group that lived near the LRT eighteen months after it opened, compared to those that lived further away. The entire difference between the two groups was a result of the increase in LRT use, suggesting that LA residents were willing

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Public parks are part of the community planning model in most cities, and 70 to 75 percent of Americans report that they live within a short walk of a park.33 Parks are even plentiful in some of the most disadvantaged cities, like Detroit, Michigan, where 74 percent of the population lives within a ten-minute walk of a park.34 In Los Angeles, by co

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