tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-223507172009-03-01T15:50:13.474-08:00Short Essays on Urban Studiesrandall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.comBlogger67125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-45977933901650440912008-07-29T09:26:00.000-07:002008-12-09T09:43:37.614-08:00

I am an urban planner; an urban planner am I. Two graduate degrees. Even did a bit of planning here and there, in addition to merely teaching or thinking about it. Married to a planner. (That's us above, back when, young and in love with the city.) We have Planning magazines piled up around the house. We argue about planning at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Tell planning jokes. The kids

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-88537793423603745132008-07-26T07:30:00.000-07:002008-12-09T09:43:38.212-08:00

This post is about federal housing policy and its reform, and features comments by Professor Briggs (and further commentary by Peter Dreier and Dowell Myers below), but first a bit about its genesis. Some years ago, Univ. Buffalo's Bill Page took the bold initiative to create a listserv for urban planning academics called PLANET. Most often used for informational postings these days, such as

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-82605107497479062372008-06-23T11:29:00.000-07:002008-12-09T09:43:38.388-08:00

by Randall Crane and Michael Manville, UCLA(reprinted and pdf version available from Lincoln Land Lines)One of the longest standing debates in community economic development is the face-off between “place-based” and “people-based” approaches to combating poverty, housing affordability, chronic unemployment, and community decline. Should help go to distressed places or distressed people?The

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-37731604571912855432008-06-23T09:00:00.000-07:002008-12-09T09:43:38.739-08:00

Lorenzetti. "Allegory of Good Government: Effects of Good Government in the City." 1338-40. Fresco. Palazzo Publico, Siena, Italy.I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. Cities. That's what I'll tell the presidential candidates when they call for career advice, any day now I expect. Cities.Because the downtowns and suburbs of cities, where the supermajority of Americans toil, relax

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-69987693895508913062008-06-22T12:27:00.000-07:002008-12-09T09:43:38.895-08:00

Net migration rate showing positive, negative and 0 =N/A, based on CIA factbook, from Wikipedia.by Alvaro Huerta, UCLA migrant to UC Berkeley(Reproduced with permission of the Berkeleyan)When things go bad, many Americans commonly blame someone else for their problems. Historically, immigrants have been convenient scapegoats: They not only "take away" jobs from "hard-working" American citizens

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-69831977858343410942008-05-11T13:33:00.000-07:002008-07-27T11:45:56.885-07:00

The version of this story I like best is that a National Public Radio producer saw my blog posts (Egypt's Zabaleen & Competing Visions of Privatization, Cairo Itinerary, & Medieval Inner-City Redevelopment) describing our class trip to "old Cairo" in 2006, where we were hosted by UCLA PhD student TH Culhane (center in photo above, bookended by a Coptic Christian and a Muslim colleague), easily my

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-42938690383523185412008-05-01T11:07:00.000-07:002008-12-09T09:43:41.300-08:00

(The final version of this essay is published as "Counterpoint: Accessibility and Sprawl," Journal of Transport and Land Use 1:1, Summer 2008, pp. 13–19.)1. IntroductionThere is little doubt that Robert Bruegmann's Sprawl: A Compact History (2005), did transportation and urban development researchers a great service. He situated contemporary discussions of “sprawl,” its problems and many policy

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-42965219966022705442008-01-11T09:26:00.000-08:002008-12-09T09:43:46.148-08:00

Plenty of UCLA planning related profiles lately, gathered here for the faithful. Today's is UCLA PhD Lisa Schweitzer, who now teaches and does whatnot at USC somewhere across town. This is reproduced, with permission, from the November 2007 Metrans Transportation Center Newsletter. Lisa was the 2003 University of California Transportation Student of the Year. And oh yeah, if I remember

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-64987062428292444572007-12-29T12:30:00.000-08:002008-12-09T09:43:46.803-08:00

My colleague* with the most celebrity cachet these days is, by far, Donald Shoup, profiled here in Planning magazine. His 2005 The high cost of free parking is APA's best selling book ever, I believe. He has managed to appeal to the right, by promoting pricing as a preferred rationing/funding device for curb space, as well as the left, by promoting higher operating costs for cars in particular

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-39876388705349759062007-12-14T13:32:00.001-08:002008-12-09T09:43:47.573-08:00

2006 UCLA Urban Planning MA graduate Alvaro Huerta is now a PhD student at UC Berkeley, our sister campus somewhere to the north where, in short order, he has been up to some good, winning a high profile award for activist scholarship and recently featured in a campus news profile, to appear in Cal's The Graduate Magazine. That article is excerpted and linked here with permission. Follow the

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-62116749506756029812007-12-09T12:21:00.000-08:002008-12-09T09:43:48.786-08:00

BackgroundUntil very recently, most climate change studies in the public eye have emphasized the technical causes and weather/geoscience implications of increased greenhouse gas production. Increasingly, however, scientists and policy makers also focus on human consequences – both how public policies can mitigate these effects and increasingly on how people might best adapt to changes that

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-39340513101849974612007-12-08T14:30:00.000-08:002008-12-09T09:43:49.304-08:00

For the sake of argument, let's set aside the issue of how to evaluate PhD programs and faculty quality as such, to focus on the issue of ranking for the purposes of recruiting professional planning students. (An earlier post on ranking cities and whatnot is here.)My first point is that applicants rank programs when they decide where to apply and then where to attend. Didn't you? So the question

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-60313734491007714742007-12-01T11:25:00.000-08:002008-12-09T09:43:55.057-08:00

Much like the weather, everyone talks about integrating land use and transportation planning but who actually does anything about it?The PRC, for one. They are building cities like gangbusters and the prospect of better using land use as part of a comprehensive transportation strategy is no cute, random cocktail party note on a napkin. USC's Gen Guiliano, among others, has argued that US cities

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-44074083810781932762007-11-17T18:26:00.001-08:002008-12-09T09:43:58.079-08:00

Every so often -- more frequently lately -- I am forced to reflect on how cloistered a life I lead, at least compared, say, to Richard Florida and other people who keep up with things useful. So he likely knew that Stanford has a newish Institute of Design, which they call a design school, or d.school for short.The napkin plan above is, I kid you not, their official manifesto, or what they call

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-54217178030251523432007-11-12T19:00:00.000-08:002008-12-09T09:43:59.991-08:00

Jonathan Levine (U. Michigan) convened a roundtable at last month's ACSP conference in Milwaukee (where my eldest was born some 20 years ago) on the topic of, "Accessibility and Mobility in Transportation Planning." The participants were Kevin Krizek (U. Colorado, Boulder), Qing Shen (U. Maryland), Joe Grengs (U. Michigan), Brian Taylor (UCLA), Jonathan and myself.We each spoke for a few minutes

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-11148732336399606852007-10-25T19:23:00.000-07:002008-12-09T09:44:00.288-08:00

Guest post by past ACSP President and Florida State University Professor Bruce Stiftel.***********************************************My Statement, Version 23.7.At last week's FWIG roundtable on Preparing for your Tenure Evaluation, I spoke about crafting a written statement in support of your tenure review. My visuals are online.The FWIG Yellow Book says, "You must prepare a personal statement,

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-42471292358803222042007-10-22T15:10:00.000-07:002008-12-09T09:44:00.559-08:00

I gave a short presentation as part of a FWIG (Faculty Women's Interest Group) panel on preparing for tenure at last week's ACSP (Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning) conference in beautiful downtown Milwaukee. The idea was to build on the Yellow Book. I added the 5th point to that talk based on a question from an attendee. (I added the postscript after seeing how these easy pieces

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-25355843545478928082007-08-27T11:45:00.000-07:002008-12-09T09:44:03.112-08:00

The best illustrated planning research blog on the internets appears to be on summer hiatus but I saw a couple of things this week that, against my better judgment and unforgiving schedule, got me thinking a bit more vis-à-vis Global Climate Change. And What Planners Can Do About It. And What Planning Researchers Advise Planners To Do About It.Outline: (A) Jerry Brown sues San Bernardino to

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-42720973233158617282007-05-31T14:51:00.000-07:002008-12-09T09:44:04.578-08:00

Curitiba, BrazilBogotá is interesting and important for many reasons but I write only to draw some quick comparisons between it and the Latin American success story probably best known by U.S. planners: Curitiba, Brazil. We mostly know Curitiba for its visionary mayor, Jaime Lerner, who made as much progress as anyone in a metropolitan city in promoting transit over car use for commuting, among

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-84624560001665107762007-04-05T10:47:00.001-07:002008-12-09T09:44:05.600-08:00

October 2007 Update: My article on this topic and these data has now been published in the Journal of the American Planning Association, Summer 2007 issue, available as a free download here.******************Dear PhD students and junior faculty especially:1. This post is partly about how one never knows where research questions will pop up. Be ready. My best personal example is that I study land

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-52451485394162479342007-03-14T09:12:00.000-07:002008-12-09T09:44:05.760-08:00

Green Cities: Urban Growth and the EnvironmentMatthew E. Kahn, Brookings Institution Press, 2006.Matthew E. Kahn is a Professor at the Institute of the Environment at UCLA. He blogs on environmental and urban topics at greeneconomics.blogspot.com.To read Chapter One of this book go here.My “Green Cities” book was published in September 2006. Now that six months have past, I can look back at

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-21247517728018617012007-03-08T11:47:00.000-08:002008-12-09T09:44:05.898-08:00

Click on this graphic for a video of a talk I gave at the University of Toronto, Mississauga, on February 2, 2007, with a full powerpoint accompaniment. (It's at the bottom of the page; I could only get the realplayer version to work.) Following a too kind introduction by UoT professor Amrita Daniere, because she owes me, the talk is a seemingly random series of topics related to travel and the

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-40397003475513123132007-03-01T11:12:00.000-08:002008-12-09T09:44:08.890-08:00

Guest post by Michael Manville, UCLA.Along with David King and Donald Shoup, I recently completed an article on the politics of congestion pricing, and Dave, Don and I are beginning another project on the same topic. Congestion pricing is getting a lot of press of late, and moving closer to reality, but politically it still has a long way to go. Rather than rehash our article here, I’ll discuss

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-74644589276574339672007-02-18T18:05:00.000-08:002008-12-09T09:44:09.229-08:00

Planning debates over the relative merits and consequences of place-based (e.g., policing, enterprise zones, business improvement districts, neighborhood investment strategies, infrastructure, the gamut of supply-side urban development strategies, downtown redevelopment) versus people-based (e.g., training/education, some housing assistance programs, welfare as we knew it, means-tested transfers

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22350717.post-51488611628318159812007-02-18T14:12:00.000-08:002007-12-19T14:21:52.791-08:00

First things first. Even though I have had my very own blog for a full year, with literally several hits a day, I am slowly, surely grasping that it may not all be about me. What if I am an insignificant excess of affected punctuation in the big top of all things scholarly? I wish I knew. Yet, I don't know: perhaps it's a dream, all a dream. (That would surprise me.) I'll wake, in the

randall cranehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06189926439915839716noreply@blogger.com0