Podcast appearances and mentions of urban form

Why is zoning so opaque, and what if making it more accessible could unlock the future of our cities?Quang Truong, architect and founder of UrbanForm, joins Most Podern to unpack how zoning works, why it became so complex, and what it will take to make it transparent, legible, and collaborative. From trophy architecture in New York to building tools in Portland, Quang shares his journey from chasing prestige to reshaping the systems that shape our neighborhoods. He explains why zoning isn't neutral, how bad actors weaponize complexity, and why he believes the built environment needs a new alliance between architects, planners, and developers.Subscribe to Most Podern on:Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/3zYvX2lRZOpHcZW41WGVrpApple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/most-podern-podcast/id1725756164Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@MostPodernInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/most.podernLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/most-podernKeywordszoning, urban development, architecture, community, Urban Form, zoning codes, housing, city planning, collaboration, urban planning,Chapters00:00 The Journey from New York to Portland09:24 Understanding Zoning and Its Impact on Architecture12:25 The Evolution of Client Relationships in Architecture15:26 Navigating the Challenges of Urban Development18:34 The Role of Technology in Modern Architecture24:30 The Shift in Development Dynamics27:33 Zoning as a Common Language30:41 Understanding the Complexity of Zoning35:05 The Power Dynamics in Zoning37:36 Urban Form: Decoding Zoning42:21 Who Benefits from Zoning?45:36 Opening Zoning to the Public49:41 The Ideal Zoning System55:41 Navigating Zoning Challenges57:56 The Role of Zoning in Community Development01:01:30 Architects and the Design Conversation01:06:55 The Complexity of Zoning Regulations01:10:55 The Future of Urban Development01:25:00 A Post-Rational Era in Urban PlanningLinksUrbanFormQuang Truong, AIADiller Scofidio + Renfro (DSR)The BroadNBCUniversalThe Economics of Zoning Laws - William A. FischelHugh Ferriss

Hello Interactors,Cities are layered by past priorities. I was just in Overland Park, Kansas, where over the last 25 years I've seen malls rise, fall, and shift outward as stores leave older spaces behind.When urban systems shift — due to climate, capital, codes, or crisis — cities drift. These changes ripple across scales and resemble fractal patterns, repeating yet evolving uniquely.This essay traces these patterns: past regimes, present signals, and competing questions over what's next.URBAN SCRIPTS AND SHIFTING SCALESAs cities grow, they remember.Look at a city's form — the way its streets stretch, how its blocks bend, where its walls break. These are not neutral choices. They are residues of regimes. Spatial decisions shaped by power, fear, belief, or capital.In ancient Rome, cities were laid out in strict grids. Streets ran along two axes: the cardo and decumanus. It made the city legible to the empire — easy to control, supply, and expand. Urban form followed the logic of conquest.As cartography historian, O. A. W. Dilke writes,“One of the main advantages of a detailed map of Rome was to improve the efficiency of the city's administration. Augustus had divided Rome into fourteen districts, each subdivided into vici. These districts were administered by annually elected magistrates, with officials and public slaves under them.”In medieval Europe, cities got messy. Sovereignty was fragmented. Trade replaced tribute. Guilds ran markets as streets tangled around church and square. The result was organic — but not random. It reflected a new mode of life: small-scale, interdependent, locally governed.In 19th-century Paris, the streets changed again. Narrow alleys became wide boulevards. Not just for beauty — for visibility and force. Haussmann's renovations made room for troops, light, and clean air. It was urban form as counter-revolution.Then came modernism. Superblocks, towers, highways. A form that made sense for mass production, cheap land, and the car. Planning became machine logic — form as efficiency.Each of these shifts marked the arrival of a new spatial calculus — ways of organizing the built environment in response to systemic pressures. Over time, these approaches came to be described by urbanists as morphological regimes: durable patterns of urban form shaped not just by architecture, but by ideology, infrastructure, and power. The term “morphology” itself was borrowed from biology, where it described the structure of organisms. In urban studies, it originally referred to the physical anatomy of the city — blocks, plots, grids, and streets. But today the field has broadened. It's evolved into more of a conceptual lens: not just a way of classifying form, but of understanding how ideas sediment into space. Today, morphology tracks how cities are shaped — not only physically, but discursively and increasingly so, computationally. Urban planning scholar Geoff Boeing calls urban form a “spatial script.” It encodes decisions made long ago — about who belongs where, what gets prioritized, and what can be seen or accessed. Other scholars treated cities like palimpsests — a term borrowed from manuscript studies, where old texts were scraped away and overwritten, yet traces remained. In urban form, each layer carries the imprint of a former spatial logic, never fully erased. Michael Robert Günter (M. R. G.) Conzen, a British geographer, pioneered the idea of town plan analysis in the 1960s. He examined how street patterns, plot divisions, and building forms reveal historical shifts. Urban geographer and architect, Anne Vernez Moudon brought these methods into contemporary urbanism. She argued that morphological analysis could serve as a bridge between disciplines, from planning to architecture to geography. Archaeologist Michael E. Smith goes further. Specializing in ancient cities, Smith argues that urban form doesn't just reflect culture — it produces it. In early settlements, the spatial organization of plazas, roads, and monuments actively shaped how people understood power, social hierarchy, and civic identity. Ritual plazas weren't just for ceremony — they structured the cognitive and social experience of space. Urban form, in this sense, is conceptual. It's how a society makes its world visible. And when that society changes — politically, economically, technologically — so does its form. Not immediately. Not neatly. But eventually. Almost always in response to pressure from the outside.INTERVAL AND INFLECTIONUrban morphology used to evolve slowly. But today, it changes faster — and with increasing volatility. Physicist Geoffrey West, and other urban scientists, describes how complex systems like cities exhibit superlinear scaling: as they grow, they generate more innovation, infrastructure, and socio-economic activity at an accelerating pace. But this growth comes with a catch: the system becomes dependent on continuous bursts of innovation to avoid collapse. West compares it to jumping from one treadmill to another — each one running faster than the last. What once took centuries, like the rise of industrial manufacturing, is now compressed into decades or less. The intervals between revolutions — from steam power to electricity to the internet — keep shrinking, and cities must adapt at an ever-faster clip just to maintain stability. But this also breeds instability as the intervals between systemic transformations shrink. Cities that once evolved over centuries can now shift in decades.Consider Rome. Roman grid structure held for centuries. Medieval forms persisted well into the Renaissance. Even Haussmann's Paris boulevards endured through war and modernization. But in the 20th century, urban morphology entered a period of rapid churn. Western urban regions shifted from dense industrial cores to sprawling postwar suburbs to globalized financial districts in under a century — each a distinct regime, unfolding at unprecedented speed.Meanwhile, rural and exurban zones transformed too. Suburbs stretched outward. Logistics corridors carved through farmland. Industrial agriculture consolidated land and labor. The whole urban-rural spectrum was redrawn — not evenly, but thoroughly — over a few decades.Why the speed?It's not just technology. It's the stacking of exogenous shocks. Public health crises. Wars. Economic crashes. Climate shifts. New empires. New markets. New media. These don't just hit policy — they hit form.Despite urbanities adaptability, it resists change. But when enough pressure builds, it breaks and fragments — or bends fast.Quantitative historians like Peter Turchin describe these moments as episodes of structural-demographic pressure. His theory suggests that as societies grow, they cycle through phases of expansion and instability. When rising inequality, elite overproduction, and resource strain coincide, the system enters a period of fragility. The ruling class becomes bloated and competitive, public trust erodes, and the state's ability to mediate conflict weakens. At some point, the social contract fractures — not necessarily through revolution, but through cumulative dysfunction that demands structural transformation.Cities reflect that process spatially. The street doesn't revolt. But it reroutes. The built environment shows where power has snapped or shifted. Consider Industrial Modernity. Assuming we start in 1850, it took roughly 100 years before the next regime took shape — the Fordist-Suburban Expansion starting in roughly 1945. It took around 30-40 years for deregulation to hit in the 80s. By 1995 information, communication, and technology accelerated globalization, financialization, and the urban regime we're currently in — Neoliberal Polycentrism.Neoliberal Polycentricism may sound like a wonky and abstract term, but it reflects a familiar reality: a pattern of decentralized, uneven urban growth shaped by market-driven logics. While some scholars debate the continued utility of the overused term 'neoliberalism' itself, its effects on the built environment remain visible. Market priorities continue to dominate and reshape spatial development and planning norms. It is not a wholly new spatial condition. It's the latest articulation of a longer American tradition of decentralizing people and capital beyond the urban core. In the 19th century, this dynamic took shape through the rise of satellite towns, railroad suburbs, and peripheral manufacturing hubs. These developments were often driven by speculative land ventures, private infrastructure investments, and the desire to escape the regulatory and political constraints of city centers. The result was a form of urban dispersal that created new nodes of growth, frequently insulated from municipal oversight and rooted in socio-economic and racial segregation. This early polycentricism, like fireworks spawning in all directions from the first blast, set the stage for later waves of privatized suburbanization and regional fragmentation. Neoliberalism would come to accelerate and codify this expansion.It came in the form of edge cities, exurbs, and special economic zones that proliferated in the 80s and 90s. They grew not as organic responses to demographic needs, but as spatial products of deregulated markets and speculative capital. Governance fragmented. Infrastructure was often privatized or outsourced. As Joel Garreau's 1991 book Edge City demonstrates, a place like Tysons Corner, Virginia — a highway-bound, developer-led edge city — embodied this shift: planned by commerce, not civic vision. A decade later, planners tried to retrofit that vision — adding transit, density, and walkability — but progress has been uneven, with car infrastructure still shaping much of daily life.This regime aligned with the rise of financial abstraction and logistical optimization. As Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman argue in Underground Empire, digital finance extended global capitalism's reach by creating a networked infrastructure that allowed capital to move seamlessly across borders, largely outside the control of democratic institutions. Cities and regions increasingly contorted themselves to host these flows — rebranding, rezoning, and reconfiguring their form to attract global liquidity.At the same time, as historian Quinn Slobodian notes, globalism was not simply about market liberalization but about insulating capital from democratic constraint. This logic played out spatially through the proliferation of privatized enclaves, special jurisdictions, and free trade zones — spaces engineered to remain separate from public oversight while remaining plugged into global markets.In metro cores, this led to vertical Central Business Districts, securitized plazas, and speculative towers. In the suburbs and exurbs, it encouraged the low-density, car-dependent landscapes that still propagate. It's still packaged as freedom but built on exclusion. In rural zones, the same logic produces logistics hubs, monoculture farms, and fractured small towns caught precariously between extraction and abandonment.SEDIMENT AND SENTIMENTWhat has emerged in the U.S., and many other countries, is a fragmented patchwork: privatized downtowns, disconnected suburbs, branded exurbs, and digitally tethered hinterlands…often with tax advantages. All governed by the same regime, but expressed through vastly different forms.We're in a regime that promised flexibility, innovation, and shared global prosperity — a future shaped by open markets, technological dynamism, and spatial freedom. But that promise is fraying. Ecological and meteorological breakdown, housing instability, and institutional exhaustion are revealing the deep limits of this model.The cracks are widening. The pandemic scrambled commuting rhythms and retail flows that reverberate to this day. Climate stress reshapes assumptions about where and how to build. Platforms restructure access to space as AI wiggles its way into every corner. Through it all, the legitimacy of traditional planning models, even established forms of governing, weakens.Some historians may call this an interregnum — a space between dominant systems, where the old still governs in form, but its power to convince has faded. The term comes from political theory, describing those in-between moments when no single order fully holds. It's a fitting word for times like these, when spatial logic lingers physically but loses meaning conceptually. The dominant spatial logic remains etched in roads, zoning codes, and skylines — but its conceptual scaffolding is weakening. Whether seen as structural-demographic strain or spatial realignment, this is a moment of uncertainty. The systems that once structured urban life — zoning codes, master plans, market forecasts — may no longer provide a stable map. And that's okay. Interregnums, as political theorist Christopher Hobson reminds us, aren't just voids between orders — they are revealing. Moments when the cracks in dominant systems allow us to see what had been taken for granted. They offer space to reflect, to experiment, and to reimagine.Maybe what comes next is less of a plan and more of a posture — an attitude of attentiveness, humility, and care. As they advise when getting sucked out to sea by a rip tide: best remain calm and let it spit you out where it may than try to fight it. Especially given natural laws of scale theory suggests these urban rhythms are accelerating and their transitions are harder to anticipate. Change may not unfold through neat stages, but arrive suddenly, triggered by thresholds and tipping points. Like unsuspectingly floating in the warm waters of a calm slack tide, nothing appears that different until rip tide just below the surface reveals everything is.In that sense, this drifting moment is not just prelude — it is transformation in motion. Cities have always adapted under pressure — sometimes slowly, sometimes suddenly. But they rarely begin anew. Roman grids still anchor cities from London to Barcelona. Medieval networks persist beneath tourist maps and tangled streets. Haussmann's boulevards remain etched across Paris, shaping flows of traffic and capital. These aren't ghosts — they're framing. Living sediment.Today's uncertainty is no different. It may feel like a void, but it's not empty. It's layered. Transitions build on remnants, repurposing forms even as their meanings shift. Parcel lines, zoning overlays, server farms, and setback requirements — these are tomorrow's layered manuscripts — palimpsests.But it's not just physical traces we inherit. Cities also carry conceptual ones — ideas like growth, public good, infrastructure, or progress that were forged under earlier regimes. As historian Elias Palti reminds us, concepts are not fixed. They are contingent, born in conflict, and reshaped in uncertainty. In moments like this, even the categories we use to interpret urban life begin to shift. The city, then, is not just a built form — it's a field of meaning. And in the cracks of the old, new frameworks begin to take shape. The work now is not only to build differently, but to think differently too.REFERENCESDilke, O. A. W. (1985). Greek and Roman Maps. Cornell University Press.Boeing, Geoff. (2019). “Spatial Information and the Legibility of Urban Form.” Journal of Planning Education and Research, 39(2), 208–220.Conzen, M. R. G. (1960). “Alnwick, Northumberland: A Study in Town Plan Analysis.” Institute of British Geographers Publication.Moudon, Anne Vernez. (1997). “Urban Morphology as an Emerging Interdisciplinary Field.” Urban Morphology, 1(1), 3–10.Smith, Michael E. (2007). “Form and Meaning in the Earliest Cities: A New Approach to Ancient Urban Planning.” Journal of Planning History, 6(1), 3–47.West, Geoffrey. (2017). Scale: The Universal Laws of Life, Growth, and Death in Organisms, Cities, and Companies. Penguin Press.Turchin, Peter. (2016). Ages of Discord: A Structural-Demographic Analysis of American History. Beresta Books.Garreau, Joel. (1991). Edge City: Life on the New Frontier. Doubleday.Farrell, Henry, & Newman, Abraham. (2023). Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy. Henry Holt.Slobodian, Quinn. (2023). Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy. Metropolitan Books.Hobson, Christopher. (2015). The Rise of Democracy: Revolution, War and Transformations in International Politics since 1776. Edinburgh University Press.Palti, Elias José. (2020). An Archaeology of the Political: Regimes of Power from the Seventeenth Century to the Present. Columbia University Press. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit interplace.io

Watch a video of this lecture, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUqzfT7sy7A Support the Doug Allen Institute and make a donation!To learn more, visit us at www.DougAllenInstitute.org.

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Sponsored by The Rado Family.Watch a video of this lecture, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwPbrp8jAwE Support the Doug Allen Institute and make a donation!To learn more, visit us at www.DougAllenInstitute.org.

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Sponsored by the DCAI Board.Watch a video of this lecture, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4d4-TZvGlE&feature=youtu.be Support the Doug Allen Institute and make a donation!To learn more, visit us at www.DougAllenInstitute.org.

This lecture was sponsored by Central Atlanta Progress.Watch a video of this lecture, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfOGhWaKpww Support the Doug Allen Institute and make a donation!To learn more, visit us at www.DougAllenInstitute.org.

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Sponsored by Historical Concepts & ESRI.Watch a video of this lecture, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqUfnBc0jaE Support the Doug Allen Institute and make a donation!To learn more, visit us at www.DougAllenInstitute.org.

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In this episode of ON CITIES, AnnaLisa Meyboom discusses the future of transportation and its impact on urban form. The conversation focuses on tangible, design scenarios for the integration of autonomous vehicles, the future of electrical vehicle station planning and the ways that well-designed infrastructure can bring social value that far exceeds its initial construction expenditure. Meyboom also sheds light on how well-designed transportation is a key factor to greater levels of equity and a higher quality of life for all citizens by sharing specific strategies and tools that have been developed in successful infrastructural projects throughout the globe. Do not miss this engaging conversation about the future of transportation and the development of contemporary cities!

In this episode of ON CITIES, AnnaLisa Meyboom discusses the future of transportation and its impact on urban form. The conversation focuses on tangible, design scenarios for the integration of autonomous vehicles, the future of electrical vehicle station planning and the ways that well-designed infrastructure can bring social value that far exceeds its initial construction expenditure. Meyboom also sheds light on how well-designed transportation is a key factor to greater levels of equity and a higher quality of life for all citizens by sharing specific strategies and tools that have been developed in successful infrastructural projects throughout the globe. Do not miss this engaging conversation about the future of transportation and the development of contemporary cities!

Paul Knight, a planner with the design firm Historical Concepts, can give you a dozen reasons for just about anything. More importantly, he can give you reasons for brushing up on the lectures of former Georgia Tech professor Douglas Allen. Allen was a giant in the field of urban planning, and fortunately some of his former students and colleagues have carried on his work following his passing. Paul is one of them, helping form the Douglas Allen Institute.This may all sound very academic, and I know I often take shots at academia. But, when it works well, it's amazing the impact one really great professor can have on so many people. I wanted to talk with Doug, because I know just how brilliant the man was, and how it's even better that his work will live on for future generations. For example, the Institute was able to videotape his lectures from his “History of Urban Form” course, and they've made them available for free on YouTube. If you're at all interested in the history of cities and towns, I couldn't recommend something more highly.Several years ago, Paul also opened my eyes to the whole rabbit hole of base 12 versus base 10 measurements. I'm now a firm believer in base 12. In this episode, Paul even lets me know there's a Dozenal Society. I should've guessed, but had no idea.Since we made a few minor errors in the podcast, here are the official corrections:* In regards to the “Jeffersonian” grid, and what it really should be called, here's what Allen had in his lecture notes: “Congress formed a committee originally chaired by Thomas Jefferson, but  eventually by Hugh Williamson of North Carolina. Jefferson had proposed ten states and  a measurement system of his own invention based on the nautical mile. After Jefferson was called away to Paris, Williamson's committee adopted the Gunter Chain and the system of feet and inches that are in use today.”* I was trying to think of the “4 rod Main Street,” which is a historic pattern throughout much of the United Kingdom and the US. The rod is 16.5 feet, and the four rod street was thus 66 feet wide. 66 feet is also one chain.* The reason a mile is 5,280 feet is that it's exactly 320 rods.* The book I couldn't remember was “Measuring America: How the United States was Shaped by the Greatest Land Sale in History.”Please look at the work of the Douglas Allen Institute, and the Urban Form Standard that Paul mentions. It's really pretty terrific work.Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin's Substack page.Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you'd like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.Intro: “Why Be Friends”Outro: “Fairweather Friend” Get full access to The Messy City at kevinklinkenberg.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of ON CITIES, AnnaLisa Meyboom will discuss the future of transportation and its impact on urban form. The conversation will focus on multiple scenarios for the integration of autonomous vehicles, the future of electrical vehicle station planning and the ways that well-designed infrastructure can bring social value that far exceeds its initial construction expenditure. Meyboom will discuss how well-designed transportation is a key factor to greater levels of equity and a higher quality of life for all citizens by offering specific strategies and tools utilized in successful infrastructural projects throughout the globe. The conversation will also address some of the more controversial outcomes associated with contemporary infrastructure including gentrification, globalization and consumer tourism

In this episode of ON CITIES, AnnaLisa Meyboom will discuss the future of transportation and its impact on urban form. The conversation will focus on multiple scenarios for the integration of autonomous vehicles, the future of electrical vehicle station planning and the ways that well-designed infrastructure can bring social value that far exceeds its initial construction expenditure. Meyboom will discuss how well-designed transportation is a key factor to greater levels of equity and a higher quality of life for all citizens by offering specific strategies and tools utilized in successful infrastructural projects throughout the globe. The conversation will also address some of the more controversial outcomes associated with contemporary infrastructure including gentrification, globalization and consumer tourism

In The City in Time: Contemporary Art and Urban Form in Vietnam and Cambodia (U Washington Press, 2021), Pamela N. Corey provides new ways of understanding contemporary artistic practices in a region that continues to linger in international perceptions as perpetually “postwar.” Focusing on art from the last two decades, Corey connects artistic developments with social transformations as reflected through the urban landscapes of Ho Chi Minh City and Phnom Penh. As she argues, artists' engagements with urban space and form reveal ways of grasping multiple and layered senses and concepts of time, whether aligned with colonialism, postcolonial modernity, communism, or postsocialism. Featuring a variety of creative production, including staged and documentary photography, the moving image, and public performance and installation, The City in Time illustrates how artists from Vietnam and Cambodia have envisioned their rapidly changing worlds. Holiday Powers (@holidaypowers) is Assistant Professor of Art History at VCUarts Qatar. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary art in Africa and the Arab world, postcolonial theory, and gender studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In The City in Time: Contemporary Art and Urban Form in Vietnam and Cambodia (U Washington Press, 2021), Pamela N. Corey provides new ways of understanding contemporary artistic practices in a region that continues to linger in international perceptions as perpetually “postwar.” Focusing on art from the last two decades, Corey connects artistic developments with social transformations as reflected through the urban landscapes of Ho Chi Minh City and Phnom Penh. As she argues, artists' engagements with urban space and form reveal ways of grasping multiple and layered senses and concepts of time, whether aligned with colonialism, postcolonial modernity, communism, or postsocialism. Featuring a variety of creative production, including staged and documentary photography, the moving image, and public performance and installation, The City in Time illustrates how artists from Vietnam and Cambodia have envisioned their rapidly changing worlds. Holiday Powers (@holidaypowers) is Assistant Professor of Art History at VCUarts Qatar. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary art in Africa and the Arab world, postcolonial theory, and gender studies. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

In The City in Time: Contemporary Art and Urban Form in Vietnam and Cambodia (U Washington Press, 2021), Pamela N. Corey provides new ways of understanding contemporary artistic practices in a region that continues to linger in international perceptions as perpetually “postwar.” Focusing on art from the last two decades, Corey connects artistic developments with social transformations as reflected through the urban landscapes of Ho Chi Minh City and Phnom Penh. As she argues, artists' engagements with urban space and form reveal ways of grasping multiple and layered senses and concepts of time, whether aligned with colonialism, postcolonial modernity, communism, or postsocialism. Featuring a variety of creative production, including staged and documentary photography, the moving image, and public performance and installation, The City in Time illustrates how artists from Vietnam and Cambodia have envisioned their rapidly changing worlds. Holiday Powers (@holidaypowers) is Assistant Professor of Art History at VCUarts Qatar. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary art in Africa and the Arab world, postcolonial theory, and gender studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

In The City in Time: Contemporary Art and Urban Form in Vietnam and Cambodia (U Washington Press, 2021), Pamela N. Corey provides new ways of understanding contemporary artistic practices in a region that continues to linger in international perceptions as perpetually “postwar.” Focusing on art from the last two decades, Corey connects artistic developments with social transformations as reflected through the urban landscapes of Ho Chi Minh City and Phnom Penh. As she argues, artists' engagements with urban space and form reveal ways of grasping multiple and layered senses and concepts of time, whether aligned with colonialism, postcolonial modernity, communism, or postsocialism. Featuring a variety of creative production, including staged and documentary photography, the moving image, and public performance and installation, The City in Time illustrates how artists from Vietnam and Cambodia have envisioned their rapidly changing worlds. Holiday Powers (@holidaypowers) is Assistant Professor of Art History at VCUarts Qatar. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary art in Africa and the Arab world, postcolonial theory, and gender studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art

In The City in Time: Contemporary Art and Urban Form in Vietnam and Cambodia (U Washington Press, 2021), Pamela N. Corey provides new ways of understanding contemporary artistic practices in a region that continues to linger in international perceptions as perpetually “postwar.” Focusing on art from the last two decades, Corey connects artistic developments with social transformations as reflected through the urban landscapes of Ho Chi Minh City and Phnom Penh. As she argues, artists' engagements with urban space and form reveal ways of grasping multiple and layered senses and concepts of time, whether aligned with colonialism, postcolonial modernity, communism, or postsocialism. Featuring a variety of creative production, including staged and documentary photography, the moving image, and public performance and installation, The City in Time illustrates how artists from Vietnam and Cambodia have envisioned their rapidly changing worlds. Holiday Powers (@holidaypowers) is Assistant Professor of Art History at VCUarts Qatar. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary art in Africa and the Arab world, postcolonial theory, and gender studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How did the Cold War shape culture and political power in decolonizing countries and give rise to authoritarian regimes in the so-called free world? Cold War Reckonings: Authoritarianism and the Genres of Decolonization (Fordham UP, 2021) tells a new story about the Cold War and the global shift from colonialism to independent nation-states. Assembling a body of transpacific cultural works that speak to this historical conjuncture, Jini Kim Watson reveals autocracy to be not a deficient form of liberal democracy, but rather the result of Cold War entanglements with decolonization. Focusing on East and Southeast Asia, the book scrutinizes cultural texts ranging from dissident poetry, fiction, and writers' conference proceedings of the Cold War period, to more recent literature, graphic novels, and films that retrospectively look back to these decades with a critical eye. Paying particular attention to anti-communist repression and state infrastructures of violence, the book provides a richaccount of several U.S.–allied Cold War regimes in the Asia Pacific, including the South Korean military dictatorship, Marcos' rule in the Philippines, illiberal Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew, and Suharto's Indonesia. Watson's book argues that the cultural forms and narrative techniques that emerged from the Cold War-decolonizing matrix offer new ways of comprehending these histories and connecting them to our present. The book advances our understanding of the global reverberations of the Cold War and its enduring influence on cultural and political formations in the Asia Pacific. Cold War Reckonings earned Honorable Mention for the 2022 René Wellek Prize. Jini Kim Watson is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University. She is the author of The New Asian City: Three-dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form and editor, with Gary Wilder, of The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present. Victoria Oana Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th and 21st Chinese, Brazilian and Romanian literature and Global South studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

How did the Cold War shape culture and political power in decolonizing countries and give rise to authoritarian regimes in the so-called free world? Cold War Reckonings: Authoritarianism and the Genres of Decolonization (Fordham UP, 2021) tells a new story about the Cold War and the global shift from colonialism to independent nation-states. Assembling a body of transpacific cultural works that speak to this historical conjuncture, Jini Kim Watson reveals autocracy to be not a deficient form of liberal democracy, but rather the result of Cold War entanglements with decolonization. Focusing on East and Southeast Asia, the book scrutinizes cultural texts ranging from dissident poetry, fiction, and writers' conference proceedings of the Cold War period, to more recent literature, graphic novels, and films that retrospectively look back to these decades with a critical eye. Paying particular attention to anti-communist repression and state infrastructures of violence, the book provides a richaccount of several U.S.–allied Cold War regimes in the Asia Pacific, including the South Korean military dictatorship, Marcos' rule in the Philippines, illiberal Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew, and Suharto's Indonesia. Watson's book argues that the cultural forms and narrative techniques that emerged from the Cold War-decolonizing matrix offer new ways of comprehending these histories and connecting them to our present. The book advances our understanding of the global reverberations of the Cold War and its enduring influence on cultural and political formations in the Asia Pacific. Cold War Reckonings earned Honorable Mention for the 2022 René Wellek Prize. Jini Kim Watson is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University. She is the author of The New Asian City: Three-dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form and editor, with Gary Wilder, of The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present. Victoria Oana Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th and 21st Chinese, Brazilian and Romanian literature and Global South studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

How did the Cold War shape culture and political power in decolonizing countries and give rise to authoritarian regimes in the so-called free world? Cold War Reckonings: Authoritarianism and the Genres of Decolonization (Fordham UP, 2021) tells a new story about the Cold War and the global shift from colonialism to independent nation-states. Assembling a body of transpacific cultural works that speak to this historical conjuncture, Jini Kim Watson reveals autocracy to be not a deficient form of liberal democracy, but rather the result of Cold War entanglements with decolonization. Focusing on East and Southeast Asia, the book scrutinizes cultural texts ranging from dissident poetry, fiction, and writers' conference proceedings of the Cold War period, to more recent literature, graphic novels, and films that retrospectively look back to these decades with a critical eye. Paying particular attention to anti-communist repression and state infrastructures of violence, the book provides a richaccount of several U.S.–allied Cold War regimes in the Asia Pacific, including the South Korean military dictatorship, Marcos' rule in the Philippines, illiberal Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew, and Suharto's Indonesia. Watson's book argues that the cultural forms and narrative techniques that emerged from the Cold War-decolonizing matrix offer new ways of comprehending these histories and connecting them to our present. The book advances our understanding of the global reverberations of the Cold War and its enduring influence on cultural and political formations in the Asia Pacific. Cold War Reckonings earned Honorable Mention for the 2022 René Wellek Prize. Jini Kim Watson is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University. She is the author of The New Asian City: Three-dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form and editor, with Gary Wilder, of The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present. Victoria Oana Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th and 21st Chinese, Brazilian and Romanian literature and Global South studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

How did the Cold War shape culture and political power in decolonizing countries and give rise to authoritarian regimes in the so-called free world? Cold War Reckonings: Authoritarianism and the Genres of Decolonization (Fordham UP, 2021) tells a new story about the Cold War and the global shift from colonialism to independent nation-states. Assembling a body of transpacific cultural works that speak to this historical conjuncture, Jini Kim Watson reveals autocracy to be not a deficient form of liberal democracy, but rather the result of Cold War entanglements with decolonization. Focusing on East and Southeast Asia, the book scrutinizes cultural texts ranging from dissident poetry, fiction, and writers' conference proceedings of the Cold War period, to more recent literature, graphic novels, and films that retrospectively look back to these decades with a critical eye. Paying particular attention to anti-communist repression and state infrastructures of violence, the book provides a richaccount of several U.S.–allied Cold War regimes in the Asia Pacific, including the South Korean military dictatorship, Marcos' rule in the Philippines, illiberal Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew, and Suharto's Indonesia. Watson's book argues that the cultural forms and narrative techniques that emerged from the Cold War-decolonizing matrix offer new ways of comprehending these histories and connecting them to our present. The book advances our understanding of the global reverberations of the Cold War and its enduring influence on cultural and political formations in the Asia Pacific. Cold War Reckonings earned Honorable Mention for the 2022 René Wellek Prize. Jini Kim Watson is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University. She is the author of The New Asian City: Three-dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form and editor, with Gary Wilder, of The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present. Victoria Oana Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th and 21st Chinese, Brazilian and Romanian literature and Global South studies. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

How did the Cold War shape culture and political power in decolonizing countries and give rise to authoritarian regimes in the so-called free world? Cold War Reckonings: Authoritarianism and the Genres of Decolonization (Fordham UP, 2021) tells a new story about the Cold War and the global shift from colonialism to independent nation-states. Assembling a body of transpacific cultural works that speak to this historical conjuncture, Jini Kim Watson reveals autocracy to be not a deficient form of liberal democracy, but rather the result of Cold War entanglements with decolonization. Focusing on East and Southeast Asia, the book scrutinizes cultural texts ranging from dissident poetry, fiction, and writers' conference proceedings of the Cold War period, to more recent literature, graphic novels, and films that retrospectively look back to these decades with a critical eye. Paying particular attention to anti-communist repression and state infrastructures of violence, the book provides a richaccount of several U.S.–allied Cold War regimes in the Asia Pacific, including the South Korean military dictatorship, Marcos' rule in the Philippines, illiberal Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew, and Suharto's Indonesia. Watson's book argues that the cultural forms and narrative techniques that emerged from the Cold War-decolonizing matrix offer new ways of comprehending these histories and connecting them to our present. The book advances our understanding of the global reverberations of the Cold War and its enduring influence on cultural and political formations in the Asia Pacific. Cold War Reckonings earned Honorable Mention for the 2022 René Wellek Prize. Jini Kim Watson is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University. She is the author of The New Asian City: Three-dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form and editor, with Gary Wilder, of The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present. Victoria Oana Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th and 21st Chinese, Brazilian and Romanian literature and Global South studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

How did the Cold War shape culture and political power in decolonizing countries and give rise to authoritarian regimes in the so-called free world? Cold War Reckonings: Authoritarianism and the Genres of Decolonization (Fordham UP, 2021) tells a new story about the Cold War and the global shift from colonialism to independent nation-states. Assembling a body of transpacific cultural works that speak to this historical conjuncture, Jini Kim Watson reveals autocracy to be not a deficient form of liberal democracy, but rather the result of Cold War entanglements with decolonization. Focusing on East and Southeast Asia, the book scrutinizes cultural texts ranging from dissident poetry, fiction, and writers' conference proceedings of the Cold War period, to more recent literature, graphic novels, and films that retrospectively look back to these decades with a critical eye. Paying particular attention to anti-communist repression and state infrastructures of violence, the book provides a richaccount of several U.S.–allied Cold War regimes in the Asia Pacific, including the South Korean military dictatorship, Marcos' rule in the Philippines, illiberal Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew, and Suharto's Indonesia. Watson's book argues that the cultural forms and narrative techniques that emerged from the Cold War-decolonizing matrix offer new ways of comprehending these histories and connecting them to our present. The book advances our understanding of the global reverberations of the Cold War and its enduring influence on cultural and political formations in the Asia Pacific. Cold War Reckonings earned Honorable Mention for the 2022 René Wellek Prize. Jini Kim Watson is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University. She is the author of The New Asian City: Three-dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form and editor, with Gary Wilder, of The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present. Victoria Oana Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th and 21st Chinese, Brazilian and Romanian literature and Global South studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/korean-studies

Richard Vesely, head of the jury at the 2022 Hviezdoslav Kubin, lends a helping hand in explaining to foreigners the Slovak phenomenon of poetry-reading contests. Eve Blau of Harvard University gives her impression of the Bratislava urban form after her lecture at an international conference hosted by the Faculty of Architecture and Design at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava.

#ITETalksTransportation host, Bernie Wagenblast, shares hosting duties for this podcast with Justin Ward, Head of Policy and Practice, CIHT (Chartered Institution of Highways & Transportation), London, UK. They speak about the evolution of urban form and function with with Noreen McDonald, Chair, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

ITE Talks Transportation host, Bernie Wagenblast, shares hosting duties for this podcast with Justin Ward, Head of Policy and Practice, CIHT (Chartered Institution of Highways & Transportation), London, UK. They speak about the evolution of urban form and function with with Noreen McDonald, Chair, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

#ITETalksTransportation host, Bernie Wagenblast, shares hosting duties for this podcast with Justin Ward, Head of Policy and Practice, CIHT (Chartered Institution of Highways & Transportation), London, UK. They speak about the evolution of urban form and function with with Noreen McDonald, Chair, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

In today’s Patreon-fueled shout-out: What’s your perfect holiday weekend in Charlottesville? Hanging with friends outside... Great live music... Maybe breaking a Guinness world record? Then mark your calendar for WTJU 91.1 FM's Freefall Music Festival -- Saturday, September 4 starting at 3 p.m. at IX Art Park. Live performances by Zuzu's Hot Five, Susie and the Pistols, and Good Dog Nigel. We'll attempt to form the world's largest human music note at 7:30 p.m. Plus, a hot dog and veggie dog cookout for our whole community. Find out more at wtju.net.On today’s show: Albemarle County is looking for a consultant for to help update their zoning codeU.S. Census Bureau releases population figures for 2020Charlottesville Planning Commission gets an update on the Cville Plans Together initiativeThe University of Virginia plans to increase the number of opportunities for people to get vaccinatedThe Virginia Department of Health reports 2,270 new cases of COVID-19 today, the third straight day with one-day totals in excess of two thousand. The percent positivity has increased to 7.7 percent. In the Blue Ridge Health District, there are 37 new cases today and the percent positivity is at 4.6 percent. There have been 244,944 cases of COVID since mid-January, and of that amount, 98.34 percent of cases were in people not fully vaccinated. Of 2,838 deaths, that figure is 98.17 percent. (The above paragraph was corrected to fix a typographical error)In Albemarle County, 73.2 percent of adults are fully vaccinated, or 63.6 percent of the total population. In Charlottesville, 61.8 percent of adults are fully vaccinated, or 54.7 percent of population. The numbers in outlying counties are lower. For instance, in Louisa the figures are 54.4 percent of adults and 45.5 percent of the total population. In Fluvanna those numbers are 64 percent and 54.5 percent. In Greene, those numbers are 63.3 percent and 56.8 percent, and in Nelson 65.3 percent of adults are vaccinated and 55.6 percent of the total is fully vaccinated.The University of Virginia Health System has announced they will make vaccines available in their outpatient pharmacies by appointment, weekdays between 11 a.m. and six p.m. Justin Vesser has helped lead the health system’s vaccination efforts. “So we’re at this time when we sincerely hope everyone makes the decision to become vaccinated and there’s a lot changing on the vaccine front and a lot changing on the COVID front with the Delta variant and the current surge that we’re in,” Vesser said. These are in addition to the vaccinations at the COVID clinic.“We have community pharmacies that are UVA pharmacies in Zion Crossroads, we have them in Fishersville, we have them at UVA Cancer Center at Pantops, one in the UVA Bookstore, and one at student health clinic on the UVA campus,” Vesser said. Masks are now required indoors at all public schools in Virginia, per a public health emergency order issued yesterday by Governor Ralph Northam. Even though the state of emergency has elapsed, the public health emergency is still in place. One whereas clause in the order point out that children under the age of 12 are not eligible for a vaccine yet. (read the resolution)Among the others: Only 40.3% of 12-15 year-olds and 51.7 % of 16-17 year olds in Virginia are fully vaccinated as of August 10, 2021Universal and correct mask use is an important COVID-19 prevention strategy in schools as part of a multicomponent approach and has been shown to be associated with lower incidence of COVID-19 in schoolsThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advises universal indoor masking for all teachers, staff, students, and visitors in K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination statusExceptions are made for anyone eating or drinking, exercising, for participation in religious rituals, and for those with health conditions that prevent wearing a mask. The U.S. Census Bureau has released population and demographic data from the tally in 2020. According to the count, Charlottesville officially has 46,553 people, a 7.08 percent increase from 2010. Albemarle’s population is 112,395, a 13.56 percent increase since 2010. Louisa County’s population increased by 13.4 percent to 37,596, Greene increased 11.68 percent to 20,552, and Fluvanna grew 6.06 percent to 27,249. Nelson County’s population shrank by 1.63 percent to 14,775. Overall, the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission increased by 10.4 percent to 259,120.Virginia as a whole has an official population of 8,631,393, a 7.9 percent increase since 2010. There are 218.6 people per square mile. Charlottesville has a density of 4,544 people per square mile, and that figure is 156 people per square mile in Albemarle County. (population and housing data viewer)A major purpose of the Census is to allocate seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Virginia will continue to have 11 members. Albemarle County is looking for a consultant to help update its zoning order. On Tuesday, Planning Director Charles Rapp hosted a briefing for representatives of firms interested in doing the work. “The zoning ordinance exceeds probably 30, 40 years of life and its in need of an update,” Rapp said. The chosen firm will enter into a multi-year contract to do the work in phases.  “We have an initial phase outlined in this [request for proposals] that focuses on zoning district land use clarifications and setbacks as kind of the first two sections,” Rapp said. Subsequent phases will be undertaken as Albemarle begins to update its Comprehensive Plan. “As we finish sections of the Comprehensive Plan, we will identify sections of the zoning ordinance that correspond with that topic,” Rapp said. “So an easy one to talk about is natural resource planning. So a zoning ordinance that might relate to natural resources would be landscaping, lighting, stream buffers, all of that kind of stuff.”Back to that first phase. Rapp said this would be an update to transition toward a more modern zoning code that is easier to use and better organized. “We would like to get a consultant on board by October,” Rapp said. A second request for proposals will be released soon for a consultant to work on the Comprehensive Plan. After this brief break, catching up with the Charlottesville Planning Commission. You’re reading to Charlottesville Community Engagement. In this subscriber supported public service announcement, over the course of the pandemic, the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society has provided hours and hours of interviews, presentations, and discussions about interpretations and recollections of the past. All of this is available for you to watch, for free, on the Historical Society’s YouTube Channel. Some examples:June 7, 2021 event on a report on how to improve cvillepediaJanuary 28, 2021 event on the Jefferson Madison Regional Library’s historyDecember 17, 2021 Speaker Series with Jordy Yager of Mapping CvilleLater on Tuesday, the Charlottesville Planning Commission met for their regular meeting in August. They’ll have two work sessions coming up, and the agenda for this one was relatively light. As always, the meeting began with updates from Commissioners, including the nonvoting representative from the University of Virginia, Bill Palmer. “I don’t have a whole lot to report other than just the reminder that fall semester starts on August 24 and we’ll be in pretty full swing around Grounds with first years coming back for orientation and all that,” Palmer said. Commissioner Rory Stolzenberg noted the finalization earlier this month of a key global update of how the entire world’s climate is changing. “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released the first part of its sixth assessment report and most of the stuff in there is bad news and some of it is tentatively good news if we act on it and I would encourage all of you to read it,” Stolzenberg said. Stolzenberg said the report shows the global temperature will likely continue to rise above the 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming considered to be an important threshold. Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are intended to keep that number lower.“And we’re most likely looking at three degrees or more unless we can get very significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions,” Stolzenberg said. Stolzenberg said the good news is that if the world can get to net zero, temperatures could eventually begin to go down. (view the various reports on the IPCC website)James Groves, an associate professor in the Department of Engineering and Society at the University of Virginia, spoke about the report during matters from the public. He said it is the first update from the IPCC since 2013.“Without surprise, the report states that our lifestyles are dangerously eroding the natural world around us, setting the stage for increasingly difficult living conditions for everyone and everything,” Groves said. Groves said he hopes the Comprehensive Plan needs to have specific recommendations related to climate change such as recommending specific financing mechanisms to replace heating and cooling systems. “Investments in sustainability solutions like [Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy] financing, a green bank, and micromobility could put critical dollars in the pockets of our most needy neighbors, year after year, while stabilizing the climate for all of us,” Groves said.Speaking of the Charlottesville Comprehensive Plan, the firm Rhodeside & Harwell updated the city Planning Commission on the next steps for the Cville Plans Together Initiative. In February 2019, a previous Council opted to spend nearly a million dollars on a firm to complete the Comprehensive Plan, rewrite the zoning code, and adopt an affordable housing plan. That last step was completed in March. Jennifer Koch is with Rhodeside and Harwell.“What we’ve heard from you all is that you’d like to see us have a Comprehensive Plan to Council this year,” Koch said.The consultant team continues to review the feedback submitted this spring in six-week public input window on the Future Land Use Map and some of the draft chapters of the Comprehensive Plan. There’s an upcoming work session on August 31. “We’ll come to you with what we’re proposing as some adjustments to the Future Land Use Map and the Land Use, Urban Form, and Historical, Cultural Preservation chapter to respond to what we heard,” Koch said. Planning Commission Chair Hosea Mitchell said he thinks it is crucial to get a Plan for the current City Council to vote on before the end of the year.“Slippage is not an option,” Mitchell said. “We do not want to have to educate a new Council. If it slips, we could be looking at another couple of years.”More to come in the near future. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at communityengagement.substack.com/subscribe

Today's Patreon-fueled shout-out is for the Plant Northern Piedmont Natives Campaign, an initiative that wants you to grow native plants in yards, farms, public spaces and gardens in the northern Piedmont. Native plants provide habitat, food sources for wildlife, ecosystem resiliency in the face of climate change, and clean water.  Start at the Plant Northern Piedmont Natives Facebook page and tell them Lonnie Murray sent you! In today’s edition:A summary of a recent steering committee of the Cville Plans Together initiative What do the three Democratic candidates for two party nominations think about the process to date? The steering committee overseeing the Cville Plans Together initiative met on May 19 to take a mid-month review of the latest round of the public engagement efforts. To recap, Rhodeside & Harwell is overseeing an update of the city's Comprehensive Plan as well as a rewrite of the city's zoning code. They’ve already produced an affordable housing strategy that City Council adopted in March. (review the plan) In February 2019, Council voted to approve spending up to $1 million to hire an outside consultant to take over oversight of the Comprehensive Plan. For background, read my story from then to explain the reasons behind the decision. The latest version of the schedule for the processThe work got underway in January 2020 and continued during the pandemic with virtual meetings. There were two previous community engagement periods last year in addition to the one underway now. Jennifer Koch is a project manager with Rhodeside & Harwell."We fully recognize there are folks in the community who may not have been aware of this process that was going," Koch said. "We've been working hard to reach folks but it's been quite a year... We've been doing a lot of virtual engagement for the past year and we don't anticipate that will completely go away as we move forward but we also know it's really nice to speak with people in person."  First, members of the steering committee had the opportunity to weigh in. One of them is City Councilor Michael Payne, who will be one of five votes to adopt the Comprehensive Plan and the updated zoning code sometime next year. At this stage, he wanted to suggest a change in the title of one of the draft chapters."With the Economic Prosperity and Opportunity [chapter], I know it mentions community wealth building in the update but I still wonder if it may make more sense for the chapter itself to be focused on community wealth building, again to try to gear that chapter towards more system change thinking about things like community land trusts, community development corporations, [and] community gardens all interconnect as a system for wealth creation that's different than the normal way of doing economic development," Payne said. Seven draft chapters of the Comprehensive Plan are available for review (download)Christine Jacobs, the interim executive director of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, applauded language about regional partnerships. However, she wanted her organization to be more specifically referenced given the number of bodies it runs on which Charlottesville City Councilors serve. "The TJPDC does have the Charlottesville-Albemarle MPO," Jacobs said. "It also has the Regional Transit Partnership and the Regional Housing Partnership." Diana Dale represents the leaders of neighborhood associations in the city, some of which have expressed concern about too much density. She drew attention to the chapter on Land Use, Urban Form, and Historic and Cultural Preservation. "And I'm thinking in particular of goal two," Dale said, reading from the chapter summary. "Protect and enhance existing distinct identitiess of the city's older neighborhoods while promoting housing options, a mix of uses, and sustainble reuses in the community." Dale said some residents of neighborhoods are concerned that some of their portions have been changed from low-intensity to medium-intensity, such as most of the Lewis Mountain neighborhood and some of the Martha Jefferson neighborhood. That could allow between four to 12 units per lot, but that will remain unclear until it is time to rewrite the zoning code. “What is aspirational? And what is actually codifiable?” Dale asked. The zoning rewrite will be conducted by the firm Code Studio, a subcontractor whose work will be informed by the affordable housing plan and the Future Land Use Map. “I’m not certain that we have a whole lot of the answers,” said Lee Einsweiler of Code Studio. “We were hoping we could work through things at the more generalized level of the Future Land Use Map and then begin to craft strategies for implementing those tools.” Einsweiler said that each category on the future land use map will not be represented by a single zoning district. “There would be two, three, four implementing zoning districts that might all have appropriate strategies for different types of the community but those can’t quite be figured out until we can understand where they are likely to be applied,” said Lee Einsweiler. Dale remained concerned. “The vagueness is not helping people’s confidence in the plan,” Dale said.The Lewis Mountain Neighborhood has been designated as medium intensity in the draft future land use map. (interactive map)Dale also expressed concern about the impacts of a more people on the existing infrastructure. She said roads might need to be widened to accommodate additional traffic, and stated the city has issues delivering on infrastructure projects such as frequent buses and a consistent bike and sidewalk network. “The guidance is recommending multimodal strategies, and that’s going to take time and funding to implement and that’s been a long struggle for a lot of improvements over time for those of who have been in the city,” Dale said. There are 19 neighborhoods across the city, and the 2007 Comprehensive Plan contains an entire appendix of specific requests from neighborhoods that came from a city-wide design day arranged by a now-defunct non-profit called the Charlottesville Community Design Center. That approach was abandoned for the 2013 Comprehensive Plan and the 2017 process did not seek a thorough capturing of what residents of neighborhoods wanted. Ashley Davies, who represents the Charlottesville Area Development Roundtable on the steering committee, suggested an approach that built upon previous efforts to plan at a neighborhood level. “I think people are hungry to give you feedback that is more specific to their area and I think it’s a shame that we can’t have the time right now to do the small area planning because I think that’s what a lot of people want to inform the land use plan,” Davies said.  Neighborhood plans were drafted in the 2007 plan, as described on page 285. If you’re a Charlottesville resident, what was said about your neighborhood? (download the plan)There’s a lot of discussion of what role the Future Land Use Map plays. Is it advisory? If so, what does that mean? Ron Sessoms is with Rhodeside and Harwell.“The future land use map is a critical component of a Comprehensive Plan and sets the stage for the city’s long-term vision of how it’s going to grow,” said Ron Sessoms of Rhodeside & Harwell (RHI). “You can think of this as the 10,000 foot view of the city and defining where there are opportunities for growth.” Sessoms said the land use map is a guide for development, but is not binding like zoning. “As we think about the future land use map, it’s much more broad and the zoning code is much more detailed with specifics of what it means to fulfil the future land use map,” Sessoms said. The medium intensity residential category is new with this comp plan update, and encourages construction between four and 12 units per lot. Sessoms said that did not have to be out of scale with existing buildings. “They can be integrated into the fabric of a neighborhood,” Sessoms said. “They don’t have to be five stories to get fourplexes or any of the medium intensity development types.” Ashley Davies said she liked that the future land use map begins a process of reducing the amount of areas colored as low-intensity residential, but thought there should be some sense of what types of housing units are prioritized. “It seems to me the strategy for adding units in the city and adding residential, maybe we need to talk about the hierarchy of that can truly happen in Charlottesville,” Davies said. Dale said the Martha Jefferson Neighborhood Association’s Board of Directors supports soft density by adding accessory units and permitting apartments within structures. But they don’t support being colored as medium intensity. “Is there an opportunity to merge the ambitions of transforming Charlottesville to general residential, which is a big step to begin with, and to merge some of the intentions of the medium intensity?” Dale asked. “I recognize this may happen as you move to more strata, more levels of medium density.”This draft also includes a name change for Low Density Residential to General Residential, which recommends up to three units per lot. Lena Seville, a Belmont resident who is on the steering committee, wanted to know why General Residential didn’t recommend allowing four units per lot. “There are plenty of little houses that are split into four,” Seville said. “At two stories, it’s four apartments. They’re easier to build. They mirror each other. They have the same footprint.”Much of what is happening in Charlottesville is patterned off an effort in Minneapolis, where their City Council voted to permit duplexes and triplexes in all R-1 areas. Here’s Lee Einsweiler with Code Studio again. “You may have followed the exercise in Minneapolis in which they began talking about four but ended up adopting three,” Einsweiler said. “Part of the conversation was about the likelihood that the existing house would be replaced as opposed to split. The three is most likely an additional building on the property and a main unit carved out of the main house.” At the meeting, some members expressed concern about a perceived lack of engagement. Valerie Washington represents the Charlottesville Low Income Housing Coalition. “While this process has been going on for a while now there are still many folks in the community that I’ve spoken to who have no idea about this process,” Washington said. “Is there any plan to really put some education out there for folks who are having difficulty understanding the planning process so they can better participate?”LaToya Thomas of the firm Brick and Story acknowledges that many people are not knowledgeable in planning issues, but the Cville Plans Together initiative wants to educate more people especially as the pandemic recedes.“We are reaching out to as many people that we can get connected to, but we also know that many of you are connected to folks and so we will continue to make ourselves available if there are groups of folks that you want to convene,” Thomas said. Dale suggested a pause while people get caught up on the planning process. That would give people the chance to read the many recommendations in the affordable housing plan adopted by Council in March. “Most of the community doesn’t really understand how it informs the plan,” Dale said. “It was previewed with the public last fall when everyone had their head down dealing with Zoom school and Zoom work and health care and everything else. It was a 100-year health event.”The housing plan was adopted in March 2021 and informed the development of Future Land Use Map (download)S. Lisa Herndon is a Realtor on the steering committee who wants to see a map that depicts where redlining occurred which overlays areas proposed for more intense development. “Going back to the history of Vinegar Hill and Gospel Hill, there [are] communities that were negatively impacted and now we’re going through redevelopment again and we see a lack of equity in terms of participation and I see nothing within this which shows where we were and how we’re going to prevent that negative effect in communities of African-American historical context,” Hernson said. “I don’t see that.” Sunshine Mathon, executive director of the Piedmont Housing Alliance, said he has been through this process in other communities where he has worked.  He reminded people the intent of the initiative is to guide change. “One of the things that gets lost in the translation is that change is constant and people have this assumption that their neighborhoods are a thing and have always been that thing which is fundamentally not true,” Mathon said. “One of the changes that we are seeing across the city regardless of the form of the city, one of the real changes is a dramatic increase in the cost of living in the city. That’s a fundamental change. The plan itself can’t be the change that solves that on its own, but it is an ingredient in that tool set.”Comments will be accepted through June 13 now that a two-week extension has been granted. The Planning Commission is expected to have a work session on June 29. You’re reading to Charlottesville Community Engagement and time for another subscriber-supported public service announcement. It’s becoming more and more safe to go out and check out live music. If you’re interested in going out and hearing people who have been waiting to get out and play, check out the Charlottesville Jazz Society and their running list of events! The Charlottesville Jazz Society is dedicated to the promotion, preservation and perpetuation of all jazz, and that the best thing you can do now is to go check out some music.Last week, the Martha Jefferson Neighborhood Association held a candidate forum for the three Democratic candidates running for two party nominations. The Future Land Use Map and the Comprehensive Plan came up. Moderator Paul Miller asked this question:“Charlottesville is currently undergoing a significant update in Comprehensive land use plan and zoning in decades,” Miller said. “Proposals significantly change the approach to residential areas, eliminating single-family lot zoning and replacing it with three new categories that allow increasing densities of multifamily through subdivision, infill and redevelopment. A significant section of the Martha Jefferson Neighborhood may undergo significant change. Since the vote on these proposals will occur under the next City Council, we hope you have been paying attention. What do you think of the public engagement process that has been conducted under the pandemic? What do you think about these new approaches to residential areas to address housing and affordability issues?” Juandiego Wade went first. To hear the full response, listen to the podcast version. The following text are just highlights. “We know that single lot zoning was established as an exclusionary type of zoning many, many, many years ago and we’re dealing with that today,” Wade said. “As a Councilor, I would have a more engaged public input process because I had input on the last process but it was virtual and I think this was as engaged as it should be.” “Maybe we need to look at some type of rezoning but I think there’s so much more we can do before we touch that third rail,” Wade added. “Like work with the University of Virginia to address affordable housing and that is something that they are doing. Work with places like Habitat for Humanity and [Albemarle Home Improvement Program] to address that. But more importantly, also get the localities to address affordable housing. Right now Charlottesville is the main player in the game putting in $6 million or $7 million in and I think the place I work for, Albemarle County, is putting in barely $1 million in. We need to get other players as well and I think that would alleviate some of the burden on Charlottesville.”Next, Carl Brown but did not seem to directly address the Cville Plans Together initiative in his response. “The Realtor’s association is a big player in this that we haven’t included and haven’t been included for a long-time in terms of how we solve this problem,” Brown said. “There are a lot of individuals in this area but we don’t bring them all together. (S. Lisa Herndon represents the Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors on the steering committee. Here is a link to the full list of members.) Brian Pinkston went next. “Two year ago we were all talking about having a plan for affordable housing when I ran and by golly if they didn’t go out what I think is a decent consultant,” Pinkston said. “I feel like the affordable housing plan… is a strong good plan. The density is one component of it, but only one component of it. There’s a whole lot of other stuff that’s included that plan.”“I largely agree with the sentiments of the folks on the Planning Commission that are really working with the consultant to have higher density,” Pinkston said. “I think we need to think closely about what increased density looks like and how we can operationalize that as opposed to just talking about it. My sense in looking at the map and the conversations I’ve had is that it is a tad too aggressive. I don’t think we’re ready for that. Having said that, I think we’re ready for something. We’re ready for accessory dwelling units. We’re ready for soft density. I do think we need to put out money where our moral mouth is in terms of creating affordability and part of that is going to be a denser city.” Pinkston said the real details will come in with the zoning ordinance. What do you think? Have you made your comment? Benefiting from the information? Consider supporting this effort financially. One way to do that is through a Patreon contribution, which supports general research into the community. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at communityengagement.substack.com/subscribe

Today's Patreon-fueled shout-out is for the Plant Northern Piedmont Natives Campaign, an initiative that wants you to grow native plants in yards, farms, public spaces and gardens in the northern Piedmont. Native plants provide habitat, food sources for wildlife, ecosystem resiliency in the face of climate change, and clean water.  Start at the Plant Northern Piedmont Natives Facebook page and tell them Lonnie Murray sent you!    On today’s show:Consultants with the Cville Plans Together consultants explain more about the land use policy reform they’re overseeing Charlottesville  Mayor Nikuyah Walker will make a decision running this year by Friday Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau launches new campaign to attract Black tourists to the areaThere are four declared candidates in the race for two seats on Charlottesville City Council, and none of them are incumbents. Mayor Nikuyah Walker announced her reelection campaign in February of 2020 and took to Facebook Live today to say she will decide by Friday whether to go through with her candidacy. In her comments, she cited a series of deaths in her family as one reason why she has not been campaigning yet. In mourning, she’s realized how much public service has taken from her life. “It consumes every day all of my time,” Walker said. “It has been very difficult to serve in Charlottesville.” (watch the video)Walker said she had heard from former City Councilor Holly Edwards as well as Councilor Wes Bellamy that being a Black person in office was difficult. “They didn’t come blazing the way I’ve been blazing,” Walker said. “It was still a challenge for them. One thing I’ve learned is that really no matter who you are, if you’re Black and female, or just Black, people don’t want to listen to you.”Walker will return to Facebook Live on Friday to make her announcementWalker said if she doesn’t run, she will continue to hold people accountable. If Walker does run she will be on the ballot as an independent as she was in 2017 when she became the first non-party affiliated candidate to win election since 1948. She’ll be on the ballot with fellow independent. Yas Washington, who did not qualify for the Democratic Primary on June 8. In that race, three candidates are seeking two nominations. The candidates are School Board member Juandiego Wade, 2019 candidate Brian Pinkston, and political newcomer Carl E. Brown. Last week, the Public Housing Association of Residents and two other organizations held a campaign forum for all declared candidates in which Walker did not participate. (watch the event on YouTube)On Thursday, the Martha Jefferson Neighborhood Association will hold a forum beginning at 7 p.m., and I’ll hold a joint forum with the Free Enterprise Forum on May 27, also at 7 p.m. The quasi-governmental organization that seeks to attract tourists to Albemarle and Charlottesville has formally begun a campaign to bring people to the area to learn about Black stories. The Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau has launched Discover Black Cville across social media and other channels, including Facebook and Instagram. According to a press release, the initiative is the result of nine months of meetings with dozens of community members“Discover Black Cville marks the beginning of ongoing efforts to tell modern, historically accurate, and inclusive Black stories in Charlottesville and Albemarle County,” reads the release. “These efforts will be guided by a steering committee of engaged community membershighlighting the arts, outdoor recreation, local food and beverage, thriving culture, and strong community.”The goals of Discover Black Cville are to support Black-owned businesses while attracting more Black visitors to the community, and to change “the view of Charlottesville in the national perspective while simultaneously working toward real change.”More on the campaign is available on the CACVB website. There are two weeks left to get in your input for the current round of community engagement for the Cville Plans Together initiative. To recap, that’s a project commissioned by a former City Council in 2019 to oversee creation of an affordable housing plan, the update of the Comprehensive Plan, and a rewriting of the zoning code. Council adopted the affordable housing plan in March, and the public is being asked now to comment on something called the Future Land Use Map as well as draft chapters of the Comprehensive Plan. This is all a precursor to an update of the zoning code. A slide from the May 10 webinar depicts differences between 2013 Future Land Use Map and the 2021 draftLast week, staff with Rhodeside & Harwell held the first of two webinars to update the latest changes.  I wrote up a summary of a March 30, 2021 Planning Commission work session with the Charlottesville Comprehensive Plan as well as a preview of the May 10, 2021 webinar. Jennifer Koch is a project manager with the company. (watch the May 10 webinar)“The Comprehensive Plan is a document that describes and illustrates community goals for the future and guides decision-making for various matters including land use and development, transportation, economic development, etcetera,” Koch said. “Once this document is adopted, it is a statement of the city’s intentions and policies regarding development.”Once adopted, Rhodeside & Harwell will get to work on the next phase.“In order for the land use and design policies and guidelines to be truly effective, they must be reflected in the zoning ordinance,” Koch said. “That’s why after the Comprehensive Plan update process, we’re going to be moving forward to the zoning rewrite.” But until then, May is a time for community engagement. The next scheduled meeting with the Planning Commission is slated for late June. The May 10 webinar and a series of pop-up community engagement exercises are intended to educate people before they submit comment in several ways:Complete the surveyLeave comments on the Future Land Use Map Send an email to engage@cvilleplanstogether.comCall 1-833-752-6428There is one consolidated chapter called Land Use, Urban Form, and Historic and Cultural Preservation. Many of its goals and strategies are taken from the affordable housing plan adopted by Council in March. That plan has influenced other chapters, too.“With the housing chapter, we pulled in a lot of the recommendations from the affordable housing plan,” Koch said. “Actually, all of the recommendations from the affordable housing plan are within the Comprehensive Plan draft and that includes everything from the land use recommendations to the funding, governance, tenants rights, and subsidy recommendations.” Many of the areas being suggested for a higher intensity on the Future Land Use Map are locations where there are high concentrations of places with deeds with covenants that prevented sale, rental, or occupation by anyone deemed to be non-white. This was a common practice in much of the United States in the mid-20th century after being validated in 1926 by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Corrigan v Buckley case. In 1948, a later court ruled against the practice in Shelley v. Kraemer. The practice continued anyway, with many deeds in Charlottesville recording the covenants until 1968 when the Federal Fair Housing Act explicitly banned them and made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, national origin, or disability. A draft from the Mapping Cville Project used in the slides for the May 10 webinarJournalist and researcher Jordy Yager has been working to document the location of these covenants. The Mapping Cville Project is informing the Comprehensive Plan. “They are mapping where racial covenants were historically located in the city and these racial covenants really define where particularly Black citizens were able to live within the city,” said Ron Sessoms of Rhodeside & Harwell. Sessoms said many of these areas are focused north of downtown and he named the Venable and Rugby neighborhoods as well as land between Preston Avenue and U.S. 250.  “As a result, the African-American community was not able to live there and today these communities remain largely white and not diverse,” Sessoms said. Sessoms continued his history lesson and here are some of the highlights. The first Comprehensive Plan in 1958 called for elimination of slums which led to the urban renewal first of Vinegar Hill in the 60’s and then Garrett Street in the late 70’s. Parking standards were adopted as well as road-building projects to ease congestion. These projects disproportionately affected Black households. “There’s still some community hurt related to that,” Sessoms said. A zoning update in 1991 emphasized single-family zoning through the city. Twelve years later in 2013, another rezoning up-zoned several transportation corridors and created the Neighborhood Commercial Corridor zoning. And the city is poised to act on a comprehensive rezoning rewrite in the near future and that begins with the adoption of the Future Land Use Map which colors different parts of Charlottesville with different intensities of development. “It is a guide that can be used in evaluating development proposals in the future for rezoning, but it is not a legally binding plan and is not legally required so it’s a plan that is visionary but it is not legally binding which is different from zoning,” Sessoms said. “Zoning really is a legally binding set of ordinances.” The details about what can be developed, either by-right or through a special use permit, depends on the zoning. “There will be much more refinement of the future land use map recommendations,” Sessoms said. A slide from the May 10 webinar describes the different intensities for residential areas in the draft Future Land Use MapBetween March 30 and May 10, the land use map and its legend had been updated. What had been described as Low Intensity Residential is now described as General Residential which seeks to encourage more than just single-family housing by allowing up to three units per lot. “Right now a lot of the areas that are shown as General Residential are now zoned at least R-1, or one unit per lot,” Sessoms said.Koch said part of the intention is to support wealth-building in the community   by encouraging construction of smaller-scale homes for homeownership. “The land use policies can not do any of these things on their own,” Koch said. “We can’t have a fully equitable land use program unless the land use map is paired with other programs to ensure affordability and protection for communities.” Koch acknowledged on the May 10 webinar that many had concerns about what they saw on the map. Someone asked in the virtual chat if the consultants have walked around the city. “Fully understand and we’re glad that people have raised potential concerns in your neighborhood,” Koch said. “You all have a much deeper understanding than we do but we have been around and we understand that looking at these potential changes for the future can be overwhelming and concerning but we have built in a requirement to consider the existing neighborhood context.” The steering committee for the Cville Plans Together initiative next meets virtually on May 19 at 5:30 p.m. (register) The next webinar is scheduled for May 25 at 6 p.m. (register) This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at communityengagement.substack.com/subscribe

Sponsored by Jones & Haley, P.C.

This week we’re joined by Carrie Makarewicz, Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado at Denver, Prentiss Dantzler, Assistant Professor at Georgia State University, and Arlie Adkins, Associate Professor at The University of Arizona to talk about their paper in Housing Policy Debate:  Another Look at Location Affordability: Understanding the Detailed Effects of Income and Urban Form on Housing and Transportation Expenditures. The paper looks at how households with varied incomes spend on housing and transportation based on location and it’s the most recent iteration of a debate about whether location impacts people’s transportation spending.  We also chat about the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a continuously collected household dataset started in 1968, the idea of housing as critical infrastructure, and the equity implications of access to jobs and destinations. You can read the paper by emailing Carrie or downloading from the journal site.

Building on the last week's episode, we examine how urban form and zoning join forces to have a powerful shaping effect on cities. The smallest unit of development in cities is the block and its shape, configuration and dimension determine the ability of buildings to change adapt over time. Listed below are the resources referenced in the episode with links to learn more about the topics discussed. References: Image of the City by Kevin Lynch or read the Summary The Evolution of Urban Form by Brenda Case Scheer --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/planning/support

Learning Objectives: Evaluate various definitions of a "city."Learn the fundamental components of cities (as uniquely defined by Doug Allen) and how they combine to form our basic organizational structure.Evaluate the commonalities of cities throughout the world.Enhance the understanding of "scale" in urbanism.Thank you to our sponsors for this episode!:Mrs. Kathy AllenMr. Seth and Mrs. Jennie GallaherDr. John and Mrs. Pam HarrisDoctors Hill and Susie HarrisDr. Dan and Mrs. Jennifer Harris.Support the Doug Allen Institute and make a donation.To learn more, visit us at www.DougAllenInstitute.org.

It's amazing how living close to people doesn't make for closer communities. Counter intuitively, it seems that urban living is more isolating than ever. So why does this happen and how do we fix it? We found an expert who's working to do just that!! Lorraine D'Arcy has a PhD in the Built Environment, Social Cohesion, Urban Form...basically she's an expert in how best to plan our city spaces to maximise human-ness, to enhance integration and make healthy urban communities. We chat through how the design for cities, parks and playgrounds is evolving to allow communities to explore their boundaries, to understand risk, make their own decisions around the use of public spaces. With a less restrictive approach to planning, humans large and small have the opportunity to assess their environment and approach it with more creativity. We chat through the controversial Bus Connects program, the design of which Lorraine has been heavily involved in, which is rolling out throughout Dublin City over the coming years, which is designed to enhance community connectivity, facilitating access for the many thousands of commuters in their daily routine as work lives and travel habits shift from our traditional suburb to city centre, into more granular and individualised patterns.

To begin our series exploring housing & development in Chattanooga we wanted to lay a foundation defining what good development looks like. Anytime we are discussing development we are really talking about growth. So is all growth a good thing for our city? How can we steward the growth of our city to be a place that is sustainable and resilient over time? Join us as we begin this conversation exploring such an a critical topic impacting our community. Featuring Eric Myers of the Chattanooga Design Studio, Jim Johnson of Chattanoogans for Responsible Development, and Justin Tirsun, a city planner who has worked in both the public and private sector. Referenced in this episode: Chattanooga Design Studio - https://www.chattanoogastudio.com/ Chattanoogans for Responsible Development - https://www.facebook.com/groups/1885179471492466/ Strong Towns - https://www.strongtowns.org/ Strong Towns Podcast - "Thoughts on Incremental Development" - http://bit.ly/32gZsez

Maps and postcodes. Is there such a thing as a predictive postcode? Can it reveal more about us than our bank account, ethnicity or social class? Laurie Taylor poses the question to Roger Burrows, Professor of Cities at Newcastle University. Also, Mapping Society - Laura Vaughan, Professor of Urban Form and Society at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, examines how maps not only serve as historical records of social enquiry, but also reveal the ways in which difference and inequality are etched deeply on the surface of our towns, villages and cities. Producer: Jayne Egerton

Topic:The relationship between tax and land use policies Guest & Organization:Joe Minicozzi is an urban planner imagining new ways to think about and visualize land use, urban design and economics. Joe founded Urban3 to break down and visualize the market dynamics created by tax and land use policies. Urban3’s work is establishing new conversations across multiple sectors, policy makers, and the public to creatively address the challenges of urbanization. Urban3’s extensive studies have ranged geographically from over 30 states, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Joe holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Miami and Master of Architecture and Urban Design from Harvard University. In 2017, Joe was recognized as one of the https://www.planetizen.com/features/95189-100-most-influential-urbanists (100 Most Influential Urbanists) of all time.   Resources: http://www.urban-three.com/ (Urban3) https://www.lgc.org/ (Local Government Commission ) https://www.newpartners.org/ (New Partners for Smart Growth Conference)

Chuck and Rachel discuss several recent and upcoming events, as well as Chuck's recent article, "Cargo Cult Planning." Mentioned in this podcast: Eau Claire, WI event, April 20 Omaha, NE event, April 21 "Cargo Cult Planning" by Chuck Marohn Shreveport campaign "Towards a Liberal Approach to Urban Form" by Nolan Gray FEEcon in Atlanta, GA "Is nothing sacred?" by Chuck Marohn Podcast: The Big Short (featuring Joe Minicozzi) ASCE Infrastructure Report Card Portland housing series, October 2016 Support the Strong Towns Podcast by becoming a member today. 

This week we’re joined by Kristen Jeffers, the Communcations and Membership Manager for Bike Walk KC and the Author of The Black Urbanist. Join us for a fun conversation about regional department stores, hair salons, and more!

Using the tools of online textual annotation -- the platform Rap Genius, its spinoff site Poetry Genius, or MIT's own Annotation Studio -- readers can collaborate on annotating or interpreting a work, make their annotations public, and respond to interpretations by others. We will be joined by creators, facilitators, and users of these sites to discuss how online annotation is changing practices of reading, enriching practices of teaching and learning, and making newly public a previously private encounter with the written word. Speakers: Wyn Kelley is a senior lecturer in Literature. She has worked for many years with the MIT's digital humanities lab, HyperStudio, and is the author of Melville's City: Literary and Urban Form in Nineteenth-Century New York (1996) among other works. Kurt Fendt is Director of HyperStudio, MIT's Center for Digital Humanities. HyperStudio explores the potential of new media technologies for the enhancement of research and education. Jeremy Dean, AKA Lucky_Desperado, is the "Education Czar" at Rap Genius, an online database of song lyrics (and poetry on the spinoff site Poetry Genius) that users can annotate freely. Moderator: Noel Jackson is a Professor of Literature at MIT and author of Science and Sensation in Romantic Poetry (2008).

Jini Kim Watson‘s book links literature, architecture, urban studies, film, and economic history into a wonderfully rich account of the fictions of urban transformation in Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. Ranging from the colonial period to the late 1980s, The New Asian City: Three-Dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jini Kim Watson‘s book links literature, architecture, urban studies, film, and economic history into a wonderfully rich account of the fictions of urban transformation in Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. Ranging from the colonial period to the late 1980s, The New Asian City: Three-Dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) introduces fictional, poetic, and cinematic texts that reflect the different but concordant ways that writers in these newly industrializing cityscapes of the Pacific Rim negotiated new built environments and experiences of modern space. Watson expertly guides us through a historical and theoretical account of colonial urban development and the literature that emerged from it, before moving to the postwar and postcolonial context of the mid-late twentieth century. Individual subjectivities, as we encounter them in a series of fascinating literary texts, are reimagined in cities full of high-rise apartments, construction sites, and spatial forms that grow in tandem with forms of urban labor. Watson’s book considers the refiguring of interiors and exteriors, collectivities and persons, men and women, points and routes. Several chapters offer a comparative analysis of nationalist discourses and fictional forms in light of a new urban space pulsing with flows of commodities and laboring bodies. By the end of the book, the reader leaves this wonderful collection of stories and analyses inspired to think about and experience built space anew. (This reader certainly did!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jini Kim Watson‘s book links literature, architecture, urban studies, film, and economic history into a wonderfully rich account of the fictions of urban transformation in Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. Ranging from the colonial period to the late 1980s, The New Asian City: Three-Dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) introduces fictional, poetic, and cinematic texts that reflect the different but concordant ways that writers in these newly industrializing cityscapes of the Pacific Rim negotiated new built environments and experiences of modern space. Watson expertly guides us through a historical and theoretical account of colonial urban development and the literature that emerged from it, before moving to the postwar and postcolonial context of the mid-late twentieth century. Individual subjectivities, as we encounter them in a series of fascinating literary texts, are reimagined in cities full of high-rise apartments, construction sites, and spatial forms that grow in tandem with forms of urban labor. Watson’s book considers the refiguring of interiors and exteriors, collectivities and persons, men and women, points and routes. Several chapters offer a comparative analysis of nationalist discourses and fictional forms in light of a new urban space pulsing with flows of commodities and laboring bodies. By the end of the book, the reader leaves this wonderful collection of stories and analyses inspired to think about and experience built space anew. (This reader certainly did!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jini Kim Watson‘s book links literature, architecture, urban studies, film, and economic history into a wonderfully rich account of the fictions of urban transformation in Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. Ranging from the colonial period to the late 1980s, The New Asian City: Three-Dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jini Kim Watson‘s book links literature, architecture, urban studies, film, and economic history into a wonderfully rich account of the fictions of urban transformation in Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. Ranging from the colonial period to the late 1980s, The New Asian City: Three-Dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) introduces fictional, poetic, and cinematic texts that reflect the different but concordant ways that writers in these newly industrializing cityscapes of the Pacific Rim negotiated new built environments and experiences of modern space. Watson expertly guides us through a historical and theoretical account of colonial urban development and the literature that emerged from it, before moving to the postwar and postcolonial context of the mid-late twentieth century. Individual subjectivities, as we encounter them in a series of fascinating literary texts, are reimagined in cities full of high-rise apartments, construction sites, and spatial forms that grow in tandem with forms of urban labor. Watson’s book considers the refiguring of interiors and exteriors, collectivities and persons, men and women, points and routes. Several chapters offer a comparative analysis of nationalist discourses and fictional forms in light of a new urban space pulsing with flows of commodities and laboring bodies. By the end of the book, the reader leaves this wonderful collection of stories and analyses inspired to think about and experience built space anew. (This reader certainly did!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Urban Morphology August 24, 2010 Urban morphology seeks to understand the spatial structure and character of an urban area by examining its patterns and the process of its development. While urban morphology has been a disciplinary specialization amongst American geographers for years, only in southern Europe, where there was no historical separation of planning and architecture, has the work of urban morphologists been brought to bear in the training of architects. In the ongoing work of the International Seminar on Urban Form, Christopher Miller, from Judson University, is exploring with his students a more research-oriented approach to the American architectural value in contextual design. Miller shared recent student work that examines questions like: Can typology be used to solve the problem of the big box in a 19th-century fabric? How is morphology a condition for pedestrian connectivity? Can the connectivity inherent in a historic fabric be the prescriptive standard for infill.