Planning and Public Health has also been an area where the Federal government seems to be taking substantive leadership, urged on by Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign and the HUD-DOT-EPA led Partnership for Sustainable Communities. Jackson, now chair of environmental health sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles's School of Public Health has been leading the charge to investigate and raise awareness on the topic.
On the medical side, for the past decade Dr. A growing number of studies are showing the causal relationship between urban design and a number of public health crises affecting Americans, including "asthma caused by particulates from cars and trucks, water contamination from excessive runoff, lead poisoning from contaminated houses and soil, and obesity, heart conditions, and depression exacerbated by stressful living conditions, long commutes, lack of access to fresh food, and isolating, car-oriented communities."
Planners are beginning to talk about an issue that has been of increasing interest to the medical profession, the connection between our built environment and public health. Whether driven from the bottom-up or the top-down, amateurs or professionals, legal means or questionable means, tactical urbanist projects are aimed at improving urban environments one intervention at a time.ġ2/22/11: The Growing Popularity of Temporary Architectureġ/1/12: Touring San Francisco's Parklets: A New Urban TrendĢ/9/12: Tactical Urbanism Lands in Raleigh Land Use & Public Health pavilion being organized by the Institute for Urban Design.Īrising out of funding challenges brought on by the recession, frustrations with the drawn-out approvals process, the organizational opportunities provided by the internet and social media, emerging technologies, and courageous designers, tactical urbanist projects are often defined by their low-cost temporary nature and require little or no approvals or environmental studies (or go without them anyway). The topic will be explored in depth later this year at the Venice Biennale as the focus of the U.S. Known by many names, this emerging field of urban intervention, whether deemed tactical, temporary, guerrilla, pop-up, ad-hoc, DIY, or open-source, covers a range of projects from the officially sanctioned parklets of San Francisco and the pedestrianization of Times Square, to bottom-up projects such as street libraries in New York and guerrilla wayfinding in Raleigh.
With a presidential election looming this year, we're sure to see more reflection on the urban policies of the Obama Administration, and the politicization of urban issues continue to intensify. Not only have the repercussions given planners and designers an occasion to reconsider fundamental questions regarding suburban development patterns and the "American Dream" of homeownership, they also provide an opportunity for local governments to rethink how they provide services in a new economic era. Here are our picks for the most notable planning trends of the past year, and the topics that we’ll be paying special attention to in 2012.Ī survey of the last year's planning and development landscape reveals that the fallout from the economic downturn and housing crisis are still being felt. Over the course of the year, the editors of Planetizen review and post summaries of hundreds of articles, reports, books, studies, and editorials related to planning and urban development.
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