Cities & Planning

How a subversive form of mapmaking charts the stories and customs of those who would traditionally be ignored

We are a loose band of mapmakers, researchers, and designers intent on widely promoting the cartographic arts and facilitating an expansion of the art, methods, and thematic scope of cartography, through collaborative projects and disruptive publishing.

We picked up on Adam Greenfield’s Lifehouse book a few months ago. We were exulting at the hints Adam was dropping, about his visions for a Lifehouse - very similar to what we have been calling cosmolocal CANs. These are full-spectrum community centres—both a source of resilience and provision

A perfect storm of factors is creating a drag on walk-on ridership on Washington State Ferries. Reasons include service reductions, fast ferries poaching riders, and the trend toward working from home.

The Express Co-Evolution of Books and Trains // As a child, I dreaded long drives in the family car. I was a bookish kid, but when I tried to read in the backseat of one of a long line of Volkswagens, I was gradually overtaken by a mounting nausea that would

During the summer of 2016, architectural historians Anne E. Bruder, Susan Hellman, and Catherine W. Zipf came together over their shared interest in documenting the history of The Negro Travelers’ …

Donors are increasingly asking conservation groups to produce data on the value of their environmental work. A group’s new method helps them show their impact.

The Cablebús Has Has Been a Game-Changer for Marginalized Neighborhoods in Mexico City. Will Tourism Ruin It?

Policy ideas that can turn a pipe dream into a reality.

Extreme temperatures across the United States are grounding emergency helicopters.

Quinault has made flooding-related disaster declarations 26 times from 1957 to 2022, and they have become more frequent.

Most advanced nations mandate at least 20 working days of paid vacation per year, but not the United States. Here's why we should change that.

In this episode of the Women Offshore Podcast, Christine sits down with Beth Stowell, the Director of Marine Operations at Washington State Ferry System (WSF) – the largest ferry system in the US. Under Beth’s visionary leadership, WSF is undergoing a transformational culture change that is setting a new standard in the maritime industry. Starting […]

Profitability is highly dependent upon the price paid, the efficiency of management, and the characteristics of the shopping center itself.

Nearly 75 percent of shops operated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority are vacant.

Introducing “Changing With Our Climate,” a new Vox series explaining Indigenous solutions to extreme weather.

On most bus systems I’ve seen, information about the route is on a changeable sign, not painted or printed on the bus itself.  Many bus operations have constrained facilities and need to be able to quickly deploy whatever bus is handy to meet a need, so bus operations folks resist marketing ideas that involve making […]

A Summer-Holiday Listicle, Straphanger-Style // People often ask me: Grescoe, what do you have against automobiles, anyway? I sometimes tell them it all goes back to when, downwardly mobile after university, I worked as a delivery driver. Forty hours a week, I watched the world from behind glass, getting angry at

The Washington State Legislature should exempt Sound Transit from local permitting processes to avoid snags and make it easier to build light rail in public streets. This would expedite transit projects that voters have approved.

WSDOT is scrapping the planned SR 520 bike and pedestrian tunnel, forcing people who travel outside cars into dangerous territory. It's not too late to push back and contact policymakers.

New material promises to help decarbonize manufacturing

A new book, Kiosk: The Last Modernist Booths Across Central and Eastern Europe, celebrates a 20th-century era of tiny urban icons.

Or, how I learned to stop worrying and build a gaff.

Seattle's single family areas have seen their Black population plummet by 9,126 since 1990. Meanwhile, "urban village" neighborhood have added more than 8,000 Black residents in that span. Why then is low-density zoning expected to blunt displacement?

The word "scientist" often conjures images of people wearing long white coats working in labs, but ecologists like Jen Vanderhoof often find themselves

Ludwig Karl Hilberseimer (September 14, 1885 – May 6, 1967) was a German architect and urban planner best known for his ties to the Bauhaus and to Mies van der Rohe, as well as for his work in urban planning at Armour Institute of Technology (now Illinois Institute of Technology), in Chicago, Illinois.[1][2]

I ran across these distinctions between economies in a talk I went to awhile back. An extractive economy takes away from ecology. A sustainable economy lessens the damage to ecology. It focuses on things like reducing and recycling. A regenerative economy helps build back ecology.