The siting of Ford’s Highland Park plant in the 1910s literally transformed the geography of work in Detroit's greater urban region, with workers forming ethnic enclaves and in the process expanding the geography of the city. Ford itself played a guiding role in this expansion through the provision of housing for its workers, and its two visions of worker housing represent what the city became and what it could have been.
During the summer, along with three other students from the School of Information, I worked at the head office of the Haven Night Shelter Welfare Organization, the largest network of centers for homeless people in Cape Town, South Africa. From this experience, I learned that housing homeless people at shelters is by itself not enough to solve homelessness — it is just a solution for houselessness.
On Tuesday, residents of Southeast Michigan have the opportunity to vote on a tax associated with the implementation of a regional transit plan. When does transit work? Where does transit work? And how does transit work? We challenge you to ask yourself the same questions, to read about the regional transit plan on the November ballot, and to vote responsibly.
NBC's Parks and Recreation came into its own when Amy Poehler's Leslie Knope evolved from a hapless dope into a champion advocate — and in a strange but telling way, the show's evolution reflects the actual evolution of U.S. planning as a profession over the 20th century.
Master’s students at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Urban and Regional Planning (colloquially referred to as MUPs) tend to spend their summers applying their knowledge in locations throughout the globe. A few MUPs shared their experiences with Agora over the summer.
Autonomous vehicle technology is exciting, cutting edge, potentially life-altering, and ultimately terrifying. My fear doesn’t come from the typical “oh no, robots are taking over” attitude, though. Instead, I see a lot of parallels between our current excitement about autonomous vehicles and past urban planning decisions fueled by progress for the sake of progress that had staggering and unforeseen implications.
The name "Los Angeles" is synonymous with urban sprawl, yet in spite of that, it is the most dense urbanized area in the United States. This apparent contradiction sheds light on what an ill-defined, psychological concept "sprawl" is, with the phenomenon coming in several distinct and widely varying forms.
Davor was the first one who kissed me. Let me explain. I recently spent the first month of my summer in Santiago, Chile, where I worked for an NGO called Ciudad Emergente. The organization does interventions and research surrounding public spaces in Latin America, promoting the notion that short-term action can lead to long-term change. Some examples of their work are experimental bike paths demarcated with cones and a pop-up concert/artisan market hybrid in derelict space — both of which are examples of an approach known as tactical urbanism. Implementation and evaluation of tactical urbanism interventions are growing in popularity as effective means of testing scenarios to ultimately influence policy.
We are proud to announce that articles published in the Agora Journal of Urban Planning and Design have now been re-published individually online, and are available in the Journal Article Archives section of our website.
With A10 recently printed and the celebration over, the Agora staff reached out to James McMurray and Deirdra Stockman, two of the founders of Agora, as well as Jonathan Levine, who was Chair of URP program when Agora started. Take a look at their responses as they reflect on being apart of Agora's start and what it has meant to them in their careers.
To commemorate Agora 10, Mike Lydon, an Agora founder and now an internationally recognized planner and writer for his contributions towards rethinking how to make cities more livable, reflected on the past ten years in an introduction to this year's edition. His "State of the Journal" is published here in full. Enjoy!
This isn't the first that Ann Arbor has brought up ADUs. Take a look at how the Michigan chapter of Planners Network has been involved over the last year.
This blog features two second-year MUP student's design project that discusses the importance of social media in Brazilian favelas, in particular the role Instagram and Twitter in giving these impoverished communities a voice that challenges the mainstream media.
Check out architect student Ryan Goold's piece on how two neighboring and physically connected places can look and feel so different!
Check out professor Jonathan Levine's opinion piece on one of Ann Arbor's more controversial issues. As he points out, the question of a deer cull is just as much a planning question as it is an ecological one.
Check out first-year SNRE student Reema Abi-Akar's fascinating blog about planning for the dead. She explores questions many of us may have not considered, such as, can cemeteries become an integral part of a city's revitalization plan?
The piece looks at the importance of monuments in place-making from an architects perspective. How do you balance form and experience so that monuments are timeless and legible to its interpreters?
Peter Knoop manages LSAs GIS IT team and has a background in geology, oceanography and information sciences. Peter shows us how to tailor ESRIs interactive story maps to the stories you want to tell! Be sure to check out all the links!
Scott Campbell, a planning professor here at Taubman College, advises on how to balance data and narration to tell a compelling story.
The second blog for the Agora Salon series describes professor Lesli Hoey's presentation on a variety of different qualitative data methods she uses and why they are beneficial for enriching your research!
