From Cyburbian MacheteJames:
This Monday, I'm going to be doing a 5 minute talk on planning to a group of 4th graders. I've never done anything like this, and I know that 9 year olds aren't going to care about rezonings, facade easements, or stormwater retention policies. How can I make planning sound cool to a group of kids this age? I know it won't be as simple as saying "we decide where sidewalks go and where buildings are built" because the Mayor, DPW chief, and Park & Rec director will be there and I've gotta take them into consideration. I'm pretty sure most 9 year olds wouldn't have played SimCity (although I was a dork and did play it when I was a little older than these kids). Thanks.

From Cyburbian fourthconchord: A small bedroom community of 10,000 population does not currently have a true downtown. There is no street level retail, though the town is not completely sprawled out. There is some light density as retail is about 30' off the road, houses are about 20' from the street. The city is in the process of defining a formal downtown centered around public buildings and some of the most active retail. Does anyone here know of any other towns that have done something similar? Does anyone have any experience or tips for a community trying to do this?

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From Cyburbian Whose Yur Planner: Got this via Law of the Land Blog. Wonder if they will include any planners?

Under the leadership of Edward J. Sullivan, immediate past chair of the ABA State and Local Government Law Section, and a member of the Portland, Oregon, firm of Garvey Schubert Barer, the State and Local Government Law Section and the Administrative Law Section created a joint task force to focus on developing fair procedures for the enactment and administration of land use regulations. This multi-year effort, with input from Association members and others in the field, has resulted in a proposed model act that will be the subject of discussion in August 2008 as the matter is reviewed by the ABA House of Delegates.

From Cyburbian Maister: I watched a popular western called “3:10 at Yuma" last night. One of the special features included on the disc was a segment about some of the movie production concerns. An important element of just about any film is set design, and during an interview one of the set designers spoke about how the ‘town’ set was designed. As most of us are aware, “the West” is a body of myths and legends that have been perpetuated and built upon throughout the years via popular literature and films. It occurred to me while watching this segment that many of my (and probably many others’) conceptions about the stereotypical historic western town layout are based upon movie sets. Movie sets, however, are designed around considerations such as providing adequate camera and crew accessibility to areas or visual lanes for shot setups, which may have little bearing on the realities of how 19th century western towns were actually built.

The Planning in Australia subforum is the newest addition to the Cyburbia Forums. Discuss planning issues unique to Australia, planning systems used in Australian states, Australian planning organizations and professional planner certification, and other topics related to planning in the Land Down Under.

Foreclosure Crisis (http://www.cleveland.com/foreclosure/) is a series of articles from the Cleveland Plain Dealer that documents how the recent credit crisis has affected Northeast Ohio; a region among the hardest hit in the country by foreclosures. The site also includes an index of other foreclosure-related stories from the Plain Dealer.

From Cyburbian Plan-it: I have been doing research on policies and regulations to protect areas that are designated as Industrial on our Future Development Map from non-industrial (residential) incursion. This has the impact of inceasing land values due to speculation and placing future residents and future/existing businesses in a potentially adversarial relationship.

I have noticed San Francisco, Seattle, and Chicago have looked at this issue and have developed policies and programs to remediate the situation. Does anyone else done any research, policies, or programs that address this problem who would not mind sharing? Thanks!

When paired with vintage images of the 19th and 20th centuries, Arizona photographers Allen Dutton and Paul Scharbach's modern-day images reveal the changes that have shaped the state's landscape during the past 100-plus years. They searched the state to locate the precise spots from which to rephotograph the scenes captured by their predecessors, endeavoring to achieve the same angles, perspectives, and lighting as in the early photographs.

From Cyburbian graciela: This is a bit trivial but have any of you ever reflected on the the effect that the style of on-street parking can have on the percieved quality of an urban sidewalk/streetscape? In an urban setting, my opinion has always been on-street parking=good. I never really cared if it was parallel or angled. I always let the site/context/traffic patterns, etc. dictate the form of the onstreet parking.

Is one more institutional than the other? Maybe angled is more informal? What are your thoughts?

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From Cyburbian TexanOkie: Texas state statute mandates that all subdivisions, regardless of plat stage, be before the planning/platting commission within 30 days of it's submittal, and, if according to each city's charter the plat also needs to go before the governing body, 30 days after the planning commission decision to the City Council. This is rather fast, in my opinion, and is generally business-friendly and works with most developers and their teams on addressing issues with their plans.

However, we are looking into possibly creating an official "Expedited Review" process that would cut that time practically in half (barring any idiot proposals or lack of progress as far as addressing issues). The expedited review would be an option on each subdivision application (i.e. check boxes for either expedited or standard reviews) and would have a higher application fee due to the added stresses it places on our staff.

From Cyburbian Tom R: Did you know that a group of frogs is called an army or a colony? Me neither. Here is a link that give more names for groupings of critters than should be allowed. Anyway, what is a group of planners? An obfuscation? A stonewall? Others?

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From Cyburbian centralpark: We are tasked with working in a rural community that has few assets, not even enough to put together an agritourism map with the area cooperative extension folk.

I need some ideas of things that people have seen elsewhere that I might suggest to citizen groups in this community as projects they would support. I'm trolling through 'best practice' sorts of websites to try and find something, anything that is a project that was successful elsewhere and might transfer here.

BTW - there is interest in hunting by the people who live there and those outside the area. I was thinking of maybe putting together an initiative to build a community-owned and operated hunting lodge. That would be seasonal, though, and it would be great to have something that is year round.

Driving Detroit (http://media.freep.com/drivingdetroit/stories.html) is a series of articles from the Detroit Free Press that documents a four-month odyssey through all 2,700 miles (4,350 kilometers) of Detroit's over 2,100 streets. The idea of this unusual roadtrip was to get a unique view of Detroit; a short-term, street-level survey of the city's 138 square miles (357 square kilometers), and a snapshot of the city many insist is coming back.

From Cyburbian jread: I'm just curious as to whether or not anyone on here is going to an Ivy League school for their planning degree. What will you do with it when you get out? I know that local government employs most planners, so I can't imagine a Harvard graduate wanting to work for the City of Bugtussle for $40k per year. It doesn't seem cost-effective.

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