• Living ‘car-free’ in the Arizona desert

    A YouTube influencer takes for a tour of Culdesac Tempe, one of the more interesting new developments today.
    A Harvard researcher with a heat gun last summer measured the temperatures on the Tempe, Arizona, sidewalk at 137°F—but inside a new car-free development the plaza surface was 90°F. That’s one eye-opening data point offered in a new video of Culdesac Tempe, one of the most-closely watched US...Read more

  • How placemaking can save the planet

    A brief film biography of Fred Kent offers insight into placemaking, and why it is essential.
    The Place Man is an excellent and easily digestible documentary history of the Project for Public Spaces (PPS). At only 19 minutes, The Place Man focuses on the career of founder Fred Kent, who William H. Whyte hired to work on the seminal “Street Life Project” that studied and documented how...Read more

  • A street ballet to aspire to, from the Dutch

    The Netherlands is one of the happiest places on Earth . This video by Active Towns founder John Simmerman gives a reason why. On the last day of a visit, Simmerman recorded a typical morning commute in Delft, a historic city of just over 100,000 people. For US residents, imagining going to work in...Read more

  • Planning for climate change and aging

    Older Americans are the most vulnerable population in a natural disaster and provide the key to making communities more resilient for everyone, argues Danielle Arigoni, author of Climate Resilience for an Aging Nation.
    Danielle Arigoni discusses her new book on how communities with aging populations can prepare for climate change on On the Park Bench . Climate Resilience for an Aging Nation argues that older adults should be the lens through which we view resilient communities. When we plan for those most...Read more