Blogabout!

Wait a minute... "Blogabout"? What is Steve talking about?

A blogabout is just like a walkabout, only instead of wandering around Australia in search of unique flora and fauna, we'll wander around the Internet in search of cool urban planning blogs. I thought it might be interesting for my readers to see which sites I visit regularly to keep up on urban planning. So here goes:

• Planetizen is an excellent blog covering all things urban. It works primarily as a link site, providing a few new links every day to urban planning articles in the mainstream press. It reliably delivers fascinating articles every day. Particularly cool is the fact that Planetizen covers urban planning news from around the world, so you get a great international perspective on the field. For instance, today's article list includes stories on Perth's water shortage, the US Congress' efforts to address parking problems, and how European cities are encouraging people to drive less.



• The Project for Public Spaces is an excellent organization devoted to promoting public spaces. They have tons and tons of case studies, and their recent issue on urban waterfronts is particularly insightful.



• St Paul Real Estate and Real Estate Snippets, both of which are blogs about Twin Cities real estate (and the real estate world in general). In the academic world of urban studies and urban planning, it's easy to ignore the market forces that fundamentally drive the construction (and destruction) of buildings, and instead ponder the abstract philosophy of the field. I find it useful to keep myself grounded by keeping up on actual, quotidian, residential real estate.



• The Next American City, to be fair, is not a blog (though it does have a web presence!). It's an excellent quarterly academic journal that regularly looks at the development of American cities. Dare I say it "challenges dominant paradigms"? Well, buzzwords aside it does an excellent job of fully investigating the dynamic life of cities. The most recent issue was all about historic preservation. Quite awesome.



• An affair with urban policy takes a practical look at urban policy at the ground level. The author recently relocated from Minneapolis to New York, and I'm eager to hear his perspective on the Big Apple.



• Urban Places Urban Spaces looks at a wide variety of urban planning issues. Featured on the blog today is an article on flea markets (and public markets).

Coming this week:

Monday: Blogabout!
Tuesday: Blue Sky Guide
Wednesday: Getting Around: Highway Access
Thursday: Downtown Living
Friday: Reader Responses