The Urban Portal

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Can public art reverse urban decay?

American cities as diverse as Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Cleveland, have made significant investments over the past few decades in community-based art projects. One example is Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Project. Since 1984, the project has created over 3,000 murals, generating a slew of tourist attractions. Such considerable investments by Philadelphia and other cities beg the question of whether arts projects, aside from their aesthetic value, will have lasting effects on the community.

December 01, 2011

Filed under: Issues

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Center for Urban and Regional Studies

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Created in 1957, the Center for Urban and Regional Studies is one of the oldest university-based research centers of its kind. The Center's mission is to promote and support within UNC-Chapel Hill, high-quality basic and applied research on urban, regional and rural planning and policy issues. The Center seeks to generate new knowledge of urban and regional processes and problems and ultimately to improve living conditions in our communities. This is done by involving the University's faculty and graduate students in large, multidisciplinary research projects and smaller, more narrowly focused projects. The Center's mission also includes promoting the use of the research it facilitates.

Filed under: Organizations

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Center for Urban History of East Central Europe (Ukraine)

As an institute of historical scholarship, we seek to offer fresh intellectual impulses and help abandon dated questions and preconceived answers. By information and open discussion, we try to help prevent history from being abused for political ends. Through conferences, seminars and exhibitions we hope to promote scholarly and cultural exchange.

Filed under: Organizations

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Center for Urban Policy Research

Rutgers University
The Center for Urban Policy Research conducts basic and applied research on a broad spectrum of public policy issues, including affordable housing, land use policy, environmental impact analysis, state planning, public finance, land development practice, historic preservation, infrastructure assessment, development impact analysis, the costs of sprawl, transportation information systems, environmental impacts, and community economic development. 

Filed under: Organizations

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Chicago Policy Review

University of Chicago
Since 1996 the Chicago Policy Review (CPR) has published top scholarship in the field of public policy analysis. Initially a forum for renowned scholars and policy experts such as Nobel Laureate James Heckman, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator John McCain, the journal has primarily published the work of students and alumni of the Harris School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago since 2006.

The Chicago Policy Review (ISSN: 1093-8990) is edited and published annually by the students of the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies. By establishing linkages between theory and practice, the Review aims to promote thought provoking, insightful, and relevant public policy decision-making.

Filed under: Journals

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City, Culture, and Society

The 21st century has been dubbed the century of cities - sustainable cities, compact cities, post-modern cities, mega-cities, and more. CCS focuses on urban governance in the 21st century, under the banner of cultural creativity and social inclusion. Its primary goal is to promote pioneering research on cities and to foster the sort of urban administration that has the vision and authority to reinvent cities adapted to the challenges of the 21st century. The journal aims to stimulate a new interdisciplinary paradigm that embraces multiple perspectives and applies this paradigm to the urban imperative that defines the 21st century.

Topics of special interest to CCS include urban economics, cultural creation, social inclusion, social sustainability, cultural technology, urban governance, sustainable cities, creative cities. As a peer-reviewed international journal, CCS welcomes contributions from disciplines including but not limited to economics, business, accounting, planning, political science, architecture, geography, sociology, historiography, cultural studies, population studies and public administration.

Filed under: Journals

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Creative City Network of Canada

Municipalities are playing a growing role in the development of arts, culture and heritage in Canada. The Creative City Network of Canada (CCNC) is an organization of municipal staff working in communities across Canada on arts, cultural and heritage policy, planning, development and support.

The CCNC exists to connect and educate the people who do this work and share this working environment so we can be more effective in cultural development in our communities. By sharing experience, expertise, information and best practices, members support each other through dialogue, both in person and online.

Filed under: Organizations

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Environmental Design Library

University of California, Berkeley
One of the premier architecture, landscape architecture, and city and regional planning libraries in North America, the Environmental Design Library is a subject specialty library of the UC Berkeley Library system.

Filed under: Links

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Forgotten Chicago

The main goal of Forgotten Chicago is to discover and document little known elements of Chicago’s infrastructure, architecture, neighborhoods and general cityscape, whether existing or historical.

Secondarily, the hope is that exposing many of the often overlooked elements of Chicago’s built environment to a wider audience will result in more interest in their preservation. Certainly, much of the content on the site is included mainly for documentation and historical reasons, and of course not every old structure in the city is worthy of being preserved. However, some of the structures included on the site are little known but of important architectural and historical interest. The hope is that their inclusion will raise public awareness and result in their preservation rather than demolition in the future.

Filed under: Links

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Fourth International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Emotional Geographies

July 1–July 3, 2013
University of Groningen
Groningen, The Netherlands

Filed under: Events

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Global City Indicators

The Global City Indicators Program provides an established set of city indicators with a globally standardized methodology that allows for global comparability of city performance and knowledge sharing. This website serves all cities that become members to measure and report on a core set of indicators through this web-based relational database.

Filed under: Links

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Goethe-Institute

A German Institute devoted to architecture, urban space, city research, town planning, and urban development.

Filed under: Organizations

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Initiative for Regional and Community Transformation

Rutgers University
The Initiative for Regional and Community Transformation (IRCT) is a university-based effort that helps community residents and leaders in the public and private sectors frame workable policies that will bolster the political, economic, and social participation of marginalized communities within the larger metropolitan community. The IRCT's vision is inclusive. Not only does it encompass concerns for the poor, but leaders of the Initiative also believe that in order for metropolitan regions to support sustainable and livable communities, all sectors of civil society must be involved and see a shared interest.

Filed under: Organizations

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Institute of Urban and Regional Development

University of California-Berkeley
IURD conducts collaborative, interdisciplinary research and practical work that reveals the dynamics of communities, cities, and regions and informs public policy.
Rooted in the social sciences, IURD's work has steadily gained recognition since its inception over 40 years ago. IURD has become the gateway to the university for those concerned with urban and regional issues—infrastructure, housing, sprawl, transportation, environmental quality, disaster recovery, and poverty and physical decline in inner cities—as well as a home for scholars who integrate real-world metropolitan problem-solving in their teaching and research.

Filed under: Organizations

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Journal of the American Planning Association

American Planning Association
Since 1935, the quarterly Journal of the American Planning Association has published research, commentaries, and book reviews useful to practicing planners, policy makers, scholars, students, and citizens of urban, suburban, and rural areas. JAPA publishes only peer-reviewed, original research and analysis. It aspires to bring insight to planning the future, to air a variety of perspectives, to publish the highest quality work, and to engage readers.

Filed under: Journals

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Mural Locator

Mural Locator is a simple to use web tool for helping people locate murals around the world to discover the art around us. Our goal is to find locations of amazing public art wall murals to share them with you and to help archive the history and importance of murals. We connect with artists, muralists, and art foundations to expand the knowledge of art. 

Filed under: Links

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Project for Public Spaces

Project for Public Spaces (PPS) is a nonprofit planning, design, and educational organization dedicated to helping people create and sustain public spaces that build stronger communities. Our pioneering Placemaking approach helps citizens transform their public spaces into vital places that highlight local assets, spur rejuvenation, and serve common needs.

Filed under: Organizations

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Public Art Online

A unique public art information site which provides guidance and examples of public art practice from around the UK and internationally.  

Filed under: Links

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Seattle Municipal Archives

City of Seattle
The Seattle Municipal Archives (SMA) holds over 10,000 cubic feet of records documenting the history, development, and activities of the agencies and elected officials of Seattle. Some of the research strengths of the holdings include parks, engineering, legislative activities, and urban planning. 

Filed under: Links

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The 7th World Congress of Environmental Education: The Rural-Urban Relationship

June 9–June 14, 2013
World Congress of Environmental Education
Marrakech, Morocco

Filed under: Events

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Travel, Tourism, and Urban Growth in Greater Miami

The growth of cities stems in large part from efforts by local boosters to promote them as ideal locations for work, leisure, and residence. Nowhere is this more essential than in locations whose development depends on tourism. Developers and tourism promoters are key "sellers" of the urban fantasy, and their ideas both animate the public's desires, and express general beliefs, trends, and tendencies in how the city is viewed.

These expressions can be found in promotional material, but also in design and architecture, the planning of new communities, the formation of historic and tourist districts, the use of natural landscapes, the artistic markers of diverse ethnic districts; in short, the visible symbols with which a place presents itself.

Miami embodies many of these trends that have shaped travel, tourism, and urban growth in the last century. Miami was built on promotionalism, on selling the image of paradise through new forms of advertising and media emerging at the turn of the century. Promoters developed fantastic sketches and drawings of tropical fantasylands, places with alluring names like Opa Locka and Coral Gables, whose themed designs represented early models for idealized cities that would be epitomized with the advent of Disney World and, recently, Celebration, Florida.

Filed under: Links

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UrbanOmnibus

Urban Omnibus is an online project of the Architectural League to create a new kind of conversation about design and New York City. Urban Omnibus gathers and delivers the insights of journalists, architects, planners, designers, artists, activists, scholars and citizens. The Omnibus features multi-media content to showcase design innovation, critical analysis and local expertise across a broad range of topics and locales, creating bridges between various communities of interest. Urban Omnibus makes vivid the processes and possibilities shaping New York. Our goal is to increase understanding of the city we have and encourage ideas that can lead to a more inclusive, more sustainable, more beautiful city that could be. 

Filed under: Links

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