The Forgotten Struggle of the Negev Bedouin

By Salena Tramel Down south in Israel’s Negev Desert, the sounds of jets fill wide-open spaces. At least 80 percent of the land is used for military training purposes, including developing and testing weapons. The Negev also contains the largest…

Categories: Fall 2010

Mexico City Creates Charter for the Right to the City

By Jill Wigle and Lorena Zárate A new collective tool for social mobilization and democratic planning has been established in Mexico City. On July 13, 2010 Mayor Marcelo Ebrard of the Federal District of Mexico signed the Mexico City Charter for…

Categories: Summer 2010

The Invisible Cyclists of Los Angeles

By Omari Fuller and Edgar Beltran Night has fallen and you’re driving through a gritty urban center when you approach an intersection. Just as you turn right through the crosswalk a dark figure materializes before you. You slam on the…

Categories: Summer 2010

Beyond Networking, Left Alternatives

By Tom Angotti Shortly after the Towards a Just Metropolis conference in the Bay Area, the U.S. Social Forum convened in Detroit. Between June 22 and 26 some 20,000 people got together there, nearly doubling the attendance at the first forum in…

Categories: Summer 2010

Los Angeles Throws its General Plan Overboard as the Ship Goes Down

By Richard Platkin The Los Angeles Times (March 1 and March 14, 2010), Southern California’s rapidly shrinking, former newspaper of record, repeatedly complains that Los Angeles’s elected officials, primarily Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the fifteen members of the Los Angeles City Council, do not…

Categories: Spring 2010

Smart Decline and Planning Ideology

By Aaron McKeon Last September, Time began a year of coverage of Detroit. Judging by the coverage in the September issue and subsequent installations online, the magazine’s angle is to present the nation’s eleventh largest city as all but a lost cause. Naturally, there is a lot of heart and…

Categories: Spring 2010

Two World Urban Forums, Two Worlds Apart

By Peter Marcuse Two major world forums focused on urban issues—the U.N.-sponsored World Urban Forum (WUF) and a social-movement-sponsored Social Urban Forum (SUF)—took place in Rio de Janiero in the last week of March, 2010. The forums were extremely different, almost existing in two different worlds, but they tolerated each other; the contrasts and similarities…

Categories: Spring 2010

Arizona Immigration Law

Date Published: 5/22/2010 Planners Network calls on planners to resist the odious Arizona Immigration Law As progressive planners who are committed to opposing social injustice and discrimination, we strongly condemn the Arizona immigration law (SB 1070). The law, which requires…

Categories: Spring 2010, Statements

Feeding Dependency, Starving Democracy…Still

By Nikhil Aziz (A shorter version of this article was published by CommonDreams.org on March 16, 2010.) Some of the advice for how Haiti ought to rebuild after the earthquake sounds hauntingly familiar, echoing the same bad development advice that Haiti has received…

Categories: Spring 2010

Picture the Homeless Chases Chase

By Lynn Lewis  Picture the Homeless is a decade-old grass roots membership organization of homeless New Yorkers,  and a member of the coordinating committee of the New York City Right to the City Alliance.  We have targeted the powerful Chase…

Categories: Winter 2010