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"Yes, for many of their inhabitants, particularly the young and the wealthy, our liberal cities are pleasant places in which to work and play. But if they are diverse in certain ways they are segregated in others, from “whiteopias” like Portland to balkanized cities like D.C. or Chicago. If they are dynamic, they are also so rich — and so rigidly zoned — that the middle class can’t afford to live there and fewer and fewer kids are born inside their gates. If they are fast-growing it’s often a growth intertwined with subsidies and “too big to fail” protection; if they are innovation capitals it’s a form of innovation that generates fewer jobs than past technological advance. If they produce some intellectual ferment they have also cloistered our liberal intelligentsia and actually weakened liberalism politically by concentrating its votes."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/25/opinion/sunday/break-up-the-liberal-city.html?mc=aud_dev&mcid=keywee&mccr=domdesk&kwp_0=373121&kwp_4=1391323&kwp_1=612961&_r=0

The Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute annual conference is the region's premier gathering of planning professionals. This year's conference explored strategies for building inclusive cities in which everyone can thrive.

https://www.planetizen.com/node/92280?utm_source=newswire&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news-04202017

Nobody knows what the future holds, but that has never stopped anyone trying to predict it. It’s a game countless US retailers are engaged in right now, while their industry shudders under the pressures of e-commerce, an overabundance of brick-and-mortar stores, and changing consumer spending habits. The ongoing “retail apocalypse” is forcing them to question the value of their physical stores.

https://qz.com/956745/retail-experiments-from-farfetch-nike-and-amazon-offer-visions-of-the-store-of-the-future/

A new data project aims to help people understand one of the country’s most complex and enduring challenges.

https://www.citylab.com/housing/2017/04/map-america-homeless-crisis/522339/?utm_source=SFTwitter

For decades, Oregon has been a trailblazer in progressive cannabis culture. In 1973 it became the first state to decriminalize possession and use. In 1998, The Oregon Medical Marijuana Act allowed cannabis to be cultivated, purchased and used by medical patients for certain ailments, including severe pain, nausea, cancer, HIV/AIDS, and epilepsy. 

http://theglobalgrid.org/legalized-cannabis-land-use-regulations-portland-oregon/

The "Q" subway extension, has been planned for 100 years, a ground breaking ceremony was held nearly 50 years ago, and excavation and construction has been going on for ten years. Now, the first phase, along Second Avenue, is open. The stations are light and airy, with generous art installations. The Station entrances are marked by glass canopies. Station levels are open and can be viewed from other levels. Author, architect, and realtor Carol Berens describes the stations in words and photos in the source article. 

http://newyorkcity.urbdezine.com/2017/04/08/take-train-q/

Walking between busy urban environments and green spaces triggers changes in levels of excitement, engagement and frustration in the brain, a study of older people has found.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170410085324.htm#.WO6iRwE-meM.linkedin

Here are 12 cities leading the car-free movement.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/02/these-major-cities-are-starting-to-go-car-free

Thanks to this free open-source mapping tool, you can digitally demolish your city’s loathed urban expressways and reveal what lies beneath.

Imagine there’s no highway, it’s easy if you try—even easier, since now there’s a map for that. With this latest cartographic venture, you can make the concrete superslabs and soul-sucking underpasses that are the scourge of urbanists everywhere disappear with a mere click.

https://www.citylab.com/design/2017/03/the-magic-of-disappearing-highways-map/520263/?utm_source=SFFB

Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London

How women writers and artists, from Virginia Woolf to Sophie Calle, found inspiration and freedom by navigating cities on foot.

From the French verb flâner, the flâneur, or ‘one who wanders aimlessly,’ was born in the first half of the nineteenth century, in the glass-and-steel covered passages of Paris. When Haussmann started slicing his bright boulevards through the dark uneven crusts of houses like knives through a city of cindered chèvre, the flâneur wandered those too, taking in the urban spectacle. A figure of masculine privilege and leisure, with time and money and no immediate responsibilities to claim his attention, the flâneur understands the city as few of its inhabitants do, for he has memorised it with his feet. Every corner, alleyway and stairway, has the ability to plunge him into rêverie. What happened here? Who passed by here? What does this place mean? The flâneur, attuned to the chords that vibrate throughout his city, knows without knowing.

https://longreads.com/2017/03/02/flaneuse-women-walk-the-city-in-paris-new-york-tokyo-venice-and-london/?utm_content=buffer7498b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer