The "walk score" uses the proximity of various businesses - grocery stores, drug stores, movie theaters - to calculate the walkability of neighborhoods. Allows visualization of this aspect of accessibility and may help diagnose what works to promote this kind of development.

In many ways, Amsterdam and other Dutch cities have fostered urban environments that provide a wide range of transportation choices for residents and visitors. The result is vibrant cities and greatly reduced automotive use - not a cure-all for carbon woes, but a great step forward for climate viability and urban livability.

The North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority held a symposium to identify issues as it prepares to write its Regional Transportation Plan for the next 25 years. Post Carbon's Daniel Lerch spoke at this even about how peak oil is forcing planners and policymakers to change their assumptions about future transportation and land use patterns.

This week, Architecture 2030 released an unprecedented guide for every city, county and state in the nation to swiftly meet their greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets through existing building codes, asserting that meeting reduction targets through existing codes is the critical ‘missing piece’ to getting major reductions underway immediately.

Vancouver, B.C.'s EcoDensity policies have been the subject of much debate, but they've become a fixture of the city's political and planning landscape, even after the term of the mayor who promoted them.

Developed as a toolkit, "Getting Density Right" was written for land use and design professionals, as well as government officials and community leaders. The book describes the successful methods used in jurisdictions across the country to enact policies, programs, and regulations that support compact development, including codes, zoning, development types, density and design strategies, financial incentives, and planning programs.

Creating what urban planners call '20-minute neighborhoods' was a recurring theme among residents and city officials during the launch of the Portland Plan. Participants focused on the idea of 20-minute neighborhoods, where residents can reach most of their day-to-day needs within a 20-minute walking distance.

This free book from the Environmental Law Institute describes and categorizes three different types of policy strategies for encouraging green building in U.S. cities and counties.

This "Vision Plan for the City of Buenaventura" analyzes probable implications of Peak Oil on the City of San Buenaventura, California, and the surrounding region, and describes a vision for post-Peak Oil planning that responds to these implications by building upon positive trends that are already taking place. This vision is supported by planning and design guidelines, as well as a phased implementation plan. The regional vision emphasizes preservation of natural resources, concentration of the developed footprint, and intra-regional collaboration.

Three reports created by the National Association of Realtors and the National Association of Home Builders seek to better explain alternative mechanisms that governments can use to finance and manage infrastructure, and offer examples of how these alternatives have been applied successfully by state and local governments.