David Holtzman
David Holtzman is a planner for Louisa County, Virginia, a freelance writer, and a former Shelterforce editor.
Big City Papers: Do We Even Need Them?
There’s been a number of news items on Rooflines in recent months about how the recession has finally led to the demise of many...
Get Your Green On
In general, most efforts to develop “green infrastructure” at the neighborhood level have been volunteer-led, grassroots efforts. City governments don’t tend to take the...
The Mystery of a Mere Idea
Compelling ideas are all you need to start a revolution. That could be one lesson to take from the experience of Van Jones, the...
Commuter Rail�s Promise
The battle over what sort of transportation projects to include in the economic stimulus package centered around whether to emphasize...
Let’s Take Advantage of The Bad Times
With city budgets shrinking rapidly, municipal governments are desperate to collect property tax revenue wherever they can find it. So they are moving to...
Television: The Drug of the Public Realm
I have been constantly astounded since I moved back to the city last summer at the extent to which television has penetrated our public...
Keep Single Family Homes in Mind
I enjoyed looking at the examples of smart growth in NRDC’s new online feature, Picturing Smart Growth. Thanks to Kaid Benfield for bringing this...
Disasters in Tough Times
The other day the brakes went out on a fire truck as it drove down a steep side street in a Boston neighborhood. The...
Considering the Townhouse
Driving along I-95 from Virginia to New England, I noticed how many townhouse-style developments have cropped up where apartment complexes would have been built...
A Few Slightly Radical Ideas to Ponder
Here’s a handful of somewhat radical planning ideas to ponder as we enter the Great Mini-Depression:
I am wondering what sort of innovations will go...
Density Revisited
This past summer, I wrote a feature for Shelterforce about a community where a CDC was battling a NIMBY mentality. The CDC was trying...
Don’t Put All The Dollars Into a Few Streets?
In a new, substantial post on planetizen.com, Charles Buki suggests that the foreclosure crisis presents an opportunity for community developers to re-assess where they...
The Trials of Grassroots Community Planning
Tom Angotti’s new book, New York For Sale, shows just how frustrating it can be to achieve true community-based planning. He writes that after...
Sorting Through What Sustainability Means
It’s interesting how language shifts slightly over time to reflect new ways of thinking. I recall a few years ago reading that some people...
Get Your Bike On
Last night, on Halloween, I saw a hundred bicyclists take command of the street. Wearing all manner of clever costume, they rode confidently in...
Transient America
This morning I read about the dismay of residents of a New York City neighborhood who have watched as people who owned homes on...
Restructuring in the works for some CDCs
What do you do when your CDC can’t afford to buy pencils or print business cards, and certainly can’t buy land or buildings?
You consider...
Planning vs. Development: Can We Really Choose One?
In theory, the current financial crisis is a good thing for neighborhood planning. With developers slowing down their projects because they can’t get financing,...
What Does the Financial Crisis Mean for CDCs?
Being a person who doesn’t have much invested in the stock market, I tend not to pay too close attention to photos on the...
NIMBYism in the Big City
I am accustomed to think of NIMBY (“Not in my back yard”) as referring to suburban homeowners who want to keep out affordable housing,...