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2015 most-read posts

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9/11 Truth

by Peter J. Robertson  
There is a popular conspiracy theory that claims a group of nineteen radical Muslims, under the direction of a Saudi Arabian man hiding out in Afghanistan, nearly simultaneously hijacked four American airplanes and turned them towards their intended targets, with three of them successfully flying into the Pentagon and World Trade Center Twin Towers and the fourth crashing into the Pennsylvania countryside after passengers struggled to retake control of the plane . . . . [more]

The Biggest Issue That No Presidential Candidate Is Talking About

by Raphael Bostic  

The U.S. presidential race has done an amazing thing: It has made $28 trillion disappear.

That’s how much all the homes in the United States are worth. It’s one tenth of everything the U.S. owns. It’s more money than the entire economy produces in a year. And if you only listened to the presidential candidates, you’d never even know it existed . . . . [more]

Urban Farms, Gardens, and Food Desert Myths

by Donnajean Ward  

Detroit is famous for a lot of things and more and more the city is becoming known for urban farming.  During our week-long visit as part of the Price School’s LEAP Detroit Lab, we saw the range of urban farming and gardening first hand.

Lafayette Greens  was just down the street from our hotel.  It sits in the heart of downtown Detroit, appropriately (ironically?) on the site of a demolished high rise.  An oasis of raised beds and fruit trees with places for office workers to sit and have lunch and charming scarecrows fashioned out of old car parts . . . . [more]

Congratulations to Lisa Schweitzer, winner of ACSP Marcia M. Feld Award

by Bedrosian Center
Professor Lisa Schweitzer has been selected to receive the 2015 Marcia M. Feld Leadership Award given biannually by theAssociation of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP). This award recognizes individuals for outstanding leadership . . . [more]

Why Home Matters: Welcome to the Conversation

by Raphael Bostic  

It was Thomas Jefferson who first solidified the vision of homeownership as the foundation of American democracy. He saw it as the antidote to European aristocracy, which perpetuated itself by keeping land in the hands of the nobility. Jefferson’s radical proposal would have given 50 acres of land to every free person in his home state of Virginia.

This particular dream was never realized . . . . [more]

Building the Future of the Los Angeles River

by Jeremy Loudenback  

The Los Angeles River presents an intoxicating vision of change for Los Angeles

A much-anticipated plan for the river would do more than just remove the concrete channel that for a long time erased the waterway from public memory. The 2007 Los Angeles River Revitalization Plan imagines connecting a newly verdant river to surrounding open spaces, potentially creating a vital network of shared public spaces that would provide substantial health benefits to nearby communities as well as create a signature project that would define Los Angeles for decades to come . . . . [more]

Visualizing Contested Space

by Jeremy Loudenback  
In Los Angeles, recent debate about street vending in the city has underscored important discussions about race, class, health, immigration, space, and the rule of law. As Los Angeles considers how to legalize street vendors, the Contesting the Streets II: Vending and Public Space in Global Cities conference will engage both academics and practitioners about how vendors interact with important but often overlooked nodes of our urban landscape. Sponsored by the Bedrosian Center on Governance, the Spatial Analysis Lab (SLAB) at USC, and the UCLA César E. Chávez Department for Chicana/o Studies, the Contesting the Streets conference will serve as an opportunity for critical dialogue about the role of streets vendors and public spaces in urban environments around the world . . . . [more]
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