Two on Urban Planning

Blame It on Canada: Vancouver urban planning guru preaches high-density tower living in San Francisco. I thought this was interesting because it talks about the similarities between San Francisco and Vancouver, and how Vancouver solved their housing crisis. While informed by Jane Jacobs and Christopher Alexander, they went with huge, dense towers amid open space that sounds more like Modernism than New Urbanism. I would've liked to have seen this presentation.

Big and Blue in the USA. Everyone's favorite suburb skeptic James Howard Kunstler talks about the link between suburban, auto-dependent living and obesity and depression. Apparently, Kunstler writes a column for Orion. I love his books The Geography of Nowhere and Home from Nowhere.