Cyburbia, the Internet's oldest portal site for urban planners and others interested in cities and the built environment, contains a selective directory of Internet resources relevant to planning and urbanism. Cyburbia also includes information about mailing lists and newsgroups, and it hosts a very active bulletin board.
Cyburbia is maintained by its founder, Dan Tasman AICP. Dan is a native of Buffalo, New York, and is currently working as the planning director for the Town of Oakland, Florida.
Cyburbia history
The first incarnation of Cyburbia was established in November 1994, when a page of links to the few planning and architecture-related Web sites then online was created on the personal Web site of the founder.
As the Internet grew, subcategories were added, and the list of links was given a somewhat awkward name; PAIRC, an acronym which stood for "Planning and Architecture Internet Resource Directory" PAIRC was renamed Cyburbia in 1997, after its founder saw the word used as a pseudonym for "cyberspace" in an article in Wired magazine.
In 2000, a partnership was formed with Chris Steins of Urban Insight, who started the acclaimed PLANetizen Web site. In 2000, due to an increased number of architecture-related Web portals, and Cyburbia's lack of exposure and its reputation as a planning-related site among architects, links to architecture-related Web sites were reduced to those pointing to Web sites that held some appeal for planners.
Cyburbia was gutted and rebuilt in 2001, with the replacement of the existing database with In-Link, which allows links to be indexed in a hierarchical directory, like Yahoo and DMOZ. The bulletin board software was replaced with vBulletin, considered to be the most powerful and popular bulletin board for small and medium Web sites. In 2002, an image gallery was added, where users can upload and view planning and built environment-related photos and graphics.
Cyburbia started off as a personal endeavor, created in the spirit of giving something back to the Internet. Cyburbia isn't a commercial Web site intended to make a profit. Cyburbia is no longer the most vitied or most popular planning-related Web site, but it is still the only Web site of its kind for urban planners