The Planetizen News Brief

• Artist: Planetizen
• Title: Planetizen Podcast - 2007-08-02 - The Planetizen News Brief
• Album: Planetizen Podcast
• Year: 2007
• Length: 4:20 minutes (4.03 MB)
• Format: Stereo 22kHz 128Kbps (CBR)

The Planetizen News Brief is a weekly rundown of some of the most interesting and important news and issues of the past week.

The Planetizen News Brief airs every week on the nationally-syndicated radio program "Smart City", which is broadcast in cities across the U.S. Learn more about Smart City and listen to archived shows.

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Full Transcript

Census population figures have come out for 2006, and one county is not very happy about it. Officials in Hamilton County, Ohio, are gathering support amongst their 49 concerned municipalities to submit a formal challenge to the U.S. Census Bureau’s population estimates. Cincinnati and other Hamilton cities are upset over what they see as low-ball estimates and are issuing their challenges in an effort to protect any federal grants they might lose because of their changing demographics. The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that Cincinnati successfully challenged the Bureau in 2005, and even though the 2006 figures show a population increase, the city says the numbers are still too low. If enough support is built among Hamilton County officials, theirs could be the first regional challenge to Census data in history.

Meanwhile, in New Jersey, the state superior court has put an end to a plan for a major downtown redevelopment in Newark, citing that the city had abused its eminent domain powers in condemning the property. The New York Times reports that the judge ruled against the city because it had inappropriately designated more than 60 parcels of land as blighted and in need of redevelopment. In addition, the judge called up documents from 2002 that proved the city had basically set plans for the redevelopment in stone before even beginning the process of determining whether it could declare the land blighted. This ruling reinforces a state supreme court decision from June that places further limits on the use of eminent domain by cities. The disappointed developers of the project are calling the decision an end to urban redevelopment in New Jersey.

And finally, a trend being seen across the globe is picking up pace in the U.S. Fully automated garages are beginning to pop up in cities across America, from the nation’s first in Hoboken, New Jersey, to a residential garage in Washington D.C. and another in New York’s Chinatown. The Wall Street Journal reports that developers are cozying up to the idea of integrating these robotic parking solutions into new projects, a technique that is helping to make the most use out of increasingly scarce land space. But as technology improves, the cost of building fully automated parking garages is beginning to seriously compete with traditional garage construction. Each space in a typical non-automated garage in New York City would run between 18 and $22,000, while each space in a fully automated garage range from 25 to $30,000. Developers’ ears will obviously perk to that, but for now car owners are less enthusiastic about handing over their babies to a gigantic parking robot.

Stories discussed in this week's Planetizen News Brief

You Call That A Census?

Major Downtown Redevelopment Project Killed By Court Ruling

Automated Parking Garages Making Inroads In U.S.