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The Planetizen News Brief - 9/20/07

20 September 2007 - 7:00am
Smart City Radio

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

With more than 365,000 people, the city of Arlington, Texas, is the largest city in America without any public transportation. But those days may be coming to an end, as The Wall Street Journal reports that the Arlington City Council is considering a plan to latch the city onto neighboring Fort Worth’s public bus system. Most of Arlington’s residents commute to jobs outside of the city, and though voters have thrice rejected plans for bus systems over the last three decades, public officials say that today’s high gas prices may be enough to get residents behind a bus system. But a strong NIMBY attitude is still present – with residents arguing that the city is too small to need a bus system and fearing that public transit will act as a welcoming mat for poor people. But if negotiations work out between Arlington and Fort Worth, residents can expect at least six months of bus service on a trial basis, and probably more.

And in Atlanta, plans are moving forward on the Beltline -- an ambitious 22-mile loop of parkspace, trails, rail lines and mixed use developments that would ring the center of the city. But with the projects is coming a sharp increase in property values around the proposed site. A new study from an affordable housing advocacy group has shown that property values within one-eighth of a mile of the proposed Beltline have seen huge increases since the project was announced. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that the rise in property values has resulted in increases in city and school property taxes, in some places by nearly 70%. The study claims that unless the city sets up tax breaks for the many low-income residents living near the Beltline, the project will cause hyper-gentrification and price many low-income residents out of the area.

And across the country, in recent years, many cities have been pushing for the creation of municipal networks for wireless internet service, or Wi-Fi. But for many of the biggest cities in the nation, these plans have all but disappeared recently. Cities such as San Francisco, Houston, and Chicago have been forced to abandon their plans for municipal wireless networks due to rising costs and uncertainties about their long-term economic sustainability. But, as The Christian Science Monitor recently reported, municipal Wi-Fi is thriving in smaller communities all around the U.S. St. Cloud, Florida, Brookline, Massachusetts, and Owensboro, Kentucky are just a few of the smaller communities that are now wired, thanks to smaller and lesser-known IT firms. So while big cities continue to fumble their Wi-Fi dreams, the small towns have taken the lead in the wireless revolution.

Stories discussed in this week's Planetizen News Brief

America's Largest Transit-Free City Reconsiders

Will Atlanta's Beltline Be Solely For The Wealthy?

Wi-Fi Flops In Big Cities, Thrives In Smaller Communities

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In short, we’ve seen the last of the cheap oil on which we’ve built our economy, our communities, and our daily lives.
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