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The Planetizen News Brief

15 November 2007 - 6:00am
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.

Full Transcript

After more than a year of public participation and town-hall meetings, the voices and ideas of the people of Philadelphia have jelled into a set of recommendations for redeveloping the city’s waterfront along the Delaware River. Aided by the urban design effort Penn Praxis of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia residents were able to communicate their ideas for improving the waterfront, including expanded green spaces, increased public access to the water and development patterns that emphasize recreation and leisure. But with these ideas has come opposition from the local real estate developers. A recent editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer takes aim at the claims of these developers who argue that actually doing what the people have suggested would significantly cut down their ability to keep developing projects as they do now -- exactly the kinds of waterfront developments the people have just finished saying they don’t want. Allowing the developers’ criticism to overpower the voice of the people, say s the author, will only further encourage the type of short-sighted and uninteresting development that has made the city’s riverfront as drab and unsuccessful as it is.

And in the city where the words “drab” and “unsuccessful” are less criticism than fact, officials are trying a new kind of approach for dealing with population decline and property blight. National Public Radio reports that officials in Flint, Michigan are selling off abandoned properties for one dollar each and turning the rest into public parks in an effort to help the depopulating city shrink in a way that won’t kill it. The need for this approach is pretty dire, as the dozens of abandoned homes in the city are not only driving down the property values of their next door neighbors, but they’re also hurting property values in the other cities in the county. Officials and residents are hoping that the one dollar sale will ease the former industrial town’s transition from a devastated ghost of a city to a sustainable rural small town.

And finally Seattle, Washington is also looking to undergo a citywide transition in the coming years. City council members recently approved a 10-year bicycle master plan that has the potential to rework the city into a world-class cycling mecca. An article in The Seattle Times reports that the master plan will include 118 miles of new bike lanes, 19 miles of biking trails and improved signage to make drivers more aware of the roadway’s other users. The bicycle master plan is being lauded as one of the country’s best examples of a city's encouragement of cycling as a viable transportation option. And though many other big American cities have their own bike plans, Seattle’s stands apart as being one of the only for which the money needed to implement it has already been approved.

Stories discussed in this week's Planetizen News Brief

Plan For The Community, Not Developers

Downsizing Flint 'Gracefully'

Broad Bike Plan Approved In Seattle

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