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The Planetizen News Brief

24 January 2008 - 5:00am
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

In one of the most sweeping development restrictions ever agreed upon, 21 countries along the Mediterranean coast have signed onto an agreement that prohibits any development with 100 meters of the coastline. The move will protect more than 29,000 miles of Mediterranean coastline from development, which some of the countries have struggled to control in recent years. The Christian Science Monitor reports that the agreement was signed at this year’s meeting of the Barcelona Convention – a 21-nation group formed in 1976 to address pollution and other environmental concerns. Included in the group are such countries as Spain, Italy, and Croatia, and though officials are excited about the agreement, many have recognized that actually enforcing the rule may be more difficult than creating it.

Meanwhile, along the U.S.-Mexico border, the federal government had little trouble enforcing its own rule on the small city of Eagle Pass, Texas recently, when a U.S. district judge ordered the city to surrender more than 200 acres of city land to the Department of Homeland Security. The Los Angeles Times reports that the land will be used by the federal government as part of its effort to build hundreds of miles of fencing on the border between the United States and Mexico. Officials in the city of Eagle Pass had been opposed to the border fence plan and had refused to give up the land. But in one day, the federal government sued the city and was granted access to the land, before the city was able to even present a challenge. The Department of Homeland Security now has control of the roughly 233 acres of land for the next six months and is expected to begin work on its border fence project soon.

And finally, in a recent editorial published in The Wall Street Journal, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary E. Peters has rejected a recommendation by a national transportation commission to increase nationwide gas taxes. She argues that the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Commission’s proposed raise of the national gas tax by nearly 40 cents over the next five years is essentially a status quo response that will do little to reduce the nation’s congestion problems. Instead, she argues, more states should look to the private sector and to road tolling mechanisms that turn highways from being a target for expenditures to a source of revenues. She says technology is making these sorts of advancements possible, and they can help improve the nation’s roads without raising taxes. Secretary Peters says quote the needs of commuters and shippers, not the desires of central planners, should drive investment decisions.

Stories discussed in this week's Planetizen News Brief

Agreement Bans Development Along Mediterranean Coast

Texas Town Forced To Forfeit Land For Border Wall

Transportation Secretary Opposes Call For Gas Tax Increase

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