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The Planetizen News Brief

11 September 2008 - 4:00am
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

Mobility is changing. More and more people are using their cars less and less, and the rising costs of driving are starting to make people think twice before stepping on the gas. Five or ten years down the line, how and why people get around is likely to be a lot different than it is today. One place this will be really evident is at the convenience store. According to real estate analyst Jeff Patterson, the Kwik-E-Mart of today will largely be gone from the future landscape. In a recent article in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal, he argues that auto-centric development like gas station convenience stores will die out and transit-oriented locations will begin to flourish. These “transit station marketplaces” are going to be the 7-11s and AM/PMs of the future, he says. And the owners of these convenience chains had better start thinking about the changing mobility patterns of their customers if they want to stay relevant -- and in business.

Meanwhile, in Houston – the place widely known as America’s biggest city without zoning – mixed use is coming to town. And it’s coming in the form of traditional neighborhood developments. According to a recent article in the Houston Chronicle, a number of TNDs are popping up in and around town. These smaller, master-planned subdivisions complete with corner shops, pocket parks and narrow streets offer a counterpoint to the huge, sterile and cookie-cutter subdivisions that dominate the city. Three New Urbanist developments, designed by architect Andres Duany, are expected to begin construction next year. Developers in town are hoping this new shape of subdivision will be a hit with Houston homebuyers. But with higher prices than typical subdivision homes and a rocky housing market, how well they sell remains to be seen.

And finally, the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 caused a lot of cities to rethink their safety requirements. A broad building code update based on a 2005 report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology sought to improve fire-safety measures and evacuation capabilities in skyscrapers. But now, 7 years after the attacks, the federal government’s General Services Administration is coming out in opposition to the building code updates, arguing that they would cost developers too much to put in place. According to an article in The New York Times, the GSA is petitioning the International Code Council to lighten the new regulations when they vote on the building code update next week. Others argue that the move doesn’t make sense, saying that the federal government is fighting on behalf of a group of developers to essentially make skyscrapers less safe. Regardless, the government is pushing forward, saying that the stricter rules were an unreasonable and emotion-based reaction to a devastating but extremely rare event.

Stories discussed in this week's Planetizen News Brief

Rethinking the Kwik-E-Mart

Traditional Neighborhoods Hit Houston

Post-9/11 Safety Provisions Challenged

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The areas where we have severe blight and indications of more blight to come are basically the same as they ever were. How in the world are we ever going to move our community development selves into an alternative future that thinks differently about the challenges we face in our cities and low-income suburban and rural communities?
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