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The Planetizen News Brief - 1/15/09

15 January 2009 - 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

It’s been the stereotypical city of the west: rapid post-war development and suburbanization that has spread subdivisions and senior citizens throughout the desert for years. But now, it seems the booming desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, may be cooling off. A variety of indicators are leading many in Phoenix to believe that the city’s unbridled growth could be slowing. A recent article from the Arizona Republic highlighted some of those indicators, including a smaller number of water hookups in the area, fewer calls for police service, and the plague of foreclosed homes that has consumed many parts of the valley. And though some say this could mean a lower population for Phoenix when the 2010 Census is taken, many argue that these indicators are little more than symptoms of the economic recession.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, plans are moving ahead to install new parking technology in 7 parts of the city that will function as a dynamic parking demand management system. Dubbed SFPark, the federally-funded experiment will eventually charge varying fees for parking in certain parts of the city depending on demand and supply. It’s an idea described by author Donald Shoup in his 2005 book the High Cost of Free Parking. According to a recent summary on Streetsblog San Francisco, the city’s experiment will include 6,000 curbside spaces and another 11,500 in garages. The pilot program will run for a year and a half and the city is hopeful that it will reduce traffic and increase revenues.

And in Seattle, officials are getting behind their own transportation solution. After years of debate, it appears that transportation officials and politicians have come to an agreement on a replacement for Seattle’s earthquake-damaged inner-city freeway. They’ve settled on a $4 billion tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way viaduct, a heavily used double-decker freeway that suffered structural damage in a 2001 earthquake. It has been the topic of debate in the intervening years as officials proposed a variety of replacement options from a complete reconstruction to a street-level redistribution of the freeway’s traffic. But this week Washington state, King County and the city of Seattle finally came to an agreement on the tunnel alternative. Now the idea will move to the state legislature for approval – but opposition remains strong among key house members.

Stories discussed in this week's Planetizen News Brief

Phoenix Falling

SF's Parking Experiment to Test Shoup's Theories

Tunnel Picked for Seattle Viaduct Replacement

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Instead of demeaning so-called "third world cities", we would do well to observe, understand, and adapt such approach on a much more widescale basis.
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