Home ›

The Planetizen News Brief - 10/16/09

16 October 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

When it comes to a problem like homelessness, there are two ways to go: you can throw money at it, or you can invest. The difference may seem semantic, but according to a new report, choosing one over the other could not only help the problem but also save millions. The United Way of Greater Los Angeles has just released the results of a four-year study that shows developing permanent housing for an area’s homeless population would be dramatically more affordable than allowing them to stay on the streets. By building permanent housing for homeless people, they become less reliant on expensive public services, according to the report. A recent article in the Los Angeles Times says that housing the county’s roughly 73,000 homeless people would save taxpayers about $20,000 a year per homeless person in expenses on public services. That’s an annual savings of about $1.4 billion.

Meanwhile, western cities to the east of California are feeling a bit left out. They’re nowhere to be seen on the map of federally-prioritized high speed rail corridors, and officials in these cities want in. So they’re taking the initiative and forming their own coalition, the Western High Speed Rail Alliance. With representatives from Phoenix, Las Vegas, Reno, Denver and Salt Lake City, the group is looking to layout plans for a series of intercity high speed rail projects, despite the federal government’s cold shoulder. According to an article in the Arizona Republic, the group is hoping to ride the momentum of their cities’ recent explosive growth to prove their regional worth. And though California may be at the top of the government’s list of high speed projects, the rest of the west is hoping it, too, can get a piece of the action.

And finally, in Brazil, nationwide celebrations followed the recent announcement that Rio de Janeiro was selected as the host of the 2016 Summer Olympics. Now that the party’s over, the work has to begin. According to a recent article from USA Today, 15 new sporting venues will need to be constructed for the event, as will extensive transportation infrastructure. Transportation officials are planning to add eight additional miles to the city’s subway system, and develop a raft of new bus lines to connect the city’s neighborhoods to the four separate Olympic zones. Overall, the city is expecting to invest $14.4 billion to host the two-week event, which government officials say will create more than 100,000 jobs per year over the next decade. The city is hoping to parlay its Olympic investments with other projects related to the city’s hosting duties when the 2014 soccer World Cup comes to Brazil. But for many in the poverty-stricken country, this investment in temporary sporting events just looks like a drain on funds that could go towards fighting Brazil’s more permanent problems.

Stories discussed in this week's Planetizen News Brief

»
Bookmark and Share
“
If hundreds of people in your community raised reasonable concerns about a planning program you developed, how would you respond? Perhaps you might call a community meeting, or ask community elected officials to reach out to community leaders.
”