Community / Economic Development

Terrain.org takes a look at Plum Creek, a New Urbanist development outside Austin, TX that added 1,400 households to a town that had only 4,000 people in the mid-1990s.

January 14, 2009 - Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments

Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker is talking about reforming the city's longstanding restrictions on alcohol. Writer Luke Garrett puts in his pitch for relaxed zoning to allow an old-fashioned pub in his neighborhood.

January 13, 2009 - The Salt Lake Tribune

The suburbs are stereotyped as homogeneous, boring, cookie-cutter communities. But suburbs are evolving, according to this column from Tom Condon. Their relationship with cities is also changing -- and it can be good for both.

January 13, 2009 - The Hartford Courant

Environmentalists reject CA Gov. Schwarzenegger's attempt to waive new highway construction projects from environmental review to qualify for Obama's stimulus package, offering 'fix-it-first' construction and public transit projects as alternatives.

January 13, 2009 - Los Angeles Times

San Marcos, Texas, joins a handful of other cities around the country in requiring pet owners to monitor their pets electronically.

January 13, 2009 - News 8 Austin

Officials in Pittsburgh are hoping that expanding transit-oriented development will spur growth in struggling and decaying neighborhoods -- and they have the voter-approved legislation to help.

January 13, 2009 - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

As U.S.-Cuba relations evolve with a new presidential administration, author Richard Louv argues that officials should be careful about relying on commerce to save the country's decaying urban areas without preserving them.

January 12, 2009 - Citiwire

In this excerpt from their new book, The Urban Homestead, authors Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen point out all the ways city dwellers can move away from industrial agriculture.

January 11, 2009 - AlterNet

The economic recession is hurting the California High Speed Rail Authority, the lead agency developing the high speed rail network for which the state's voters approved $10 billion in bonds in 2008. With no buyers, the bond money is unavailable.

January 11, 2009 - San Francisco Chronicle

A NY Times profile of Suffern, NY focuses on real estate, but in the process creates a miniature of the struggles of all small towns- keeping the historic downtown vibrant, offering varied housing options, and competing with neighboring cities.

January 10, 2009 - The New York Times

After decades of restructuring, Pittsburgh is doing significantly better than other cities attempting to recover from the loss of industry. Here's how they did it.

January 10, 2009 - The New York Times

In this column, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer calls on the Obama Administration to direct its stimulus package towards innovative technologies and "transformative" projects, not just the status quo roads and bridges of the past.

January 10, 2009 - Slate

A giant crossword puzzle has been painted on the side of a 100-foot tall building in Lvov, Ukraine. Clues to the puzzle are planted throughout the city, and the puzzle's answers are revealed at nighttime with the use of special lights.

January 9, 2009 - English Russia

A new GIS-based service promises to improve on real estate agents by using GIS data to locate promising sites to locate for business.

January 9, 2009 - BusinessWeek

States around the country have delivered big tax breaks to film companies to shoot in their area, but do they pay off? A recent study in New Mexico says no.

January 9, 2009 - Governing Magazine

The New Yorker profiles Van Jones, a leading environmental activist and the driving force behind the movement to create a green energy jobs policy in the United States.

January 9, 2009 - The New Yorker

What comes next for the doomed, enclosed mall across America? This article highlights a number of solutions, including an adaptive reuse model that incorporates housing units inside the mall itself.

January 8, 2009 - HousingWire

Was it a walkability protest, political demonstration, or just an accident? Regardless, the thousands of used shoes that covered Miami's Palmetto Expressway last week, delaying traffic for hours, are now on their way to Haiti.

January 7, 2009 - Miami Herald

Cities like Alexandria, VA and Agoura Hills, CA have taken to relaxing sign restrictions for the sake of boosting local business.

January 7, 2009 - USA Today

Architect Teddy Cruz is creating new models of affordable housing using the shantytowns of Tijuana as his inspiration.

January 6, 2009 - GOOD Magazine