The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

A toll payment facility in Florida.
Tolling All Lanes

Bay Area transportation planners are studying a radical idea to reduce traffic congestion and fund driving alternatives: tolling all lanes on a freeway. Even more radical, the plan considers tolling parallel roads.

3 hours ago - San Francisco Chronicle

Close-up of person holding up smartphone next to contactless fare reading device on bus

Federal SMART Grants Awarded for Transportation Safety, Equity Projects

The grant program focuses on the use of technology to improve safety, accessibility, and efficiency in transportation.

4 hours ago - U.S. Department Of Transportation

Seattle Transit

Fare Enforcement Upheld by Washington Supreme Court

But using armed police to enforce fare payment is less than ideal in the eyes of the top court in the state of Washington.

5 hours ago - Crosscut

Chandler Tiny Home Village in North Hollywood, California

California Pledges to Provide 1,200 ‘Tiny Homes’ for Unhoused Residents

Critics of the plan say the effort is a drop in the bucket in a state where tens of thousands of people experience homelessness every night.

6 hours ago - Cap Radio

Stockton Foreclosure

The Shifting Boomer Bulge: Major Short Sell Risk

Policy makers dealing with housing issues aren't fully absorbing the numbers. In the second of a series on the subject, Ben Brown and Dr. Arthur C. Nelson help clarify what's going on and what we can do about it.

7 hours ago - PlaceShakers and NewsMakers

View of downtown Dallas skyline at night with tall tower lined with green lights

Dallas Ahead of the Game in Adaptive Reuse

Thanks in part to a state tax credit created in the early 2000s, downtown Dallas is set to create roughly 1,500 new housing units by converting office buildings to residential uses.

March 21 - Dallas Business Journal


Buildings on Wall Street, New York City

The ‘Goldilocks Zone’ for Office Conversion

A formula for the ideal office-to-housing candidate.

March 21 - Fast Company

Black and blue bags of trash piled on a New York City sidewalk

New York Garbage ‘Containerization’ Pilot Not Replicable at Scale

The city’s sanitation department says the program, while successful on one block, would be too difficult and expensive to implement citywide.

March 21 - StreetsBlog NYC


Washington D.C. Protest

IPCC Report: The World Is Running Out of Time on Climate Change

The planet is not doing enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to a recent report published by the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

March 20 - International Panel on Climate Change

A view of the Boise skyline, across tress int he foreground. The state capitol is visible amongst other office buildings.

Skyline-Defining High-Rise Potentially Coming to Boise

A rendering making the rounds in Boise depicts a 40-story apartment building that would be taller than all other buildings in one of the fastest growing cities in the United States.

March 20 - Boise Dev

Interior of Tesla car with driver holding hands off wheel in 'full self-driving' mode

Buttigieg: Tesla ‘Autopilot’ Marketing ‘A Concern’

The USDOT secretary says marketing doesn’t fall under his department’s investigative authority, but expressed disapproval of language that implies autonomous operation.

March 20 - Bloomberg

Petroglyphs on Spirit Mountain

Avi Kwa Ame, Sacred Land in Nevada, to Be Preserved as a National Monument

Hundreds of thousands of acres of land in Clark County, Nevada will be preserved by President Biden under the powers of the Antiquities Act, according to reports.

March 20 - The Washington Post

Dilapidated vacant wood slat house painted white in Louisiana

The Quiet Housing Crisis in Rural America

While housing shortages in major cities are grabbing headlines, rural communities are seeing higher rates of growth in housing prices and a silently spreading homelessness crisis.

March 20 - The Daily Yonder

A bright red traffic lane reads “Bus Only.”

Texas Legislation Would Add More Roadblocks for Transit Funding in Austin

A former Austin city councilmember, now at the Texas State Legislature, is trying to make it harder for Austin Transit Partnership to borrow money to fund Project Connect, the Austin region’s big, ambitious transit investment plan.

March 20 - KUT

 Red brick homes with blooming wisteria in foreground in Arlington, Virginia

Arlington ‘Missing Middle Housing’ Plan Faces Scrutiny

A proposal to legalize more housing types in northeastern Virginia has prompted vigorous debate among stakeholders.

March 20 - The Washington Post

Aerial view of snowy single-family homes in suburban Long Island, New York

BLOG POST

New York Governor Advances Housing Plan Amid Stiff Suburban Opposition

Governor Kathy Hochul’s ambitious proposal to create more housing has once again run into a brick wall of opposition in New York’s enormous suburbs, especially on Long Island. This year, however, the wall may have some cracks.

March 20 - Mark H. McNulty

Hillside home construction in the Porter Ranch neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.

BLOG POST

YIMBYs and Environmentalists Team Up at Last

The politics of development in California achieved another significant milestone recently, when a YIMBY organization and an environmental advocacy organization collaborated on new land use legislation to be considered by the State Legislature.

March 19 - James Brasuell

Bike lane and line of cars on street in Chicago with sun in background

Chicago Approves New Parking Enforcement Pilot Programs

The city plans to test automated technology that will issue citations for blocking or parking in designated bike or bus lanes.

March 19 - Smart Cities Dive

Aerial Philadelphia cityscape by night with the City Hall tower in the foreground and Ben Franklin bridge spanning Delaware river in the back

Philadelphia ‘Lights Out Pledge’ Seeks To Prevent Bird Deaths

Migratory birds are often lured away from their normal paths by the bright lights of cities, with deadly results.

March 19 - Next City

Pedestrianized shopping street in Santa Monica, California

Reclaiming Our Space: The Battle for Open Streets

The growth of pedestrianized spaces and car-free streets depends on a transformational shift in thinking about what—and who—public spaces and streets are for.

March 19 - The Washington Post

A broad valley with two tall peaks in the background. In the foregound, but far below the view from the hill where the photo was taken, large freeways are visible.

Infamous 315-Unit Lafayette Housing Development Finally Approved

In a dramatic sign of how far zoning reform has come in the state of California, CEQA wasn’t enough to stop a 315-unit apartment development first proposed 12 years ago in the city of Lafayette.

March 17 - San Francisco Chronicle

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City of Greenville

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City of Greenville

Rural Projects Coordinator (RARE AmeriCorps Member)

Resource Assistance for Rural Environments (RARE) AmeriCorps Program

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