The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

Sasaki Associates has produced a video about the under-construction Chicago Riverwalk. The lesson for all cities from the video, as well as the project: "If you can imagine it, you can built it."

September 3 - The Architect's Newspaper

BLOG POST

Many Americans believe children should not be free to walk alone, because of crime and traffic. But children constantly driven around by their parents or locked away at home are also subject to significant risks.

September 3 - Michael Lewyn

Kyle Hill compares the cost of exclusively riding Uber to owning a car in the car-centric city of Los Angeles.

September 3 - TechCrunch

A new study from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University and the AARP Foundation has produced a pile of data on the country's aging population and its implications for housing and planning policy.

September 3 - Harvard University Gazette

Writing for Motherboard, Derek Mead details what it took for a particularly ambitious SimCity player to build a city of 100 million people.

September 2 - Motherboard

Fifty years ago, Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law The Wilderness Act, at the time protecting more than nine million acres of wild lands throughout the nation.

September 2 - Los Angeles Times

Today, most transportation professionals are aware that the era of inexorable growth in vehicular travel has ended. Yet many state DOTs and local public works departments continue to assume that traffic will grow far into the future.

September 2 - Community Builders

After two years of work, SPUR's proposals for the Ocean Beach Master Plan are still taking shape. A road diet for vehicle lanes on the Great Highway, for instance, was recently shelved for the good of other pressing priorities.

September 2 - S.F. Streetsblog

Casinos in Atlantic City are closing quickly, costing the local economy 5,700 jobs and leaving the city with four large, empty buildings of a variety that offers little or no precedent for reuse.

September 2 - Philadelphia Inquirer

Shaila Dewan details the increasing rates at which renters all over the country forced from their homes by eviction.

September 2 - New York Times

FEATURE

An August 19 article in the Washington Post took a tough stance on the value of families to urban settings. Here Bradley Calvert responds by describing how families provide opportunities for planners to rethink cities for the better.

September 2 - Bradley Calvert

BLOG POST

With the advancement of LGBT rights and equality, the traditionally LGBT neighborhood is changing to reflect the tastes and preferences of the new LGBT community within.

September 2 - Reuben Duarte

Protected bike lanes are not included in the California Highway Design Manual, notwithstanding the state's recent endorsement of the NACTO manual. All that's needed to change that is Gov. Jerry Brown's signature.

September 2 - LA Streetsblog

BLOG POST

A significant portion of vehicle travel consists of chauffeuring: additional travel to transport a non-driver. The new Chauffeuring Burden Index calculates its direct and indirect costs. Why do these costs receive such little attention in planning?

September 2 - Todd Litman

A rich new feature for ProPublica details what's described as "one of the greatest environmental and economic disasters in the nation’s history."

September 1 - ProPublica

The FHWA reports that Americans have returned to the road en masse this summer—beware obvious political motivations and a failure to compare VMT trends to population growth.

September 1 - U.S. Department Of Transportation

Overcoming initial rejection on the Assembly floor on Monday, bill supporters picked up six votes on Thursday "upon reconsideration" and it passed. The Senate approved it Friday and it is on its way to Gov. Jerry Brown, who has until Sept. 30 to act.

September 1 - KQED News Fix

A detailed case study of Kokomo, Indiana, which has achieved an impressive record of investments in streetscape and other capital projects, even as it struggled to deal with the effects of the recession.

September 1 - Urbanophile

A comparison of road conditions in Rwanda and Mali—the former an autocracy with sterling roads, the latter a democracy where poor road conditions reveal a deep divide in the country.

September 1 - Foreign Policy

Camping isn't for everyone, but everyone who wants to camp should get an opportunity to. A growing program run by the Chicago Park District allows residents to heed the call of the wild, right inside the city.

August 31 - Chicago Tribune