The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

Apparently there may be a subconscious reason why so many people are attracted to the architecture of Frank Gehry. Using magnetic resonance imaging, researchers have found that our brains are hard-wired to enjoy curvilinear forms.

October 18 - Fast Company Co.Design

BLOG POST

Creating parks that benefit and reflect the needs of the communities that use them is the goal for both planners and landscape architects. Programming is a big part of this. So is design.

October 18 - Mark Hough

People-powered street design is getting a major boost with the help of two new tools that make it easy to reimagine unsatisfactory streetscapes.

October 17 - Gizmodo

Have you ever noticed that the image of little man (it's usually a man) in pedestrian traffic icons differs depending on which country you're in? Artist Maya Barkai has, and her new project seeks to explore what these guys say about their culture.

October 17 - The Wall Street Journal

With their anti-urban inward orientation, cul-de-sacs are representative of the auto-oriented, privatized suburban development model. But one sociologist is out to demonstrate their benefits by showing how cul-de-sacs can develop social cohesion.

October 17 - The Atlantic Cities

News of a secretive, and vague, software platform developed by Google X, the company's research and development wing, has design and construction bloggers abuzz. An internal report claims "Genie" could halve construction costs and project timelines.

October 17 - ArchDaily

In order to "ease traffic flow" the police commissioner in Kolkata, India (formerly Calcutta) has expanded a ban on bikes to 174 roads across the sprawling city of 14 million. Environmentalists and social activists are protesting the measures.

October 17 - The Washington Post

Over the first 40 days they've been in operation, Chicago's nine new speed enforcement cameras have issued warnings to 200,000 drivers. Politicians and reporters are skeptical about the city's motivation for installing the cameras.

October 17 - Chi.Streetsblog

Add a list of the "Top 100 Best Places to Live" to the seemingly endless series of rankings seeking to quantify what's best and worst about our cities and states. Though the inputs have changed over the last 80 years, our desire to rank hasn't.

October 17 - The Atlantic Cities

A new study by MIT researchers indicates that a greater number of premature deaths in the United States can be attributed to auto pollution than auto collisions.

October 17 - Next City

Tanya Snyder, Streetsblog's Capitol Hill editor and mother of 21-month-old daughter Luna, writes about a conversation she had with Dr. Phyllis Agran, consultant to American Academy of Pediatrics, about the risks she has exposed Luna to when biking.

October 17 - Streetsblog Capitol Hill

After seven years of stalemate, two developers have reached an agreement that will allow them to build ultraluxury towers on the northern edge of Midtown. The area is becoming the modern equivalent to what the robber barons built a century ago.

October 17 - The New York Times

BLOG POST

The short-sightedness of overarching proclamations for the right city form obscures the very context in which cities are built and expanded. City planning must become reconnected to its environmental context.

October 16 - Steven Snell

A controversial plan to merge L.A.'s Planning and Building and Safety Departments has been scuttled, for now. Mayor Eric Garcetti, who supported the merger as a councilman, announced it will not go forward in January as his predecessor had planned.

October 16 - Los Angeles Times

Last week, the long saga over the preservation of Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Hospital entered its nadir with the start of demolition. But could the intensity of the building's defense lead to a reinvigoration of preservation around Modernism?

October 16 - Next City

A new law hopes to expunge the "impulse and accessibility" aspect of suicides from new or rebuilt bridges by requiring that they "consider" suicide barriers. The price for barriers can be greatly reduced when evaluated in the planning phase.

October 16 - San Francisco Chronicle

As a 2012 law aimed reforming the "increasingly unsustainable" National Flood Insurance Program goes into effect, some homeowners in coastal areas are seeing dramatic increases in their insurance rates. Lawmakers are pondering how to ease the pain.

October 16 - The New York Times

The same week that the City of L.A. made a big splash with its "Great Streets Initiative", a new program that has the potential to have a sizable impact on city streets went less noticed. Damien Newton reports on the city's "People St" program.

October 16 - LA.Streetsblog

To finance and construct a new $2.2 billion light rail line in the D.C. suburbs, Maryland will seek to enter into a unique private sector partnership. The ambitious strategy is drawing concern from lawmakers.

October 16 - The Washington Post

Toronto's suburbs have often been dismissed as bland and banal. A closer look, however, reveals a diverse, complex landscape whose rapid changes have profound implications for the metropolis as a whole.

October 16 - Satellite Magazine