The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

BLOG POST

<p> It&#39;s the talk of the town today. The Metropolitan Transit Authority, after years of dithering has finally signed a contract to build out a shared cell phone infrastructure inside the underground portions of the subway system. Sort of. </p><p> According to the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/nyregion/20cellphone.html">New York Times</a>, &quot;[t]he cellphone network will start in six downtown Manhattan stations in two years. Once it is shown to be working properly, Transit Wireless will have four more years to outfit the rest of the underground stations.&quot; </p><p> Thats six years to completion, folks. Awesome. </p>

September 20 - Anthony Townsend

<p>In this column, urban planning professor Justin Hollander asserts that online games such as “Second Life” have the potential to enable genuine public participation in civic affairs.</p>

September 20 - The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

<p>New York has been looking for ways to rejuvenate the area surrounding its historic Coney Island boardwalk themepark. This article from the <em>Gotham Gazette</em> says the city should use the opportunity to create a model for sustainable development.</p>

September 20 - The Gotham Gazette

<p>Across the country, communities and housing associations are finding themselves in heated debates over what would otherwise be a rather banal subject: drying clothes. Some want to use clotheslines, but others worry about plummeting property values.</p>

September 20 - The Wall Street Journal

<p>In this four-part interview, <em>Streetsblog's</em> Aaron Naparstek talks with New York City's Director of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability about the city's congestion pricing aspirations.</p>

September 20 - Streetsblog

<p>Suburban sprawls love affair with the automobile is getting out of hand. In the primarily suburban county of Tippecanoe, parking spots are outnumbering automobile's 3 to 1.</p>

September 19 - LiveScience.com

<p>Along the Massachusetts Turnpike, WGBH's new digital mural is raising concerns over safety and visual blight.</p>

September 19 - The Boston Globe

<p>With few options for obtaining more water, the small community of Cloudcroft, New Mexico, is going to replenish its dwindling water supplies by treating and recycling its own wastewater.</p>

September 19 - High Country News

<p>A Missouri developer claims that intersection upgrades that make streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists are hostile to cars.</p>

September 19 - Columbia Tribune

<p>While the ailing Fidel Castro remains behind the scenes in Cuba's governing, his brother Raúl has earned popular praise for putting various quality-of-life projects on the fast track.</p>

September 19 - CNN

<p>City officials are considering a crackdown on high-speed packs of cyclists who train near the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena, California. Many collisions have occurred between bikers, pedestrians, and cars, and the city is seeking a safe compromise.</p>

September 19 - The Los Angeles Times

<p>Through a fund-matching program organized with the Mexican government, ex-patriates in the United States are able to contribute money to their home villages in Mexico for infrastructure projects that receive three-to-one matching government funds.</p>

September 19 - Deseret Morning News

<p>Global warming is exacerbating the erosion of the Alaskan coastline, but no agency has taken the lead in addressing the issues of land depletion and community relocation. One village's struggles may set the rule for future relocations.</p>

September 19 - Anchorage Daily News

<p>In an effort to avoid the extra costs associated with electrifying trains and building overhead wiring systems, transportation planners are backing a plan to develop a 41-mil commuter rail line in Denver with diesel-powered trains.</p>

September 19 - The Denver Post

<p>Government planners in China are proposing a megacity merger between Hong Kong and neighboring Shenzhen to create a metropolis of more than 20 million people, but some fear the metropolis would be too big.</p>

September 19 - BBC

<p>Increasing development in California's Sierra Nevada Mountains is adding significantly to the area's fire risk. Some are calling for more scrutiny in the approval of further development in the fire-prone area.</p>

September 19 - The San Francisco Chronicle

BLOG POST

<p>With cities developing today at a rate that is outpacing architects’ and planners’ efforts to shape them, there is no longer sufficient time to plan. As a result, architecture’s role in the city has fundamentally changed from that of designing buildings which both engage and are a product of their context, to that of creating commodified experiences--like everything else, tied first and foremost to speculation in future identity, and real estate values. </p>

September 18 - Roger Sherman

<p>Los Angeles and Orange counties are once again home to the longest amounts of time drivers waste in traffic congestion, at 72 hours per year. Nationally, the average amount of time lost to traffic congestion is 38 hours -- nearly a full week's work.</p>

September 18 - The Los Angeles Times

<p>Rapid development is expected to bring the population of Albuquerque, New Mexico, over the 1 million mark within 15 years.</p>

September 18 - The Albuquerque Tribune

BLOG POST

<p class="MsoNormal"> It&#39;s like something out of a Flannery O&#39;Connor story. The setting is the small town of Natchez, Miss., which was built on an unstable, water-soluble bluff. An entire street, Clifton Avenue, collapsed about 20 years ago. Swallowed up. A few years back—in 1995, to be exact, Sen. Trent Lott urged Congress to shore up the bluff to save not just people—two women died in a 1980 street collapse—but &quot;to protect these historically significant properties and to prevent potential loss of lives,&quot; as he put it. </p>

September 18 - Margaret Foster