The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

<p>For those who can't get to the coast, tons of sand have been trucked into a park in Mexico City, where residents flock to spend a day at the "beach". But critics see the effort as a wasteful in a city where many residents still have no running water.</p>

April 6 - The Guardian Unlimited

<p><em>Men's Health Magazine</em> has rated the U.S. cities with the best and worst drivers. The three cities with the safest drivers are Des Moines, Iowa, Jersey City, New Jersey, and New York, New York. Columbia, South Carolina is the least safe.</p>

April 6 - Men's Health Magazine

<p>Severe water shortages have hit Australia in recent years, and they are showing no signs of subsiding. The government has cracked down on waste, but many scientists say that global warming is the underlying cause of the shortage.</p>

April 6 - The Christian Science Monitor

<p>Community activists and designers have made a deal with local officials to reuse construction materials from a demolished fire station to build an amphitheater in a local park.</p>

April 6 - The Missoulian

<p>After many years of lagging population growth many attribute to the bust of the dot-com boom, the San Francisco Bay Area has shown a positive population growth rate for recent years.</p>

April 6 - The San Francisco Chronicle

<p>Farmland in British Columbia is being rapidly snapped up by residential developers as land values increase. This pressure is threatening the area's remaining fertile farmland.</p>

April 6 - The Globe and Mail

<p>A bid is up for new street furniture in Toronto. Three firms have submitted their proposals for innovative street furniture, public restrooms, and bus stops. Some of the designs can be seen in this slideshow.</p>

April 6 - The Globe and Mail

<p>To raise awareness of global warming, a massive sea level change was staged in the online virtual reality world "Second Life" that flooded areas such as London and Tokyo -- similar to what scientists predict could occur within this century.</p>

April 6 - National Geographic News

<p>Confirming what Atlanta residents have long sensed based on mind-numbing traffic and high-rise condo towers breeding like bunnies, the Census Bureau announced that the Atlanta region has added more residents since 2000 than any other U.S. metro.</p>

April 5 - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

<p>Proposed state legislation in Arizona will punish cities that offer subsidies to retail projects. Kansas City's new mayor was elected on an anti-TIF platform. Increasingly, public financing for urban revitalization is coming under attack.</p>

April 5 - The Wall Street Journal

<p>A large loss of mobile home parks in Florida has legislators asking whether the state or the municipalities should take responsibility for the thousands of misplaced low-income residents.</p>

April 5 - The Miami Herald

<p>A researcher has cited the preponderance of luxury amenities in cars as decreasing the amount of carpoolers and making it easier for drivers to "adapt" to and accept gridlock.</p>

April 5 - CBC News

<p>The provincial government in British Columbia has purchased 11 residential hotels in an effort to improve its handling of a rapidly increasing homeless population.</p>

April 5 - The Tyee

BLOG POST

<p class="MsoNormal">Getting stuck in traffic is fast becoming one of those necessary evils that everyone complains about but seldom does anything about it.<span> </span>Or at least anything that seems terribly effective.<span> </span>Neither additional road building nor public transit seemed to have had a major impact on traffic congestion in places where these types of remedies have been attempted.</p>

April 5 - Lance Freeman

<p>The British government has proposed lifting planning barriers that hindered the domestic installation and use of energy generating devices such as small wind turbines and solar panels.</p>

April 5 - Building

FEATURE

Many say Los Angeles is a city that grew without any rational planning. In reality the planning was there -- but much of the best planning never quite materialized.

April 5 - Christian Peralta

<p>Western states suffering from prolonged drought get proactive about water problems in the face of increasing demand. Projects include desalinization plants and a 280-mile pipeline to Las Vegas, but the fight over water is escalating.</p>

April 5 - The New York Times

<p>In response to the loss of local businesses in some of Salt Lake City's neighborhoods, Mayor Rocky Anderson is proposing a ban on chain stores in neighborhoods valued for their local character and businesses. But support for the ban is sparse.</p>

April 5 - The Salt Lake Tribune

<p>The town of Blue Springs, Missouri, has turned to a form-based code to help revitalize its downtown and improve predictability for residents and developers alike.</p>

April 5 - The Kansas City Star

<p>Global warming is causing significant long- and short-term problems for the highly populated Mediterranean island of Malta, many parts of which would be submerged by rising sea levels, and whose water supply would be contaminated by sea water.</p>

April 5 - BBC