The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

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<p>Reading news stories about planning is crucially important to the worth of planners, developers, public officials, policy makers, and anyone else who cares about the way communities form and evolve. By knowing what&#39;s going on in other places, those concerned with cities and their development will be better informed to analyze and approach the planning issues facing their own communities.

February 24 - Nate Berg

<p>The Nation magazine investigates whether 100,000 FEMA-purchased trailers are releasing toxic fumes from materials used in their construction, and made worse by low quality standards as the trailers were constructed at breakneck speeds.</p>

February 24 - The Nation via Sun Herland

<p>Residents are upset that plans for a waterfront casino in Sparks, Nevada, were not revealed to the public early enough in the planning project. Many fear that by the time a public hearing is held, the citizen voice will have no power to make changes.</p>

February 24 - Reno Gazette-Journal

<p>A new report ranks 72 U.S. cities on their environmental quality, including such common indicators as pollution and drinking water quality, but also social aspects like public health, poverty, and quality of life. On top of the list: Fargo, ND.</p>

February 24 - El Paso Times

<p>The chair of L.A.'s municipally-owned Department of Water and Power outlines how the city will build up its portfolio of green power by 2010.</p>

February 24 - The Metro Investment Report

<p>The tremendous scale and pace of construction in China threatens to bulldoze over thousands of years of archaeological sites.</p>

February 24 - International Herald-Tribune

BLOG POST

<p>Hi - I&#39;m excited about the start of this blog! I am the co-founder and editor-in-chief of <a href="http://www.americancity.org" target="_blank">The Next American City</a>, where we promote socially and environmentally sustainable economic growth for American cities and suburbs in our magazine, events, and op-eds. Looking forward to the conversations over the coming months and years on this site, and I&#39;m always open to ideas for what I should discuss here, or what our team at TNAC, including our President Seth Brown, Publisher Michelle Kuly, Editor Jess McCuan, and everyone else that makes TNAC happen, should cover. </p><p>The national media is obsessed with the story of central cities coming back. Let&#39;s put aside whether this story is real or not (one on hand, I could show you similar clippings from any of the last five decades and suburban growth rates are still much higher; on the other hand, there does seem to be a slight resurgence in many cities lately that goes beyond what we&#39;ve seen in the past). My question - from a planning standpoint - is - who cares?<br />

February 23 - Anonymous

<p>The largest redevelopment project to date in New Orleans -- a city known worldwide for its music -- is aimed at bringing musicians back to town by giving them a place to live.</p>

February 23 - The Christian Science Monitor

<p>After the San Francisco Planning Department rejects several condo projects for the city's historic State Armory and Arsenal Building on the edge of the Mission District, an Internet pornography studio buys the building to make films.</p>

February 23 - The Wall Street Journal

BLOG POST

<p>About two years ago, after teaching a course at NYU&#39;s Interactive Telecommunications Program on &quot;Digitally Mediated Urban Space&quot;, I wrote an article for the architectural design journal Praxis that sought to do do two things: 1) make sense of the wide array of digital technologies that are being deployed in urban space, and 2) present a couple of places that I thought exemplified good and bad &quot;design&quot; of digital public spaces. </p><p>Recently, my research on context-aware computing - computing based on sensors and artificial intelligence - has led me to revisit this piece. Around the same time, I got a call from Lucas Graves, a friend who writes for Wired, and was doing a piece on technologies that are &quot;perpetually around the corner&quot;. Lucas was mainly interested in things like videophones, but it coincided with a turn in my research to the applications side of context-awareness: smart cities, smart places, smart homes, and smart objects. As an urban planner, I immediately gravitated to thinking about smart cities and smart places, but wondered in the back of my mind - is this something that is really happening, or just another one of those technologies that are perpetually around the corner?<br />

February 23 - Anthony Townsend

<p>Even with widespread demolition of old buildings to make way for modern towers, the city still has more art deco buildings than anywhere else on earth. A new photo book hopes to inspire the city to preserve its rich architectural legacy.</p>

February 23 - Time Magazine

<p>The dramatic downturn in American real estate markets, combined with extraordinary levels of national debt, point to an economic crisis on par with the Great Depression, writes Mike Whitney.</p>

February 23 - The Atlantic Free Press

<p>Why industrial areas are vital to healthy cities.</p>

February 23 - The Los Angeles Times

<p>To the dismay of many residents, plans have been submitted for a housing development of more than 12,000 units in western Palm Beach County, Florida. Zoning and building guidelines would have to be changed to allow the development.</p>

February 23 - South Florida Sun-Sentinel

<p>As a virtual world where anything goes grows up, it's problems are not so different from real world communities.</p>

February 23 - The Los Angeles Times

<p>A report from <em>NPR</em> looks at a plan to redistribute land in Bolivia. Land owners are wary of of the plan, despite the government's promise that it would primarily redistribute its own land holdings, and then that of prospectors and investors.</p>

February 23 - NPR

<p>Phoenix Metro director is looking to expedite plans for a regional light rail system by drafting a strategy to garner and extra $1.7 billion needed to pursue the project.</p>

February 23 - The Arizona Republic

<p>Approving high density, smart growth developments has brought urbanity and monetary benefits to the town of Easton, Massachusetts.</p>

February 23 - The Boston Globe

<p>Israel's oldest kibbutz -- a communal living settlement founded on socialist principles -- has approved a vote allowing community members to retain private salaries instead of pooling their income for the entire community.</p>

February 22 - BBC

<p>In an effort to improve the accuracy of property information, 13 counties in North Central Texas have initiated an aerial photography project to document the land. Many hope the publicly available project will improve property appraisals.</p>

February 22 - Corsicana Daily Sun