The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

Matt Bevilacqua talks shop with Emily Talen, whose new book explores the way land use regulation has shaped American cities and how it's all about to change.

July 5 - Next American City

Officials and developers in the Turkish capital have set their sights on a poor but centrally-located neighborhood for an urban renewal project, leaving longtime residents worried they may not be around much longer, Jessica Bourque reports.

July 5 - The New York Times

Apartments are scooped minutes after being placed on Craigslist, waiting lines form at open houses, rents are rising. San Francisco? Not quite, but with developers rising to the occasion with 5,000 units in construction, growth may be sustainable.

July 5 - The Columbus Dispatch

Neighborhood Improvement Districts in Philadelphia are facing challenges from a skeptical public for the first time since their introduction over 20 years ago, Alex Vuocolo reports.

July 5 - Next American City

In the coming days readers will learn more about America's new transportation funding plan MAP-21, which will guide surface transportation planning through 2014. In this piece, Tanya Snyder centers on changes to the popular TIFIA lending program.

July 5 - Steetsblog Capitol Hill

The nation of Iraq is building itself anew after the last of the US troops evacuated six months ago, but experts are saying that their wealth, which has created an invasion of shopping malls around the country, is subsidizing the public agenda.

July 5 - The New York Times

Singapore has a robust public housing program, which comes from the government operating 80% of the housing stock. Neal Peirce spells out how the system works.

July 4 - The Citistates Group

So says the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, releasing a new report that says this all-too-common strategy rarely pays off.

July 4 - The Boston Globe

Brian Phelps reports on the power of urban landscaping to revitalize a flood-devastated city - Valencia, Spain.

July 4 - Metropolis

On Tuesday, the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors voted 5-4 to support extending D.C.'s Metrorail to Dulles Airport, ending months of uncertainty over the project's fate.

July 4 - The Washington Post

Tehran is known for being congested and polluted, but Elyana Javaheri credits mayor Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf for making the Iranian capital more livable.

July 4 - This Big City

Josh Barro offers his take on the charge, oft resorted to by transit advocates, that subsidies for road maintenance encourage driving. Instead, he argues, we should turn our attention to the mechanisms that make it hard for transit to compete.

July 3 - The Washington Examiner

A new report documents the dramatic growth in the average length of environmental reviews for major infrastructure projects. While some have called for easing environmental protections as the solution, the report authors have different suggestions.

July 3 - The Atlantic Cities

Last week's census figures were widely used to point to a swelling of urban populations. Chris Briem says that the jury's still out.

July 3 - Nullspace

In response to widespread attention from one short video, MTA repair crews rushed to repair a faulty step at a subway station staircase in "perhaps the fastest response to a customer complaint in agency history," Matt Flegenheimer reports.

July 3 - The New York Times City Room Blog

Energy shortages in coal, natural gas, and diesel fuel are constraining India's growth. At the heart of the shortages are government subsidies that keep prices low, state-run monopolies that are unable to increase production, and costly imports.

July 3 - The Wall Street Journal

Richard Close, a member of the Oversight Board supervising the dissolution of the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency, discusses the challenges of defining 'enforceable obligations' and the legal battles he anticipates in the coming year.

July 3 - The Planning Report

A movie location scout fell in love with a turn-of-the-century Victorian in Queens, but ended up not using it for the TV show they were scouting. Years later, they returned and found that something horrible had happened.

July 3 - Scouting New York

Stephen Smith points to new economic research highlighting the dramatic effect of rent control on the value of nearby properties. Hint: it keeps prices down <em>everywhere</em>.

July 3 - Market Urbanism

In order to save Coney Island from dwindling unemployment rates and high poverty levels, developers rezone the 46-year-old amusement park, but the plans may never actually leave the paper.

July 3 - The Brooklyn Bureau