The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

John Pavlus reports on Eric Fischer's use of Twitter's geotagging feature to map the most highly trafficked thoroughfares in several cities. The results are fascinating, and beautiful.

January 25 - Fast Company Co.Design

A new survey provided some good news for the alternative technology sector of the auto market: younger consumers prefer hybrids and other electrified vehicles over conventional vehicles, especially fuel-inefficient ones.

January 25 - Bloomberg News

A neighborhood in Tarzana, one of the few residential areas in Los Angeles County that allows raising livestock, battles developmental pressures. The latest proposal: razing five homes for an elderly care center.

January 25 - Los Angeles Times

As the Republican primary battle heats up heading into Florida, Michael A. Fletcher asks the question that many residents of the state are considering: how do the candidates propose addressing the housing crisis?

January 25 - The Washington Post

Karen McVeigh reports on 5Pointz in Long Island City, a public mecca for hip hop and graffiti artists, and its uncertain future.

January 24 - The Guardian

Sarah Laskow reports on new analysis indicating that in restored wetlands, plants, insects, and animals do not reach their former abundance, density or diversity.

January 24 - Good

Mackenzie Carpenter has written an engaging profile of David Lewis, the community planning pioneer whom Richard Florida calls the 'Jane Jacobs of Urban Design,' as he celebrates his 90th birthday.

January 24 - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

BLOG POST

<p class="MsoNormal"> For more than ten years now I have been a librarian at the Institute of Urban Studies at the University of Winnipeg, managing <a href="http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/index/ius-library">a small library dedicated to planning, geography, urban design and environmental issues</a>. I have been extremely fortunate to have had the freedom in this role to evolve a hybridized career involving research, librarianship, teaching, writing and editing. </p>

January 24 - Michael Dudley

As cyclists toured Watts and other parts of South Los Angeles, they were invited to share photographs and record places of interest along the way.

January 24 - Los Angeles Times

Writing about 'one of the most pressing civil and human rights issues facing our nation,' Lexer Quamie sees the renewal of the nation's federal transportation law as a key tool in addressing issues impacting low-income and minority communities.

January 24 - Urban Habitat

James Kanter reports on plans by Danish government to generate half the nation’s power from wind within eight years, and whether too much of a good thing, in this case, may lead to failure.

January 24 - The New York Times

A new documentary aims to challenge the existing narrative surrounding the birth, life, and death of the Pruitt-Igoe public housing development.

January 24 - Architectural Record

States across the country are expanding legalization of commercial casinos in what many frame as a no-lose proposition. Writing in <em>The New York Times</em>, Paul Davies makes the case against the expansion of casinos in New York State.

January 24 - The New York Times

A new report ranks all 50 states and the 51 largest American cities in terms of bicycling and walking levels, safety, funding, and other factors.

January 24 - Alliance for Biking and Walking

When a building in blighted Highland Park, Michigan was demolished, a painted advertisement on the adjacent building was revealed. Nearby, other ghost ads remain, "nearly as bright" as ever. Dan Berry reports on why we're so fascinated by them.

January 24 - The New York Times

The good news is that the $390 million renovation of the Javits Center on the west side of Manhattan is coming along well and on target to be completed in 2014. The bad news is it that it will likely be torn down shortly thereafter.

January 23 - The New York Times

FEATURE

Are cities across the country acting negligently in ignoring the property tax implications of different development types? Joseph Minicozzi thinks so, and he's done the math to prove it.

January 23 - Joseph Minicozzi

Paul Knight delivers an impassioned defense of the gridded urban form against its many criticisms -- that its boring, its unnatural, its only use is to maximize profits for developers, etc.

January 23 - TheGreatAmericanGrid.com

Tom Vanderbilt writes about the current crop of self-driving cars in Wired. "After almost a hundred years in which driving has remained essentially unchanged, it has been completely transformed in just the past half decade."

January 23 - Wired

Scott Carlson profiles the work of Dr. Richard J. Jackson, chair of Environmental Health Sciences at the UCLA's School of Public Health, one of the leading voices calling for better urban design for the sake of good health.

January 23 - The Chronicle of Higher Education