The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

The creation of a park in downtown Greenville, South Carolina, is credited with helping the city lure new development and stay economically healthy during the recession.

July 31 - NPR

As Singapore's population booms, officials are working through plans to help the city absorb its people but also provide them with adequate green space.

July 31 - The New York Times

With an eye to the future, the planners of London's Olympics have built the Olympics venues in a depressed part of town. They're hoping their work will turn the area around.

July 31 - The New York Times

BLOG POST

<p> A few months ago, I updated a city rating system (available at http://lewyn.tripod.com/livable09) that evaluated cities&#39; &quot;livability&quot; by rating crime rates, transit-friendliness, and cost of housing.   </p> <p> Plenty of cities did very well on the first two criteria.  For example, New York is now safer than most big cities, and of course is by far the best city in the U.S. for public transit.  But its housing costs are dreadfully high.  The same was true of Boston and San Francisco (which, if only crime and transit were considered, would rank second and third for livability).   </p>

July 30 - Michael Lewyn

Before there were "smart cities", there was R. Buckminster Fuller.

July 30 - The New York Times

London Evening Standard columnist Kieran Long takes a tour through London's Olympic Park and finds a new public space that will likely show its importance long after the games are over.

July 30 - London Evening Standard

This essay from <em>Places</em> looks at the history of "architectural fiction", and how imagined spaces and uses of land enrich understanding of the built environment.

July 30 - Places

NIMBYism served a purpose once, says Scott Doyon, preventing all sorts of heinous projects from being built. But eventually, it became about stopping ALL change. Doyon has some recommendations for changing course.

July 30 - PlaceShakers

Mayor Thomas Menino declared that "the car is no longer king in Boston" as the Hubway bike-sharing system made its debut this week, putting the city abreast with Washington D.C.

July 30 - WBUR

An Al Queda spokesperson says that they refuse to attack any U.S. bridges or any part of the transportation system because they're already in such a poor state no one will notice.

July 29 - The Onion

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) released a report this week that offers a bleak outlook at the nation's surface transportation infrastructure - just in time for the imminent Aug. 2 deadline to raise the debt ceiling.

July 29 - WOWK-TV

In Kern County, Calif., trendy fruits like pomegranate are at the center of a number of contentious lawsuits over water resource management.

July 29 - The New York Times

LA Times Columnist Gregory Rodriguez notes that cities from LA to D.C. and even Atlanta are losing black and even Latino and Asian populations to more affluent whites migrating from the suburbs, who take their values with them.

July 29 - Los Angeles Times - Opinion

Transportation is increasingly a major civil rights issue, according to The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which argues that federal funding disproportionally serves car drivers.

July 29 - Wired

Glaeser argues that Jane Jacobs was attempting to preserve affordability with her historic preservation efforts, which he says is wrong-headed.

July 29 - Governing Magazine

A new biography of Frederick Law Olmsted pulls together letters and collections from five separate archives to paint him as a pioneering environmentalist and landscape architect.

July 29 - ASLA's The Dirt blog

Every summer, tiny Manchester, Tennessee, becomes a metropolis of rockers and concertgoers as the Bonnaroo music festival comes to a nearby farm. This piece from <em>Governing</em> looks at how the town adapts to the surge.

July 29 - Governing

In the opening monologue of The Colbert Report, late-night comic Stephen Colbert mocks what appears to be another installment of "The Value of Zero" campaign for the all-electric, zero-emissions Nissan Leaf.

July 29 - AutoBlog

Home sales in the Miami metropolitan area surged 16% during the first six months of this year. Not only does the figure represent the highest jump since 2007, two-third of the transactions were paid in cash.

July 29 - The New York Times

In a newly announced effort, different parts of Detroit will receive different levels of public services based on projections of whether or not they're expected to grow in the future.

July 28 - The Christian Science Monitor