The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

Faces are appearing in Brooklyn, plastered along the slats of front stoops as part of a participatory public art project by famous French street artist JR.

May 17 - The Street Spot

Bike lanes have become one of the most controversial topics in all of New York City. For cycling to take hold, the city needs to make sure all groups have equal access to cycling, say a team of Hunter College grad students.

May 17 - Streetsblog

Policy in Hong Kong dictates that development must concentrate on only 25% of the land area, with the remaining 75% preserved as open space. Julia Levitt examines the ingenious density that results.

May 17 - Metropolis Magazine

Your streets could be killing you -- or at least making it harder for emergency services to reach you in times of need.

May 17 - Medill National Security Zone

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has supported roughly 700 affordable housing projects around the country that have never been completed, some stalling out for over a decade.

May 16 - The Infrastructurist

How to Be A Retronaut features a smattering of photos of New York's unique storefronts, taken by photographers James and Karla Murray. Since the book's release, about a third of the stores have faded from existence.

May 16 - How to Be a Retronaut

Google announces the addition of D.C.'s Metro and bus routes to their online and mobile maps, including connections to other commuter transit systems.

May 16 - TheCityFix.com

Once the site of neglected and abandoned buildings, Winnipeg's downtown is now seeing a host of construction and renovation projects, thanks to its redevelopment corporation, new incentives, a mixed use zoning bylaw -- and a change in perceptions.

May 16 - Globe and Mail

Race and ethnic groups have seen major shifts from the 1990s to today, according to this report from the Brookings Institution.

May 16 - Brookings Institution

FEATURE

Prakash M Apte, a planner in India, brings us this in-depth and fascinating look at the history of town planning in Gandhinagar, which was developed with an "egalitarian ethos," says Apte, but now it is at risk of becoming "just another suburb."

May 16 - Prakash M Apte

Copper demand is on the rise all over the planet. As this post from <em>InfraNet Lab</em> points out, the U.S. has rich deposits -- in its telephone networks.

May 16 - InfraNet Lab

A growing number of nations are instituting design standards and architecture policies to help make good design a part of the national strategy.

May 16 - Architect

Retail shopping in Hong Kong is a diverse experience of density, hidden storefronts and extreme visual stimulation, as this tour of the city's shopping areas shows.

May 16 - Metropolis

An architect takes a seat on the Wet Hollywood City Council, and offers his thoughts on density and parking in the city and where things went wrong.

May 16 - Architect

New speed limit signs will alert drivers that they are going to fast by showing them an image of a skeleton -- an image intended to warn drivers that their speeding could kill.

May 16 - Transportation Nation

In the 1920s, when the concept of a big city like New York was still new to many Americans, one newspaper columnist brought the city to small town America.

May 15 - Smithsonian

Plans to build a parkway around Houston will help ease traffic and spur growth in the region, but it will also run right through a key stopover point for millions of migrating birds.

May 15 - Next American City

Rural areas in Germany are seeing major declines in population. Some worry that these declining villages and towns are being left by the wayside as the nation heads towards urban centers.

May 15 - Der Spiegel

The recovery of New Orleans is happening in many small ways. One of them is the work of community groups to rebuild and re-inhabit damaged homes.

May 15 - NRDC Switchboard

Family makeup is changing in New York City, where unmarried partners are on the rise and households with children are on the decline.

May 15 - The New York Times