The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

FEATURE

The latest in a series of academic challenges to the New Urbanism turns out to be weak in all the areas that matter most, argues author Michael Mehaffy.

October 4 - Michael Mehaffy

A Columbia professor finds an obscure 1856 document that created the legal precedents that allowed the United States to seize and hold islands, and it all ties back to bird poop.

October 4 - CABINET

Rick Wright is the Executive Director of MainStreet Oceanside, and is attending the California Downtown Association conference. But Rick also edits MiceChat, a blog for Disney obsessives, and this week he features Main Streets, Disney and otherwise.

October 4 - MiceChat

Paul Goldberger pays Las Vegas' CityCenter a visit, and wonders how much different it really is from a fake Paris and the Luxor Pyramid.

October 4 - The New Yorker

WebUrbanist looks at 12 ambitious skyscraper proposals that have stalled out, from a tower planned for Dubai's man-made Palm Islands to a Dublin tower proposed by the band U2.

October 4 - WebUrbanist

Cyclist Rachel Brown put out a video recently to prove that bike lanes make her commute more dangerous, not less, because they create a false sense of security. Streetsblog reacts.

October 4 - YouTube

Most of the bullets made for WWI and II came out of the ground under Picher, Oklahoma. The minerals ran out in 1970, and the OK government bought out residents of the city to get them to leave. A handful of people stayed.

October 3 - Wired

Earlier this year, The Nation uncovered that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) holds people in 186 under-the-radar "subfield offices," which the less generous might call "secret immigration detention centers."

October 3 - Utne Reader

We've been measuring traffic congestion all wrong, a new report shows, and that's been making more highways look like the solution to long commutes. They're not.

October 3 - Streetsblog

Because of their broad appeal, diverse uses, and heavy programming, parks may do more for cities than the performing arts centers of the 1980s and the sports venues of the 1990s have accomplished, says JoAnn Greco.

October 3 - The Washington Post

Data from the Census shows that 36.7% of U.S. households pay more than 30% of their pretax income on housing, an increase of 1.5 million since 2007.

October 3 - The Wall St. Journal

The Vdara Hotel at CityCenter, designed by architect Rafael Vinoly, has an unforeseen side effect: its curving shape captures and focuses the hot Las Vegas sun, heating up visitors below like bugs under a microscope.

October 2 - BLDGBLG

Last year Toronto became the first North American city to mandate green roofs on all new residential, commercial and institutional buildings larger than 21,500 square feet. Now it has created a 118,000 square foot example on top of the City Hall.

October 2 - Metropolis Magazine

Chemical engineers at MIT were recently able to create solar energy that is 100 times more concentrated than that created by a conventional photovoltaic cell. The secret? Carbon nanotubes.

October 2 - Green Muze

USA Today's traveler reporter asks, "Should the U.S. invest in High-Speed Rail?" (readers check their answer and results are available). He cites the usual critics but also notes the challenges it must face in order to build a successful line.

October 2 - USA Today-Travel

Perceptions about the amount of time transit trips take have been found to fall significantly when people actually take transit, according to a new report.

October 2 - KALW

BLOG POST

<p> The term Green Urbanism keeps showing up unexpectedly in newspaper articles, conference session titles, blog posts, and casual conversation.  While there is an innate, intuitive sense of the meaning, green urbanism may also seem as elusive as it is evocative.  Having given this topic a fair amount of thought over the past several years, I, and my colleague and collaborator Ted Bardacke, arrived at the following working definition: </p> <p> <strong><em>green urbanism:</em></strong><em> the practice of creating communities mutually beneficial to humans and the environment </em> </p>

October 1 - Walker Wells

Keep your eyes on the road - or maybe not, with this bike path fiasco from FAILBlog.

October 1 - FAILblog

A Los Angeles Times investigation finds "widespread instances of corruption, questionable spending and poor accountability" among California's 400 municipal redevelopment agencies.

October 1 - Los Angeles Times

Spride Share is betting that Californians will, and a new bill signed into law by Gov. Schwarzenegger sorts out the insurance issues if they do so.

October 1 - Fast Company