The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

Memphis's 4500-acre Shelby Farms Park has languished for years. Now, local leaders are bringing in Yale professor Alex Garvin to try to bring the park up to its potential.

May 26 - Memphis Daily News

Essayist and programmer Paul Graham writes about how cities can create great hi-tech communities that attract dynamic startups.

May 26 - Paul Graham

When fundraising fails to save farm formerly leased to the Los Angeles Food Bank, Joan Baez sings in a tree and Darryl Hannah plays guitar in a tent.

May 26 - The Los Angeles Times

Federal agencies will approve thousands of miles of new corridors for power lines and pipelies across public lands in the West including national parks and forests. Scientists warns of ecological devastation.

May 26 - The Los Angeles Times

Ozone pollution has worsened at some national parks posing health risks to visitors but also leading to improved visibility.

May 26 - The Los Angeles Times

Al Gore's new documentary "An Inconvennient Truth" uses a personal narrative to drive home the urgency of the global warming problem.

May 26 - Grist

Hercules, CA, threatens to use eminent domain to keep out retail giant Wal-Mart.

May 26 - The San Francisco Chronicle

Los Angeles' leaders have an opportunity to show some courage and extend the "current brainless configuration" of the area's subway system.

May 25 - The Los Angeles Times

Smaller cities across Southern California, like Santa Clarita, have discovered that being friendly to small businesses yields big rewards, especially when the mammoth City of Los Angeles is too big to care.

May 25 - The Los Angeles Times

With the Canadian government under Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper backing away from Kyoto in favor of a "made-in-Canada" solution, Jeffrey Simpson of the Globe and Mail asks, "If not Kyoto, then what?"

May 25 - The Globe and Mail

The "man architecture critics love to hate", New Urbanism co-founder Duany, has been shaping the debate over how to revitalize the Gulf Coast.

May 25 - The New York Times

A New Yorker columnist compares today's sky-high energy prices with those during the Carter administration, and the scare of the terrorism of September 11 to that of December 7, 1941. She suggests that increasing the gas tax should be considered.

May 25 - The New Yorker

The success of Atlantic Station, a large scale mixed-use urban development, proves the need for a more pedestrian friendly environment in auto-dominated Atlanta.

May 25 - The New York Times

The city council of Hercules, CA, votes unanimously to use eminent domain to take Wal-Mart's land and stop it from building a store.

May 25 - The San Francisco Chronicle

An open space preservation coalition led a visioning exercise for the future of Seattle, to "design Seattle's green network for the next century".

May 25 - The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

GM responds to higher gas prices by offering those who purchase SUVs in California and Florida subsidies on their gas expenses.

May 25 - Associated Press

Plans to build the largest offshore wind power generating station in the world off of Cape Cod are being challenged by local residents -- including wind energy supporter Senator Edward Kennedy.

May 25 - The Globe and Mail

Some younger families and retirees are choose to "downsize" their homes. The decision comes with several lifestyle benefits.

May 24 - Parade

An independent study finds that 3.1 billion in repairs made to New Orleans' levee system won't protect the city from another Katrina-like hurricane.

May 24 - The Los Angeles Times

You may not have heard of him, but Portland's Homer Williams is busily making big changes in Downtown Los Angeles.

May 24 - Los Angeles Downtown News