The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

Anyone living in New York, or paying attention to baseball, knows how one failed splashy signing can sink a team's competitiveness. Rather than trying to win with home runs, local governments should be playing small ball, argues Charles Marohn.

August 19 - Strong Towns

Those investing in the largely Latino enclave of Boyle Heights prefer to use the term "gentefication" - a play on the Spanish word for people - rather than the pejorative gentrification, to describe their efforts to improve the L.A. neighborhood.

August 19 - The New York Times

Philadelphia Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron has the knives out for a new hotel built in Center City, calling it the 'worst new architecture' in the city. Worse yet, we all helped pay for such awful design.

August 19 - philly.com

Unlike prior litigation based on environmental grounds, this suit, brought by a farmer, homeowner and the Kings County Board of Supervisors, is based on the rail project's business plan violating the bond measure the voters approved to fund it.

August 19 - Sacramento Bee

As the culmination of the Big Dig project that sunk Boston's elevated Central Artery, the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway was envisioned as one of the world's premier parks. Though plans have been curtailed, the park has become a beloved space.

August 19 - The Boston Globe

From the panhandle to the Gulf coast, cities across traditionally car-crazed Texas are building bike-share systems and expanding bike infrastructure to lure businesses, residents, and improve public health.

August 19 - The Texas Tribune

This interactive feature from the New York Times employs animation and photographs of the city over time to explore the places where the outgoing Mayor has left the biggest impression.

August 19 - The New York Times

In this opinion piece on how to pay for roads, Noel Popwell gives 5 reasons for switching from gas tax to vehicle-miles-traveled (VMT) fee revenue collection - even if the Highway Trust Fund wasn't facing insolvency next year. Obama is opposed to it.

August 18 - Streetsblog Capitol Hill

A scheme to transform a Watts housing project with mixed-use development earned final approval from the L.A. City Council on Wednesday. Shops, town homes, and open spaces are to replace "one of the city's most poverty-stricken and violent areas."

August 18 - Los Angeles Times

A scholar and former New York City planner has an interesting idea for improving the financial state of America's often beleaguered public transit systems: let non-profits run them instead of public agencies. Eric Jaffe explains his reasoning.

August 18 - The Atlantic Cities

Chicago has good news to report in its battle to improve access to fresh healthy food. Since Rahm Emanuel became mayor more than two years ago, the number of residents living in food deserts has declined by 21 percent.

August 18 - Chicago Sun-Times

Famed Danish architect Jan Gehl shared his thoughts this week about people-friendly cities, and why we have no option but to build them.

August 18 - Future Cities

BLOG POST

Are children, millenials and baby boomers returning to cities? The best answer: sometimes, sometimes, and maybe not.

August 17 - Michael Lewyn

A new report by the office of City Councilman Brad Lander finds that New York's voluntary inclusionary housing program is failing to entice developers in large numbers, producing only 2,700 permanently affordable units over the past 8 years.

August 17 - The New York Times

A spirit of reflection seems to be in the air across America this summer. Exhibitions in Chicago, the Bay Area, and Los Angeles catalog major projects that were never built and allow visitors to imagine what might have been.

August 17 - The Architect's Newspaper Blog

A new study published this week in the American Journal of Public Health links 18.2 percent of premature deaths in the United States between 1986 and 2006 to obesity, a nearly fourfold increase over what had widely been cited.

August 17 - Los Angeles Times

Andrew Romano explores the ironic fate of the modest mid-century home in the cradle of modernist residential design, where a hot housing market imperils their existence.

August 17 - Newsweek

In what may be the most informative piece of pointillist 'painting' ever made, a demographic researcher has created a zoomable racial map of America made up of 308,745,538 dots. The result is 'strangely beautiful'.

August 17 - The Atlantic Cities

BLOG POST

Planners are futurists, but with less pretension and jargon. Our work requires predicting how current trends are likely to affect future conditions and activities, and how communities should prepare. For example, let's predict self-driving cars.

August 16 - Todd Litman

The battle over who can present the most compelling infographical maps is apparently escalating. The good news, no matter the result, we all win. While these 80 maps may not explain everything, they sure do say a lot.

August 16 - Bored Panda