The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

The winners of a competition to rethink the streetscape along 5 blocks of Syracuse's Near Westside hope to "get people out on their feet" and improve public health in the historically low-income neighborhood.

May 17 - The Architect's Newspaper

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A final, closer look on how our optimism can be our best quality and our biggest weakness.

May 17 - Norman Wright

Form-based codes extract the DNA of the desired local character, and enable it by right. Hazel Borys talks about how to get the numbers right in this week's Back of the Envelope.

May 17 - PlaceShakers

After the World Trade Center attacks, planners, neighbors, and Mayor Bloomberg supported reweaving the site into the city's street grid, in the process undoing "a painful planning error of the 1960s." Security concerns seem to have won out, however.

May 17 - The New York Times

Speaking at an event this week, Detroit's economic development czar was unabashed in his support of gentrification for the troubled city. The subject is a sore one for a city that still recalls the rampant black displacement of the 1940s and ’50s.

May 17 - Motor City Muckraker

A public presentation by the D.C. Office of Planning on the potential for amending the city's controversial height limits revealed residents' many concerns, and little support, for the Congressionally mandated review.

May 16 - Washington City Paper

BuzzFeed clearly knows its way around a New York City bike lane. A recent listicle of 44 insights into the pleasures and pains of biking in New York is sure to resonate with the city's growing cycling community.

May 16 - BuzzFeed

In recent months, new players like Apple and MapBox have taken aim at the increasingly important arena of digital mapping. With the boldest redesign of Google Maps in 8 years launched this week, "the leader in online mapping" isn't standing pat.

May 16 - The New York Times

While the percentage of American's living outside of urban areas has been declining for some time, overall rural population loss has occurred for the first time since the Census began keeping track, reports the USDA's Economic Research Service.

May 16 - USDA ERS

The USA Today editorial board argues that increasing the gas tax is the best way for states to fund transportation while Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) extolls Oregon's VMT fee pilot project, which the editors calls complex and bureaucratic.

May 16 - USA Today

A new study reveals that texting while driving causes more injuries and fatalities among teens in the U.S. every year than drunk driving. Many states still allow drivers to text.

May 16 - Pocket-lint

Since the state's 400+ redevelopment agencies were killed in 2012, cities across California have struggled to manage unfinished projects and support development in distressed neighborhoods. Civic San Diego may provides a model for life after death.

May 16 - Jonathan Nettler

A new study by the Chicago-based Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) compares that city's flood insurance claims with its floodplains, and finds a 'completely counter-intuitive' relationship between the two.

May 16 - The Atlantic Cities

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The evolution of today's infrastructure-intensive bike sharing systems has been a hard-fought learning process; alas, the current paradigm is about to get turned on its head, and it's happening – surprise - this week in Hoboken, New Jersey.

May 16 - Ian Sacs

In an op-ed for Forbes, economist Carl Schramm argues that "the practice of city planning has escaped reality." He indicts planners, and the plans that cities produce, for ignoring the economic imperatives that constitute a successful city.

May 16 - Forbes

'America 2013', a report released this week by the Urban Land Institute, presents the results of a nationwide survey on housing, transportation, and community preferences. Demographic trends indicate a continued demand for city living.

May 16 - Urban Land Institute

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Can we transform China’s Eurocentric towns from architectural caricatures into urban catalysts, and from one-dimensional exports, into reflective antidotes to the unequivocal and rapacious sprawl that continues to ravage its urban landscape?

May 15 - Vinayak Bharne

Can successful places be driven by key metrics in the same way Billy Beane assembled the 2002 Oakland As? Guest Shaker Michael Hathorne proposes a little Moneyball for cities.

May 15 - PlaceShakers

In the U.S., investment in private development has long been limited to wealthy individuals; making the type of crowdfunding that raised $239 million from 3,100 people for a skyscraper in Bogota difficult. New securities laws should change that.

May 15 - The New York Times

Code for America is planning a National Day of Civic Hacking next month to "promote transparency, participation and collaboration between governments and citizens." In advance of the event, they've explained how cities can benefit from civic hacking.

May 15 - Code for America