The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

President Obama signed the transportation bill known as MAP-21 on July 6 that also maintains low student loan rates, ending the three-year process of three-month extensions of SAFETEA-LU. He praised the bill as bipartisan and job-saving.

July 9 - The Hill's Transportation Blog

Alexandria Abramian Mott spotlights several grassroots ways -- from signs to screams -- in which "fed-up residents are reclaiming their streets, or at least trying to."

July 9 - Los Angeles Times

Sam Lubell pens an opinion piece for <em>The Architect's Newspaper</em> examining the ethical and cultural implications of unpaid internships in the architecture profession.

July 9 - The Architect's Newspaper

The Shard, as it is known, has brought about much debate for its futuristic design and the expensive apartments in a part of town that is facing economic challenges.

July 8 - The Times Colonist

Seattle's innovative Residential RainWise Program provides tools for stormwater management at home, in the hopes of reducing flooding, safeguarding property, and restoring the area's waters for people and wildlife.

July 8 - Global Site Plans - The Grid

New Orleans has only one supermarket for every 350,000 residents, and they are often in locations that are more than a mile from where low-income residents live, writes Rosa Ramirez.

July 8 - NEWS21

Community agriculture this is not. Large scale, urban agriculture is the vision of wealthy businessman and 20-year Detroit resident John Hantz that would transform blighted, East Side's vacant and city-owned properties into a profit-making tree farm.

July 8 - The Wall Street Journal - U.S.

Rebecca Solnit poses that yes, inserting food gardens into the urban landscape results in more local fruits and vegetables, but the more important crops are things like hope, justice, and community.

July 8 - Orion Magazine

Unsurprisingly, most of the projects compiled by the company KPMG called "Infrastructure 100: World Cities Edition" are in expanding countries like China and Saudi Arabia. Tyler Falk pulls out some favorites.

July 7 - SmartPlanet

The Dirt looks at some new European public plazas that use interlocking paving materials with success.

July 7 - ASLA's The Dirt blog

Without a vote to spare, the CA state senate voted to authorize $5.8 billion to begin construction in the Central Valley of the nation's first true HSR system. The assembly passed the bill earlier in the week.

July 7 - Capitol Alert (Sacramento Bee blog)

A new anthology gathers writings on New York's Central Park, which includes an observation by the artist Christo that the park is "the most unusual and surrealistic place in New York City."

July 7 - The New York Times

Curtis Johnson details an unexpected trend in downtown Motor City, where a spike in housing demand may hint at the comeback promised in Chrysler's famed Superbowl ad.

July 7 - Citiwire

BLOG POST

A frequent query I receive from students is whether they should focus on gaining a broad understanding of many aspects of planning and places or if they should focus on one topic in depth. This is an important question.

July 6 - Ann Forsyth

Willamette Week interviews U.S. Representative Peter DeFazio of Oregon about the shenanigans going on behind-the-scenes of the newly-approved Transportation Bill.

July 6 - Willamette Week

A June panel, ‘Experiencing Healthier Places’, at the AIA Design Conference in LA looked at the roles that professional planners and architects can have in fostering a healthier society through the built environment.

July 6 - The Planning Report

An armory built for the National Guard at the turn of the century may see a second life as Crown Point's newest community-oriented, multi-use complex, Raanan Geberer, reports.

July 6 - Brooklyn Daily Eagle

It all depends on who you ask, argues David Alpert. Ratepayers have pushed for buried lines before; now, there's reason to doubt it would cost as much as the utility company once quoted them.

July 6 - Greater Greater Washington

What exactly is defined by mixed-use is often somewhat up to debate. Howard Blackson of <em>Better Cities & Towns</em> helps us clarify what the term "mixed-use" should really mean.

July 6 - Better Cities & Towns

A common criticism of streetcars are their relative slow speed combined with high capital and operating costs. Still, streetcars are being constructed in both large in small cities to help incentivize development.

July 6 - The Naked City