The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

A new report ranks all 50 states and the 51 largest American cities in terms of bicycling and walking levels, safety, funding, and other factors.

January 24 - Alliance for Biking and Walking

When a building in blighted Highland Park, Michigan was demolished, a painted advertisement on the adjacent building was revealed. Nearby, other ghost ads remain, "nearly as bright" as ever. Dan Berry reports on why we're so fascinated by them.

January 24 - The New York Times

The good news is that the $390 million renovation of the Javits Center on the west side of Manhattan is coming along well and on target to be completed in 2014. The bad news is it that it will likely be torn down shortly thereafter.

January 23 - The New York Times

FEATURE

Are cities across the country acting negligently in ignoring the property tax implications of different development types? Joseph Minicozzi thinks so, and he's done the math to prove it.

January 23 - Joseph Minicozzi

Paul Knight delivers an impassioned defense of the gridded urban form against its many criticisms -- that its boring, its unnatural, its only use is to maximize profits for developers, etc.

January 23 - TheGreatAmericanGrid.com

Tom Vanderbilt writes about the current crop of self-driving cars in Wired. "After almost a hundred years in which driving has remained essentially unchanged, it has been completely transformed in just the past half decade."

January 23 - Wired

Scott Carlson profiles the work of Dr. Richard J. Jackson, chair of Environmental Health Sciences at the UCLA's School of Public Health, one of the leading voices calling for better urban design for the sake of good health.

January 23 - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Zappos founder Tony Hsieh and his team went from designing a new campus to an entirely new collaborative city in downtown Las Vegas for Zappos employees and other emerging members of the creative class.

January 23 - CNN Money - Fortune Tech

Apple's decision to performs most of its engineering and manufacturing overseas, highlights how the US government and the US manufacturing industry can no longer compete internationally. " 'Made in the U.S.A.' is no longer a viable option."

January 23 - The New York Times

Eric Jaffe writes of an article appearing in the January issue of the <em>Journal of Urban History</em> in which the forgotten story of a time when Hollywood's jealous co-star tried to claim her throne is re-told.

January 23 - The Atlantic Cities

Oklahoma City Mayor, Mick Cornett, discusses the powerful role cities play in job creation and economic stability.

January 23 - NPR-Morning Edition

The APA has announced its 2012 National Planning Excellence Award winners. Award recipients come from a diverse array of locales including: New York City; Wilmington, North Carolina; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Cleveland, Ohio.

January 23 - Planning.org

The gaze of the world's starchitects has turned lovingly towards the lowly parking garage. New projects by Zaha Hadid, Herzog & de Meuron, Frank Gehry, and Enrique Norten in Miami give a makeover to the Cinderella of structures.

January 23 - The Wall Street Journal

<em>The Dirt</em> profiles three recent projects that play with the ideas of landscape, nature, and the eye of the beholder.

January 22 - THE DIRT

What do New Orleans, Detroit, and Phoenix all have in common? Each one has confronted some of our most pressing challenges of our time and has a lesson of survival to teach us.

January 22 - Practicing Architecture

Real estate speculators are being fined big bucks in Cleveland for letting properties sit vacant, but the jury's still out on whether this is the key to stabilizing neighborhoods.

January 22 - Shelterforce

A pedestrian safety study from the University of Maryland overstates the perils of walking while using headphones, while ignoring a fundamental reason for auto-pedestrian accidents--dangerous streets lacking adequate infrastructure for pedestrians.

January 22 - Transportation for America: campaign blog

A new report highlights the threat posed to a wide range of species by the extraction of fossil fuels in the United States.

January 22 - CommonDreams

Christopher Hawthorne reviews an exhibition at the Center for Land Use Interpretation in Los Angeles on the subject of nine places in the United States that claim to occupy the center of the country.

January 21 - Los Angeles Times

In announcing a new initiative led by ULI and the Greenprint Foundation, Ed McMahon looks at the disconnect between politicians and the marketplace in the debate around climate change and U.S. energy policy.

January 21 - Urban Land