The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

As Brazil prepares to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, renovations to the Maracana, an infamous soccer stadium in Rio de Janeiro, are pricing out the city's poor. Some say the work is killing one of the city's few egalitarian public places.

May 6 - The New York Times

This post from <em>This Big City</em> looks at how transportation needs to evolve, and some of the ways it could in the near future.

May 6 - This Big City

Density -- either high or low or somewhere in the middle -- is a key defining element of our cities. In this essay, Witold Rybczynski looks at the relative densities of U.S. cities and suggests that things may start to change subtly.

May 5 - Wilson Quarterly

While some Americans find them confusing, traffic roundabouts are good for the environment and cut down on time spent in traffic, say transportation planners.

May 5 - Marketplace

A private bus company with an internet-based reservation system is succeeding wildly, perhaps paving the way for successful bus transit (and away from rail).

May 5 - Providence Business News

When asked to describe their town at a charrette, the residents of Canon chose words like "rundown", "courageous" and "eccentric". University of Georgia students and professors worked with locals to create a vision for the town.

May 5 - The Frankling County Citizen

The U.N.'s population division has increased their world population projection, previously set to peak at mid-century at 9 billion. Now they say it will continue growing to reach 10.1 billion by 2100, with Africa tripling its numbers.

May 5 - The New York Times - World

Officials in New Jersey are planning to revive a stalled megamall project called Xanadu. <em>The New York Times</em> asks a panel of experts whether the plan should move forward.

May 5 - The New York Times

Officials in Detroit have demolished 3,000 buildings over the course of the last year, a goal set by Mayor Dave Bing.

May 5 - Associated Press

Building wind farms in the ocean is an ideal way to generate electricity, but it's not so easy to get that energy back to shore efficiently. This article looks as a transmission project that could address that issue.

May 5 - Popular Science

As officials in San Francisco debate the city's historic preservation policies, this column looks back at some of the ways the city has successfully preserved its past and some of the ways the process is broken.

May 5 - San Francisco Chronicle

In Vancouver, where rents and housing prices are moving beyond the reach of ordinary citizens, the search for proven ways to provide modest market housing is on.

May 5 - The Dependent Magazine

New York City has created its own version of the census to track transportation in the city, a job it says the federal government's counting system does poorly.

May 4 - The New York Times

BLOG POST

By all logic, the comic strip character Dagwood should be fat, sick and impoverished due to his gluttonous eating, sedentary habits, and automobile-dependent lifestyle. Blondie should worry about his high blood pressure and clogged arteries [...]

May 4 - Todd Litman

The capper to the San Pablo Avenue Streetscape Project is to be a public art project that would line the boulevard. But the art commission in charge has rejected the artists' plans as "poorly done" and wants them to come back with a new concept.

May 4 - Patch

<em>National Journal</em> asks its panel of experts whether the U.S. needs more highways, and if they should or shouldn't be a major part of transportation funding in the near future.

May 4 - National Journal

Michel Martelly is the newly elected president of Haiti. He faces the large challenge of rebuilding much of the country's population center, which was devastated by an earthquake in January 2010.

May 4 - Architectural Record

FEATURE

Planetizen intern Victor Negrete explains how he made the choice to attend planning school, and the thought process he went through deciding which schools to apply for, and ultimately to attend.

May 4 - Victor Negrete

Plans to redevelop former salt ponds in the San Francisco Bay Area have pitted environmentalists against New Urbanists.

May 4 - Grist

One of the problems with switching to electric cars is the range of the vehicles per charge. But what if the roads themselves provided a constant charge, like a third rail?

May 4 - Txchnologist (GE)