The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

This article from <em>The Economist</em> explains why America's transportation system is failing, and how the federal government's infrastructure funding mechanisms are contributing to the decline.

May 4 - The Economist

Los Angeles has taxed itself to raise money for transit projects, and now officials want to borrow against those future earnings to speed up projects. This article wonders if that's a model other cities can and should follow.

May 4 - The Minn Post

Megacities are quickly on the rise in China. But as this post from <em>New Geography</em> argues, they've managed to avoid problems currently faced by other megacities in developing nations.

May 4 - New Geography

Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster and a group of local stakeholders is circulating a proposal that would help the state of California and generate revenue for local redevelopment. Is it too late for a win-win in California?

May 4 - The Planning Report

L.A.'s landscape architects are relatively obscure compared to their architect counterparts. Is this obscurity the reason landscape architecture isn't as protected as architecture?

May 3 - Los Angeles Times

Conor Friedersdorf writes that Los Angeles is made up by 88 different municipalities, 10 million residents and a lot of unincorporated territory, making it difficult to decide who controls what.

May 3 - The Atlantic

Counter-intuitively, Natl. Real Estate Investor says that sales in physical stores is supported by increases in broadband, and therefore the internet seems to enhance retail sales in shops.

May 3 - National Real Estate Investor

Public health researcher Anne Lusk argues that installing bike routes separate from motor vehicles will boost cycling and make compact communities work better.

May 3 - New Urban Network

Portland, Oregon, famed in planning circles, has a diversity problem that is only getting worse. Downtown is getting whiter, while the demographics of the surrounding area get more diverse.

May 3 - The Oregonian

The New York City Department of Transportation's yearly statistical smorgasbord adds a new tool: neighborhood travel profiles showing how people arrived in eight neighborhoods. In many of them, the number of drivers was in the single digits.

May 3 - Streetsblog

Calgary, Alberta is getting inventive with its transit system and considering building an urban gondola to soar high above the city and connect light rail stops.

May 3 - CBC Radio / CBC News

Joel Kotkin teamed up with Michael Shires to produce the annual Best Cities for Jobs list for <em>Forbes Magazine</em>.

May 3 - New Geography

A compromise high speed rail approach for the Peninsula to have the train use the existing Caltrain corridor without elevating or widening it may have mollified some Peninsula HSR opponents but stirred opposition by Central Valley HSR advocates.

May 3 - Merced Sun-Star

A new organization in California is advocating for reforms to make infill a more viable option for communities around the state of California. Their three talking points: redevelopment, CEQA reform, and parking requirements.

May 3 - The Planning Report

In this article, Roberta Brandes Gratz argues that demolition-based strategies are not an effective way for shrinking cities to promote revitalization. Instead, she cites a recent auction of blighted homes in New Orleans as a better alternative.

May 2 - Citiwire

Zach Patton details the effects of Seattle's zoning regulation which allows for the construction of "backyard cottages." These cottages, writes the author, are a viable way to increase urban density and provide affordable housing.

May 2 - Governing

Various plans and strategies have been crafted over the years to try to help New Orleans recover from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. While early plans took a stronger stance, the city is now taking a less heavy-handed approach.

May 2 - Architectural Record

Suburban population growth in the U.S. is still on the rise, but new trends show that those suburbs closest to urban cores and those farthest away are driving the growth.

May 2 - USA Today

BLOG POST

<p> As just about everyone in the planning profession now knows, this is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Death-American-Cities-Modern-Library/dp/0679600477/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1304357036&amp;sr=1-1"><em>The Death and Life of Great American Cities</em></a><em> </em>by urbanist icon <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs">Jane Jacobs</a>. While <em>Death and Life</em> was itself iconic, Jane Jacobs was also a great public intellectual who continually built on her ideas in subsequent books and articles.  </p>

May 2 - Samuel Staley

<em>The Wall Street Journal</em> talks with Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, about where the city is heading and how it needs to change.

May 2 - The Wall Street Journal