The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

With a new plan called "Connecting El Paso", the Texas city is on track for a transit-oriented future. Kaid Benfield says the plan is "nothing less than a comprehensive guide to smart growth design and implementation."

January 25 - NRDC Blog

The Boston Globe discovers that midsize towns across Massachusetts are ditching the mall and revitalizing their downtowns.

January 25 - The Boston Globe

The U.S. spends far less on its infrastructure than many other countries, which some say will hurt the nation's competitiveness. The U.S. needs to build infrastructure, but as Neal Peirce argues, with a few caveats.

January 25 - Citiwire

Officials in New York are pushing a plan known as Vision 2020, which is aimed at restoring the city's waterfront areas and creating new public spaces. It also hopes to create preconditions for waterfront industries and businesses to grow again.

January 25 - The Gotham Gazette

Building owners in downtown Chicago are hoping to push forward a project aimed at creating a "smart grid" of energy-efficient and energy-producing buildings.

January 25 - The Architect's Newspaper

The U.S. war in Afghanistan is also a broad infrastructure building effort, according to military officials who talk about a rail building effort known as the Silk Road Initiative

January 25 - Transportation Nation

Brookyln City Councilman David Greenfield is introducing legislation that would allow pregnant women special parking passes if they have a note from their doctor.

January 25 - New York Daily News

The rural Midwest produces much of our nation's food supply, and yet small towns in the heartland and around America are increasingly and ironically becoming food deserts - places where citizens have little access to fresh, healthy foods.

January 25 - Grist

Scott Thill makes the case for high speed rail, and how it can contribute to a more sustainable future nationwide -- but conservative politicians at the state level appear set to derail it.

January 24 - AlterNet

Redevelopment agencies are vital to job creation and necessary for central cities to stem suburban job sprawl, claims Gerald Metcalf, executive director of a SF urban think tank (SPUR), countering CA Gov. Jerry Brown's proposed elimination of them.

January 24 - San Francisco Chronicle - Sunday Insight

Peace and Security professor Michael Klare warns that we are entering a period of global resource scarcity and unrest.

January 24 - AlterNet

With many scratching to make a living in a badly damaged economy, coworking is springing up to meet the needs of independent workers.

January 24 - New Urban Network

There are 12 community benefit districts in San Francisco, which raise their own taxes to create funds for various local projects. But some argue they favor big businesses.

January 24 - San Francisco Chronicle

The city of Detroit is increasingly characterized through imagery of its abandoned and decaying buildings. This piece from <em>The New Republic</em> says it's time to stop.

January 24 - The New Republic

FEATURE

Was Jane Jacobs a NIMBY? Did she despise density? These sort of reevaluations of Jacobs' legacy are hot at the moment. Roberta Brandes Gratz explains why the naysayers are off base.

January 24 - Roberta Brandes Gratz

A new project is seeking to create the first citywide, comprehensive urban agriculture plan for New York City.

January 24 - Urban Omnibus

A group of city leaders and activists gathered in Sacramento to protest Governor Jerry Brown's plan to close the state's redevelopment agencies.

January 24 - San Francisco Chronicle

This TIME video is titled, "What Makes Cities Smart?" But the mayors interviewed - Villariagosa, Daley, Nutter - are mostly obsessed with building public transit and high-speed rail.

January 24 - Time

A new report from BP projects world energy use for the next 20 years: decreased oil growth but more OPEC-dependent; increased coal, natural gas, and renewable usage; and a major growth in carbon emissions.

January 24 - USA Today

Streetfilms looks back at Professor Donald Appleyard's pioneering work observing the social life of streets, which proved that streets with less traffic fostered more social interactions than those with heavy traffic.

January 23 - Streetfilms