The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

Pittsburgh becomes first city in Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to hire a full-time bike/pedestrian coordinator.

August 14 - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

BLOG POST

<p> I recently read Oscar Newman’s 1970s book on crime prevention, “Defensible Space.”  In this book, Newman addressed the question of why some public housing projects are insanely dangerous, and others only moderately so.   Although Newman’s analysis is mostly confined to low-income housing, commentators of all stripes have relied on his work:  new urbanist commentator Laurence Aurbach asserts that Newman’s work supports new urbanists’ emphasis on heavily trafficked, walkable streets (1) while Randall O’Toole considers Newman to be a defender of single-use, cul-de-sac sprawl (2).                                                        <br />

August 13 - Michael Lewyn

Urban experts weigh in on the future of the suburbs.

August 13 - Freakonomics (Opinion) on The New York Times

Microsoft has introduced a spherical computer display that lets users touch the globe to interact with it. There are many likely applications for planning and public participation.

August 13 - YouTube

Escalators are major energy wasters, so many cities are looking for greener solutions. 35 new green escalators were recently installed in the New York Subway, with mixed success.

August 13 - The New York Times

An unusual coalition of environmentalists, builders,and city leaders announced their support for a controversial land use and transportation bill that aims to involve the CA Air Resources Board in setting reduction targets.

August 13 - Capitol Weekly

David Byrne, an avid cyclist in Manhattan, was asked to judge a bike rack design contest. Instead, he made his own designs, which have quickly gone up around the city.

August 13 - The New York Times

More than a quarter of all local TV ad revenue comes from car companies. Could plummeting profits from SUVs mean even worse local news?

August 13 - Streetsblog

The practice of secret bidding that goes on between cities vying for business to locate in their town has been going on since the 1920s- and there's one man responsible for it all.

August 13 - Governing Magazine

American businesses and consumers are changing their habits and finding ways to save energy.

August 13 - Wall St. Journal

With the prospect of million more residents by 2015, Colorado will need to be creative to address the infrastructure and environmental consequences of growth.

August 13 - University of Denver Magazine

In the wake of a recent scandal with MIT students hacking the subway comes a story of a Long Island couple who stumbled into a glitch in a ticket machine and exploited it for $800,000 in free tickets.

August 13 - Newsday

The public has relegated global warming well behind other issues, including high energy prices. This article examines the role of environmental groups in this backslide as the public warms to more drilling to reduce gas prices.

August 12 - Politico

A columnist in Saskatoon, after a robbery at his office, takes a look at CPTED (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design).

August 12 - The StarPhoenix

Plans are moving forward in India for Nano City, the planned city brainchild of Hotmail mogul Sabeer Bhatia.

August 12 - The San Francisco Chronicle

"Locavores" hoping to promote more sustainable agriculture through urban gardening are facing a new hurdle: infill housing projects.

August 12 - The Berkeley Daily Planet

This column from Neal Peirce looks at the new megapolitan stronghold of the Intermountain West.

August 12 - Citiwire

BLOG POST

<p>When it comes to urban policy issues such as public transit andsmart growth, self-identified &quot;Conservatives&quot; and Libertarians have turned&quot;straw man&quot; argumentation into an art form. Many of their positions are sotransparently fallacious that I feel compelled to take them down, (asI&#39;ve done in previous Planetizen op-eds [<a href="/node/25437">here </a>and <a href="/node/24107">here</a>])by systematically identifying their fallacies and documenting their misleading use of data sources. </p><p>It&#39;s easy and it&#39;s fun! </p>

August 12 - Michael Dudley

Upkeep and Water Consumption Prompt Reviews of the Esthetics of Faux Turf

August 12 - The Los Angeles Times

The Ohio Mechanical Handling Co. reflects back on designing and building the first commercial monorail in the United States for a park in Akron, Ohio.

August 12 - Akron Beacon Journal