The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

<p>Cities across California are taking extra steps to encourage people to use their bikes, offering such services as full-service bike stations equipped with showers, and even valet bike parking.</p>

April 24 - The Los Angeles Times

<p>Legislators in Texas are proposing the creation of a commuter rail line running throughout the fast-growing border region near the Rio Grande River. Though the proposal was voted out of the state senate in early April, proponents are pushing forward.</p>

April 24 - AP via Express News

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<p>This week, a few stories circulated around our office that generated some discussion. One was a piece in <em>The New Yorker</em> by Nick Paumgarten on commuting in America entitled <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_paumgarten" target="_blank">&quot;There and Back Again&quot;</a>. The tease at the beginning sums up the entire piece: <em>&quot;People may endure miserable commutes out of an inability to weigh their general well-being against quantifiable material gains.&quot;</em><br /><br />In this story, the writer accompanies commuters in Manhattan and Atlanta while attempting to understand the life of an &quot;extreme commuter.&quot;

April 24 - Anonymous

<p>Many have criticized city subsidies to lure corporate employers as a wasteful use of taxpayer money, but new evidence has also correlated the subsidies to urban sprawl. Neal Peirce discusses the evidence.</p>

April 24 - The Washington Post Writer's Group

Australian farmers may soon lose access to irrigation if drought conditions don't improve -- which may prove to be the first climate-change related disaster to hit a developed nation.

April 24 - The Independent (UK)

<p>A peninsular area of land in Greenland has become an island off its coast due to rising sea levels, which scientists attribute to global warming.</p>

April 24 - The Independent

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It&#39;s increasingly clear that the future of the car in Asia, and possibly Africa and the Middle East as well, is going to be shaped as much by what happens in the Shanghai region as Western cities were by Detroit in the 20th century.<br /><br /><blockquote>Last week General Motors (GM) unveiled a hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered version of its Chevrolet Volt concept, a family of electric cars that get a portion of their energy from being plugged into the electrical grid. The first version, announced in January, married plug-in electric drive to a gasoline or ethanol generator that can recharge the battery.<br />

April 24 - Anthony Townsend

<p>With mounting evidence that the lifestyle promoted by car-oriented suburbia can lead to increased risk of obesity, the idea of people consciously moving to a healthy-oriented, walkable neighborhood isn't so far-fetched.</p>

April 24 - The San Francisco Chronicle

<p>Professor Robert Fishman, author of "The Fifth Migration", argues that Americans' rediscovery of inner cities will give even troubled cities like Detroit a major boost.</p>

April 24 - The Detroit Free Press

<p>A new set of principles and findings to guide future planning in the city has reportedly been giving to planning staff and decision makers.</p>

April 24 - Curbed LA

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<p>It&#39;s been a great week for city planning here on the East Coast. The American Planning Association&#39;s 99th National Conference held in Philadelphia drew more than 6,000 attendees, a fact noticed by <em>Philadelphia Inquirer </em>writer Inga Saffron in her April 13th column titled &quot;Welcome, Welcome City Planners,&quot; where she took the opportunity to draw local and national lessons from the event. The APA opened with Robert Kennedy&#39;s address on environmental planning and closed with an exploration of the legacy of Edmund Bacon (Philadelphia&#39;s director of city planning from 1949-1970), but more about that later. </p>

April 23 - Eugenie Birch

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Typically I have fallen into the “every day is earth day” camp. But this year, April 22nd offered a moment for reflection, although of a more professional than personal nature.<br /><br />Green is everywhere these days – from Vanity Fair to the Wall Street Journal. The decades long debate about the validity of climate change appears to be over – as the discussion seems to be quickly shifting to either: a) how do we make it less dramatic, or b) how we prepare for the inevitable.<br />

April 23 - Walker Wells

<p>National award winning "green development" is getting attention in Salem, Oregon.</p>

April 23 - Salem Oregon Statesman Journal

<p>The expanding light rail system in metropolitan Salt Lake City, Utah, is giving many developers opportunities to build transit-oriented housing and retail projects, especially in the suburbs.</p>

April 23 - The New York Times

<p>Designers and community development corporations collaborate on concepts for infill development along Philadelphia's commercial corridors.</p>

April 23 - The Philadelphia Daily News

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<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Last week, my home city, Los Angeles, lost out to Chicago for the right to represent the United States in the international competition to host the 2016 Olympics.<span>  </span>Since an Olympic city selection represents the ultimate inter-urban beauty contest – dare I say, a kind of urban “International Idol” – what did this process tell us about the state of urban planning in two of America’s largest cities?</font><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> </font> </p>

April 23 - Ken Bernstein

<p>The tide in mall development is changing to incorporate elements of nostalgia for 'Americana' and a hometown feel, complete with story lines, but concerns over traffic congestion and over-development persist.</p>

April 23 - The Los Angeles Times

<p>Conservative lawmakers are using climate change as a political issue. Environmentalists are not happy.</p>

April 23 - The Sacramento Bee

<p>Russia's super-rich live in a secret suburb hidden in a forest outside Moscow.</p>

April 23 - BBC

<p>Congressional investigators calculate the insurance risk of crop damage and flooding due to climate change.</p>

April 23 - MSNBC