The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

Al Gore's new documentary "An Inconvennient Truth" uses a personal narrative to drive home the urgency of the global warming problem.

May 26 - Grist

Hercules, CA, threatens to use eminent domain to keep out retail giant Wal-Mart.

May 26 - The San Francisco Chronicle

Los Angeles' leaders have an opportunity to show some courage and extend the "current brainless configuration" of the area's subway system.

May 25 - The Los Angeles Times

Smaller cities across Southern California, like Santa Clarita, have discovered that being friendly to small businesses yields big rewards, especially when the mammoth City of Los Angeles is too big to care.

May 25 - The Los Angeles Times

With the Canadian government under Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper backing away from Kyoto in favor of a "made-in-Canada" solution, Jeffrey Simpson of the Globe and Mail asks, "If not Kyoto, then what?"

May 25 - The Globe and Mail

The "man architecture critics love to hate", New Urbanism co-founder Duany, has been shaping the debate over how to revitalize the Gulf Coast.

May 25 - The New York Times

A New Yorker columnist compares today's sky-high energy prices with those during the Carter administration, and the scare of the terrorism of September 11 to that of December 7, 1941. She suggests that increasing the gas tax should be considered.

May 25 - The New Yorker

The success of Atlantic Station, a large scale mixed-use urban development, proves the need for a more pedestrian friendly environment in auto-dominated Atlanta.

May 25 - The New York Times

The city council of Hercules, CA, votes unanimously to use eminent domain to take Wal-Mart's land and stop it from building a store.

May 25 - The San Francisco Chronicle

An open space preservation coalition led a visioning exercise for the future of Seattle, to "design Seattle's green network for the next century".

May 25 - The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

GM responds to higher gas prices by offering those who purchase SUVs in California and Florida subsidies on their gas expenses.

May 25 - Associated Press

Plans to build the largest offshore wind power generating station in the world off of Cape Cod are being challenged by local residents -- including wind energy supporter Senator Edward Kennedy.

May 25 - The Globe and Mail

Some younger families and retirees are choose to "downsize" their homes. The decision comes with several lifestyle benefits.

May 24 - Parade

An independent study finds that 3.1 billion in repairs made to New Orleans' levee system won't protect the city from another Katrina-like hurricane.

May 24 - The Los Angeles Times

You may not have heard of him, but Portland's Homer Williams is busily making big changes in Downtown Los Angeles.

May 24 - Los Angeles Downtown News

New York Senator Hillary Clinton has revealed her plans to make ethanol use widespread by 2015. Is it a coincidence that Iowa, site of the first presidential caucus, is a leading producer of the fuel?

May 24 - Associated Press

We can do a lot of things to move to a future powered by alternative energy sources. One of the most important, writes K.C. Golden, is to elect leaders who are willing to tell us the truth -- that fossil fuels are expensive.

May 24 - Tom Paine

Canada's Environment Minister defends against intense criticism of her country's decision to back out of the Kyoto Accord, but hints at future commitments if a new international consensus emerges.

May 24 - The Globe and Mail

The Int. Journal of Health Geographics publishes a study on how "GIS and cluster analysis makes it possible to objectively characterize urban neighborhoods and to select comparable and/or contrasting neighborhoods for community-based health studies."

May 24 - International Journal of Health Geographics

Author Matt Dellinger examines the work of the New Urbanists in Mississippi and Louisiana, and whether or not New Urbanism has reached the tipping point in terms of wider acceptance.

May 24 - Oxford American