The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

Many predicted that 9/11 marked the end of the age of the skyscraper. Nothing could have been more wrong.

August 27 - Wall St. Journal

Traffic can be vibrant and beautiful, not fast and ugly.

August 27 - Michigan Land Use Institute

A public relations expert explains why local governments so often fail to use branding effectively.

August 27 - Fast Company

City sues Southeast Michigan Council of Governments and argues that the agency hurts Detroit’s core communities.

August 27 - Michigan Land Use Institute

A community in Southern California is divided over whether to be recognized as "little India."

August 27 - The Los Angeles Times

Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, said that experts could not confirm the existence or formation of a housing bubble.

August 26 - The New York Times

North Carolina passes a law banning electric or barbed-wire fences around public housing complexes.

August 26 - The News & Observer

Andrew Ferguson ridicules the Smart Growth America study that claims a link between obesity and urban sprawl.

August 26 - Bloomberg

BLOG POST

I have been struck lately by the progress of several projects using non-ESRI based GIS planning support systems and how often the decision to move away from ESRI has been that PC based ArcGIS cannot handle the large data sets for real-time scenario analysis.<br /> <br /> I just saw a beta demonstration of a wildfire mitigation application developed by the University of Colorado's Planning department that uses a combination of open source GIS, SQL server, and Perl coding to help cities and counties look at alternative growth futures and how they impact fire mitigation.

August 26 - Ken Snyder

Computers and high-tech equipment from Western economies are being recycled in dangerous village processing plants in China, India and other parts of Asia.

August 26 - The Sydney Morning Herald

Not everyone agrees that the housing bubble is about to end. Some say it doesn't exist.

August 26 - The Motley Fool

Two professors describe the possible economic consequences when the housing bubble begins to deflate.

August 26 - Wall St. Journal

What your neighbor drives can increase or decrease the value of your house.

August 26 - The Guardian Unlimited

The Building Industry Association makes the case for a more moderate solution instead of inclusionary zoning: "Housing Incentive Zones."

August 26 - The Planning Report

The U.S. state that is considered most endangered historic places in America has to be inventive to survive the impact of Wal-Mart.

August 26 - Common Dreams

Development in the Arab world is centering on tourism as the area attempts to diversify.

August 26 - Urban Land Magazine

BLOG POST

<img src="http://www.gutenberg.net/pics/pg-logo.png" align="right" alt="Project Gutenberg" />For those Tech Talk readers who have not yet heard about <a href="http://www.gutenberg.net/">Project Gutenberg</a>, this is an amazing project that defines the future of the Internet.<br /> <br /> Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books. They have published over 12,000 eBooks through the collective efforts of hundreds of volunteers. The <a href="http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/10000">Magna Carta</a> was the project's 10,000 e-book, published in October, 2003.

August 25 - Chris Steins

A non-profit makes ublic participation in urban planning seem less like a "chore."

August 25 - The Cleveland Plain Dealer

Developer and investor Sam Zell finds big money in small Mexican homes.

August 25 - The Slatin Report

The Auto Club of Southern California asks Senator John Kerry and President George W. Bush 5 questions on transportation.

August 25 - Westways