The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

Vancouver, B.C. is known for its strong commitment to progressive planning, which has resulted in a dense, vibrant downtown. Planning director Brent Toderian explains his city's biggest plan yet.

May 1 - re:place Magazine

Builder Magazine thinks its time to give the mid-rise (4-6 stories) building its due.

May 1 - Builder Magazine

In this interview, Treme creator David Simon discusses what motivated team that produced "The Wire" to turn their attention from Baltimore to New Orleans.

May 1 - AlterNet

Planners have embraced "1/4th of a mile" as the official distance that people are willing to walk to take transit. But why is that the measure, and is it accurate?

May 1 - Human Transit

Community leaders hope to raise awareness and the profile of a beloved city daughter.

May 1 - The Scranton Times Tribune

New Jersey owes the Feds $271 million for canceling the infamous, $9 billion Hudson River rail tunnel. The state was ordered to pay up in not-so-subtle terms by DOT Secretary LaHood.

April 30 - The New York Times - N.Y. / Region

Lawrence Okrent is a Chicago planning and zoning consultant and also a photographer. Recreating a series of aerial photographs from 1985, he shows the remarkable growth of the city over the last 15 years.

April 30 - The Chicago Tribune

Howard Blackson looks at new tools for fixing cities, including form-based codes, plans for complexities (neighborhoods, urban patterns, architecture), classification of character, and funding systems.

April 30 - PlaceShakers

Theodore Tremelstam argues that the United States desperately needs to develop alternate sources of fuel, awakening his buddy Bill at 3 o'clock in the morning in this Point/Counterpoint.

April 29 - The Onion

Would you believe its Olive Branch, Mississippi? Since 1990, the Memphis suburb has grown an astonishing 838 percent.

April 29 - The Commercial Appeal

To save $1 million a year, the mayor is folding the Planning Department into the department in charge of processing building permits.

April 29 - Voice of San Diego

Device Magazine features photos of places with deserted technology like the former Soviet nuclear submarine base in Balaklava, Ukraine and a ship graveyard in Lisbon, Portugal.

April 29 - Device Magazine

A new online tool uses the power of crowdsourcing to "map, inventory, and preserve the Philadelphia urban forest."

April 29 - Azavea

The great senior sell-off, rising household sizes, dropping homeownership, tighter lending standards, and other reasons why the next decade will be a disaster for homebuilders, writes Robert Steuteville.

April 29 - New Urban Network

Why is it so hard to build in New York City? Why are rents so expensive? It's partly because parking requirement are so onerous that developers are doing everything they can to avoid them, writes Noah Kazis.

April 29 - Streetsblog

The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles was built into a 1960s department store, and in the 90s the facade was fashioned to look like the grill of a vintage car. With new funds in hand, the museum wants something more "attention-grabbing".

April 29 - Los Angeles County Museum on Fire

Immigrant populations can be valuable assets to communities. This post from <em>The Atlantic</em> looks at how different countries' openness to immigrants benefits their economic development.

April 29 - The Atlantic

Infrastructure projects are lagging in Brazil, which is causing some to worry that the country won't be ready to host the 2014 World Cup.

April 29 - The National

That's Billy Burge of the Grand Parkway Association, referring to a plan in Houston, Texas to expand the city out into greenfields on the outskirts of the city.

April 28 - Streetsblog Capitol Hill

A new website offers a compelling way to understand cities through sound. It combines audio feeds from city police radios with ambient music.

April 28 - 99% Invisible