The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

As San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom prepares to leave for Sacramento to become Lt. Governor, he praises the latest road diet plan - reducing busy Cesar Chavez St. from 6-4 lanes with landscaped median and bike lanes and views it as part of his legacy

January 7 - San Francisco Chronicle

It's not just the High Speed Rail project making news these days in California. The three 79 mph, state-subsidized inter-city lines: Capitol Corridor, San Joaquin, and Pacific Surfliner (nation's second busiest), all registered riderships gains.

January 7 - San Francisco Chronicle

Julio César Pérez is a Cuban architect and urban planner. An art gallery is showing examples of his work, a perfect occasion to reflect back on what matters in architecture and planning, and lay out his vision for the future of Cuba.

January 7 - Cuban Art News

The cities that often top the "most livable" lists like San Francisco, Portland, Boston and D.C. also happen to have the lowest percentage of households with children. Does that mean that kids make places un-livable?

January 7 - Conservative Planner Blog

A panel of "frequent fliers" chooses the best cities to have a business meeting, a convention, and all-around business friendliness.

January 7 - The Globe and Mail

In this op-ed, Daniel Shoer Roth says that fast roads are still the be-all and end-all of transportation planning in South Florida.

January 7 - The Miami Herald

By charging drivers for each mile they travel, rather than a fixed amount, pay-as-you-drive insurance could cut driving by eight percent nationally, or more than eleven percent in New York State, says a Brookings Institution report.

January 7 - Streetsblog

Jonna McKone of TheCityFix looks at Copenhagen's recently added rail cars that are specifically for bicyclists and other passengers with special needs.

January 7 - TheCityFix

Reporter Jarrett Murphy gets behind the curtain to reveal that the Obama administration is actually doing quite a lot for cities - just very, very quietly.

January 6 - City Limits

Eli Broad, a powerful force in the Los Angeles art world, today unveils the design for a $130 million building that will house his personal contemporary art collection. Broad hopes it will help be part of a revitalization of downtown L.A.

January 6 - The Los Angeles Times

California Governor Jerry Brown is settling into his new office by taking on one of the state's most controversial laws: the property tax increase limits enforced by Proposition 13.

January 6 - Los Angeles Times

This video from the <em>BBC</em> takes a tour of a new winter festival in China in which a city of sculptures has been created out of ice.

January 6 - BBC

<em>Alternet</em> runs down a list of the five best policies enacted by cities in 2010.

January 6 - AlterNet

In his annual state-of-the-city speech, Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker highlighted what he sees as his most important accomplishment: a streetcar.

January 6 - Deseret News

The U.S. Census Bureau has released a new set of formulae that dramatically change the way poverty is determined in the U.S., leaving behind the one-size-fits-all approach in use since the 1960s.

January 6 - The Washington Post

In California, some worry that the state's aging delta levees are in extreme danger of being destroyed by earthquakes. And as environmental concerns rise, the state is considering plans to re-engineer its water supplies to prevent another "Katrina".

January 6 - Miller-McCune

Developers in China are pushing forward plans to build a 4-million-square-foot shopping mall as part of a major cultural center outside of Beijing's Central business district. It will be the biggest mall in the country.

January 6 - Baltimore Business Journal

A new video features urban explorer Steve Duncan as he adventures in the abandoned subway tunnels beneath New York City.

January 6 - Wired

BLOG POST

<p> I spent the last two weeks of December in Atlanta, living (mostly) with my parents.  My life in Atlanta is much more car-dependent than my life in Jacksonville; in the latter city, I live a block from a bus stop, while in Atlanta, I live at least a mile from the nearest bus stop (and more importantly, near no sidewalks to take me to said bus stop).  So naturally, I drove everywhere in Atlanta. </p> <p> And while driving, I noticed a couple of unusual things.  First, I noticed that unlike in my Jacksonville neighborhood, bicyclists actually tried to ride on the street rather than on sidewalks.*  Second, I noticed that I was beginning to get annoyed with bicyclists- to a much greater extent than I have ever been annoyed with pedestrians while driving. </p>

January 5 - Michael Lewyn

Prevailing wisdom is that transit mode and frequency of service is dependent on residential density, which leaves low density, outer suburbs in a lurch, instilling an auto-dependent lifestyle. Not so, says Australian researcher and author Paul Mees.

January 5 - The Age: Victoria