The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

Cities seeking to become more tech-savvy and open up their data are turning to independent software developers to solve their problems.

January 2 - Governing

Donald Shoup's market-based parking concept comes to another city, this time, Seattle.

January 2 - The Seattle Times

While the recession has affected the housing market across the country, the few state that are showing signs of recovery are mostly rural.

January 2 - USA Today

Oil has topped $90 barrel, electric cars are being touted, and the government is pushing fuel efficiency, but you'd never know it from auto sales - SUVs and trucks once again claim the top spot, having jumped 41% while small cars sales dropped 1.7%.

January 2 - The Washington Post

Reporter Dan Fitzpatrick goes to Florida, where slow foreclosures are making cranky neighbors who are footing the bill for the upkeep.

January 1 - The Wall St. Journal

Alex Marshall muses on a new T.V. show set in Portland and how distinctiveness is so important to a city's success.

January 1 - Citiwire.net

In an effort to reduce congestion, Beijing is planning to reduce the amount of vehicle registrations it issues.

January 1 - Inhabitat

The noted "antiplanner" tells the story of how, while riding a train across California, he discovered that transportation policy is driven by corrupt politics—and how he got the girl in the process.

December 31 - The Antiplanner

Recently released plans for a possible new football stadium in downtown L.A. show how the city tends to react to developers rather than guide them, according to this criticism.

December 31 - Los Angeles Times

The impact of the recession is being felt around kitchen tables in America as multiple generations have clustered in homes together after being foreclosed on.

December 31 - The International Herald Tribune

The Casa View Haven Neighborhood Association in Far East Dallas is taking the opposite approach from other local groups by welcoming homeless folks to their community and actively giving them support.

December 31 - The Dallas Morning News

The reason? Dan Zambonini proposes that the prevailing winds in most U.S. cities run westerly, so pollution from industrial smokestacks would blow through the eastern neighborhoods.

December 31 - The Januarist

Austin, Texas and Baltimore, Maryland have the right stuff to woo the high-tech industry despite their modest size, says Monique Wassenaar Silverio.

December 30 - Area Development Online

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill re-designed the former U.S. Steel plant site, which will eventually house almost 50,000 people.

December 30 - The New York Times

"Phytoremediation" is a growing field (pun intended) of practice that uses particular types of plants to leech toxic materials out of the soil in contaminated sites.

December 30 - ASLA's The Dirt blog

Regulators have approved the construction of 9 large solar power plants in California, but many are facing opposition from local Native American tribes who say that the environmental and cultural impacts were not fully considered.

December 30 - Grist

To reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25% below 1990 levels by 2020, Massachusetts hopes to tap federal funds to help enact a 'Pay As You Drive' auto insurance program to reduce transportation emissions.

December 30 - The New York Times - Energy & Environment

Extreme weather events have had big city mayors across the world scrambling to clean up messes and prove their cities aren't falling apart. But the real issue is the climate, not the politics.

December 30 - The Atlantic

Affordable housing mandates - "inclusionary zoning" - have been a popular way for cities to deal with high housing costs. But Stephen Smith says there are real market costs, and while the empirical work is in its infancy, it doesn't look promising.

December 30 - Market Urbanism

Officials in Indonesia are increasingly considering a plan to relocate the capital from Jakarta to another, less troubled location.

December 30 - Guardian