The Daily Source of Urban Planning News
New Power Grid Would Slice Through Rural Areas
Expanding America's power grid to connect wind and solar power plants to the urban areas they fuel will require thousands of miles of transmission lines. Most of it will be built in rural areas where locals are not likely to be very welcoming.
6,000 Parking Spots, 20,000 Cars
That's the ratio on summer weekends downtown in Newport, Rhode Island. A coalition of local businesses, advocates and city officials are brainstorming solutions.
BLOG POST
London's Big Stadium Gamble
<p> The Olympics can be awesome for cities. Or they can be devastating. Rarely they're both, and most often they are an economic drain caused by over-investment in facilities with limited long-term usability. So when London's plans for a 2012 Summer Olympics stadium that would reduce from 80,000 seats during the games to a more realistically usable 25,000 seats after, Olympics experts, city officials and taxpayers rejoiced. But <a href="http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-olympics/article-23711886-details/Olympic+legacy+chief:+Keep+80,000-seat+stadium+for+World+Cup+bid/article.do" target="_blank" title="Olympic legacy chief: Keep 80,000-seat stadium for World Cup bid - London Evening Standard">recent news</a> has turned that rejoice to disgust.<br />
Should We Plan Cities To Be Temporary?
Eoin O'Carroll, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, notes the plans to bulldoze neighborhoods in decaying American cities and wonders if all this waste couldn't be avoided in the future by building more pre-fab houses.
Land Use Clash Involves "Every Piece of Law You Can Think Of"
An amusement ride business in the Town of Niagara-on-the-Lake is the center of controversy involving public space, environmental protection, and noise pollution.
Mississippi River Dams Doom Gulf Marshes
Marsh loss in the Gulf region is being exacerbated beyond repair by dams along the Mississippi River, according to a recent study.
Rainwater Collection Rules Evolving in the West
Two new laws in Colorado make legal the formerly prohibited act of collecting rainwater. Other states aren't so lenient.
London's Temporary Olympic Stadium Could Go Permanent
Officials in London are changing their minds about the main stadium being built for the 2012 Summer Olympics, which was intended to be a semi-temporary structure. Now they want it to be permanent.
A Different Kind of New York Street Conversion 100 Years Ago
While New York City is currently taking space away from automobiles and giving it to pedestrians and cyclists, the New York City of 100 years ago was doing exactly the opposite. And it was a popular idea.
Bike Activist Becomes The Man
What happens when a city hires a former bike activist to become it's mobility coordinator? No surprises, the city becomes more bike friendly.
Ways to Retrofit the City
You don't have to tear a city down to make it green, according to this piece from the <em>Boston Globe</em>, which offers some emerging ideas.
Cash-Strapped Cities Ditch Fourth of July Fireworks
Tight budgets are causing cities across the country to skip fireworks displays for their Fourth of July celebrations.
Rediscovering the River
Chicago's river has often played second fiddle to its lakefront. A new riverwalk hopes to change that.
Lincoln Center Facelift
A look at the progress in New York's Lincoln Center, as architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro look to refresh the aging public space.
The Wall Street Tax Shelter That Crashed Your Local Transit Agency
How might an obscure tax shelter called a SILO contributed to the D.C. Metro Red Line crash that killed nine this week?
FEATURE
Brainstorm: Can Cities Shrink Gracefully? Should They? How?
As the recession digs in, cities across the country are left with large swaths of abandoned or vacant places. Can these cities shrink gracefully? Do they even need to? Vote on ideas submitted by the Planetizen community, or suggest your own.
Breaking Out of Silos and Across Borders
With interdepartmental cooperation blossoming within the Obama administration, Neal Peirce wonders how things will shake down when policies hit metropolitan regions -- and the municipal borders that can impede and confuse policy.
BLOG POST
Part Time Lover - Is The Car Just An Affair?
<p> America's so-called “love affair” with the automobile, although cliché, provides a vivid description of how attached we really are to driving. Public policy, and the historically overwhelming effect of auto industry lobbying, is only partly to blame for the endemic traffic jams and smog of the twentieth century. Bruce Schaller, a transportation consultant hired by New York City advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, <a href="http://www.transalt.org/files/newsroom/reports/schaller_Feb2006.pdf">recently demonstrated</a> that urbanites with multiple transportation options still choose to commute by car for rational reasons of privacy, convenience, and speed. A chart of his, shown below, demonstrates how perplexing this choice is. Overcoming these reasons is a ser
D.C. Bus Gets Real-Time Locator Application
A new web-based application that tracks the location of Washington D.C.'s Circulator bus has been released.<em>DCist</em> reports.
BLOG POST
Finding Planners with Shared Interests: The Post-Graduation Experience
In recent months many planning students have graduated and are moving on to the next phase of life—jobs, internships, fellowships, and such. For many this will involve a move to a new place. Even those staying in the same metropolitan area will seldom make it back to their planning program, and besides their fellow students will have scattered. Graduate school provides a peer group of those with similar interests and training. How do recent graduates create such a network when they are no longer in residence at a university?
City of Camden Redevelopment Agency
City of Astoria
Transportation Research & Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University
City of Camden Redevelopment Agency
Municipality of Princeton (NJ)
Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada
Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.
