The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

WebUrbanist brings together fifteen innovative, creative, and absurd experiments in parking, from VW's robot stacker to eco parking to parking meters on gravestones.

January 26 - WebUrbanist

The downturn in the economy has hurt the auto industry, leaving many cars unsold. Storage of these cars is becoming a problem for many automakers.

January 25 - Guardian

A new review of Oregon's land use system calls for a reworking of the state's policies to allow counties and regions to make more focused and appropriate decisions.

January 25 - The Oregonian

Light reflecting from streets and glass buildings in cities have been found in a recent study to disrupt animal behavior.

January 25 - BBC

Wannado City in Sawgrass Mills, FL, is a model city in a warehouse that gives kids a chance to play at having jobs. Broward County Transit has chipped in a mini bus, which drives around the city introducing kids to public transit.

January 25 - The Miami Herald

This piece from <em>Bloomberg</em> architecture critic James Russell calls for a unified approach to building the nation's transportation infrastructure.

January 25 - Bloomberg

BLOG POST

<p> The military has recently opened <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/us/05army.html?_r=4" target="_blank" title="Urban Tool in Recruiting by the Army - An Arcade - NYTimes.com">a new type of recruitment office</a> known as <a href="http://www.thearmyexperience.com/" target="_blank" title="Army Experience Center Website">&quot;The Army Experience Center&quot;</a> in a Philadelphia shopping mall. It&#39;s like an arcade, where video games and other interactive technologies provide visitors a glimpse of what it might be like to be in the military. It&#39;s a new approach, one that capitalizes on the modern teenager&#39;s affection for video games to attract them to the military life. You could call it persuasive, cajoling, or even a thinly-veiled attempt to con kids with flashy games, but, as it provides exactly what its target audience wants, the bottom line is that it&#39;s very effective. Why couldn&#39;t a city do the same thing?

January 24 - Nate Berg

An obscure new rule pushed through the Federal Highway Administration requires public toll roads to collect 'fair market value' from drivers, rather than to serve the public interest.

January 24 - On The Commons

BLOG POST

<p> Usually planners get involved in the allocation and details of creating both public and private spaces for groups of people engaged in a wide range of variety of activities.

January 24 - Rick Abelson

Boise's degrading air quality and the fear it may lead to a loss in federal transportation funding is causing local governments to improve public transit options to get commuters out of their cars. The alternative, smog testing of cars, is resisted.

January 24 - The New York Times

San Francisco building codes encouraged the creation of privately-owned, publicly-accessible spaces across the downtown. These spaces have gone underused and are little understood. A new report from SPUR attempts to clear the fog.

January 24 - Streetsblog

Architects form the University of British Columbia are calling on cities to "go wild" -- mainly by integrating ecological features into the cityscape to make it more self-contained. The result would be both sustainable and exciting, they say.

January 24 - The Tyee

Street furniture is a critical part of the urban makeup in cities. New developments in the Middle East are beginning to recognize its importance.

January 24 - Construction Week

Need a sustainable slogan to show your green cred? Look no further than Building Magazine's Sustainability Buzzword Generator.

January 23 - Building

In a new twist of "managed lanes", this comic looks at ways to accommodate cell phone users so as not to affect those not using their cells.

January 23 - Go Comics

Granville Bridge was built in 1954 for a growing Vancouver, with giant cloverleaf offramps on each end. Today, the city has taken a different direction.

January 23 - Price Tags

Jon Zemke ponders the many possibilities for building a world-class transportation network throughout metro Detroit.

January 23 - Metromode

2008 saw one of the greatest number of deaths worldwide from natural disasters. Factors contributing to the high number of deaths include extreme weather brought about by climate change, as well as rapid urbanization in vulnerable areas.

January 23 - The Globe and Mail

A massive WWII-era airfield in Berlin has been closed down, but city officials are looking for ways to take advantage of the large space. New ideas abound -- from a proposal for a "red light" district to plans for an artificial mountain.

January 23 - Der Spiegel

Landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx, featured in a new exhibition in Rio de Janeiro, used the principles of cubism and abstraction to create modern landscapes using native tropical plants.

January 23 - The New York Times