The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

Homeownership is often promoted as a way for low-income and minority families to build wealth. But it is those very families who assume the most risk in buying a house.

July 22 - City Observatory

WBUR's Here & Now ventures outside the Quicken Loans Arena to see a distressed part of the city and region, similar to parts of Detroit and Flint. Residents want abandoned homes demolished. Take the audio driving tour of East Cleveland.

July 22 - Here & Now

Parts of California’s rural, working-class Central Valley see virtually no transportation investment, leaving many residents stranded in the heat.

July 22 - KCET Departures

Forty-two conservation districts in 25 state received grants totaling $2 million this week. The funding will create technical assistance opportunities for urban agriculture and conservation projects.

July 22 - National Association of Conservation Districts

A new study from University of Michigan researchers tallies, and then compares, the greenhouse gas emissions from different sectors of the U.S. economy.

July 22 - Fast Co.Exist

The people's choice: Pac-Man.

July 22 - CityLab

The number of inclusionary zoning programs is growing quickly around the country. A recent study by the National Housing Conference takes stock of this prominent affordable housing tool.

July 21 - American Planning Association

New York's Clean Energy Standard, if approved, would mark the first time a state put a price on carbon emissions.

July 21 - Politico

A recent study by Trulia concentrates on elasticity (i.e., the rate at which housing stock grows, relative to demand), and arrives at the conclusion that bureaucracy, not regulation, is responsible for rising housing prices.

July 21 - Trulia

A new paper studies the impacts both of specific land use regulations and land use regulations in the aggregate.

July 21 - Market Urbanism

Barcelona wants to be the world’s best city for people. To reclaim the public space and community living that residents lost to cars over the last century, the city is transforming mobility and access to public space by introducing the superblock.

July 21 - Cities of the Future

The Grand Old Party platform calls for an end to using gas taxes for public transit as well as other non-road purposes like "bike-sharing," opposes increases to the 23-year-old gas tax, and would eliminate the U.S. DOT Livability Initiative.

July 21 - Progressive Railroading

Concepts like erasure, greenfield development, and easements figure into this story about a rural community on the fringes of suburban development in Maryland's Montgomery County.

July 21 - National Council on Public History

The new board chair of Houston's Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County recently shared her ideas for the future of the transit agency.

July 21 - The Urban Edge

When the state allowed the 421-a tax abatement program to expire in January, the city of New York lost a key tool for development in the city. Now scuttled developments are blaming their demise on the lack of 421-a.

July 21 - DNAInfo

Arriving just in time in the District of Columbia, as Safe Track disrupts Metro service, General Motors launched 'Maven' to compete with ZipCar, Car2Go, and Enterprise car sharing services.

July 21 - The Washington Post

Tesla's 7kWh lithium-ion Powerwall batteries come standard in every house in the planned community of YarraBend. The community is billed as the "suburb of the future."

July 20 - RenewEconomy

A new report from Public Agenda tracks the spread of participatory budgeting, and provides guidance for implementing such processes for maximum benefit to public engagement.

July 20 - Governing

Three proposed legislative measures would undo one of the more obvious signs of the recession, and return the responsibility for street trees to the city.

July 20 - San Francisco Chronicle

What would Richard Neutra do with a third arm? UC Berkeley researchers once asked him that and more, for science.

July 20 - 99% Invisible