The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

Toronto's City Hall is a massive concrete structure. Oddly, so was all its furniture, which was included with the original design. <em>99% Invisible</em> looks at this unconventional design choice, and the legacy of that furniture.

March 5 - 99% Invisible

<em>Grist</em> delves into the responses and repercussions of a recent <em>New York Times</em> story about contaminated water in Pittsburgh caused by a method of extracting natural gas known as hydraulic fracturing or fracking.

March 5 - Grist

A new gondola cable car system is opening in a Rio de Janeiro slum to improve accessibility.

March 5 - Wired

Streetfilms takes a look at the growing trend of car sharing as part of its series on cities moving beyond the automobile.

March 5 - Streetfilms

BLOG POST

<p> Working for a small municipality - regardless of its location - has all the isolating properties of a far-away fiefdom.  So it has been with great consternation that, despite being nary a narrow river&#39;s width from that island, I have been yet so far removed from the industry-insider privileges of working on transportation projects in Manhattan.  I am, admittedly, all but entirely absorbed by work in the New York City satellite of Hoboken, NJ, and while aware of progress as reported by the media, have nonetheless lost granular touch with the revolutionary day-to-day goings-on in my career&#39;s former epicenter.  From this side of the Hudson I read the broad <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/nyregion/06sadik-khan.html?pagewanted=1&amp;_r=1&amp;adxnnlx=1299299134-EbMLr

March 5 - Ian Sacs

Chinese search engine company Baidu has developed an alternative to Google's (banned in China) 3D view.

March 4 - Gizmodo

Writing for <em>The Architect's Newspaper</em>, Sam Lubell argues that current L.A. zoning regulations require architects and developers to endure a "ridiculous, disjointed, outdated process."

March 4 - The Achitect's Newspaper

A city in Michigan has initiated a plan to provide greater beach and park access to those who are disabled.

March 4 - South Bend Tribune

No matter what alternatives it can think of, the Obama Administration remains baffled why most Americans are still attached to their cars, says Fred Barnes.

March 4 - The Weekly Standard

From high drug use to overpriced housing, Vancouver has its flaws despite its 5-year strong top spot as the world's most livable city.

March 4 - National Post

Gold mining was an integral part of what made the city of Johannesburg, South Africa one of the most economically important cities on the continent. But as mining winds down, some are trying to find new ways to use the landscape of mining operations.

March 4 - Places

Cities across the country are beginning to realize the mistakes they made years ago dividing their downtowns with urban highways. The city of New Haven has decided to do something about it.

March 4 - The Christian Science Monitor

As some voices in Washington D.C. call for increasing the city's building height limit, <em>The Transport Politic</em> looks at what that might mean for transportation demands in the city.

March 4 - the transport politic

This post from <em>The City Fix</em> looks at how holidays cause mass movements of people, especially Muslims in Indonesia, and what impact those movements can have on transportation systems.

March 4 - The City Fix

The city of Reno, Nevada has installed nine different wind turbines around town to test out their varying designs in an effort to find out which is the most efficient turbine to consider for large-scale installation.

March 4 - The Wall Street Journal

BLOG POST

<p> Census data is already in for a couple of dozen states, and already blogs are starting to speculate about their lessons for American cities.  Some commentators look at the continued decline of Rust Belt cities like Chicago and St. Louis, and suggest that suburban sprawl continues (and will forever continue) unabated.  But reality is not quite so simple. </p>

March 3 - Michael Lewyn

Writing for <em>Newsweek</em>, George Will claims that the real reason that progressives are gung ho for high-speed rail is because it suppresses the individualism of Americans and makes them more subservient to government.

March 3 - Newsweek

Joel Kotkin recently argued that America is becoming more suburban. Tim Evans says that it's easy to draw that conclusion "when you define 'suburb' so loosely that it includes just about everything."

March 3 - Garden State Smart Growth

The foreclosure crisis and economic meltdown have left many American cities struggling to cope with thousands of properties being abandoned -- not just by owners, but by lenders as well.

March 3 - Huffington Post

If no solution is made by the end of this week, a government shutdown will grind Washington to a halt. As <em>Steetsblog</em> reports, that shutdown could cost the transportation sector $100 million per day.

March 3 - Streetsblog