The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

Harvard comes out on top for their master of landscape architecture program, while the best bachelor's degree, according to DesignIntelligence, is from Louisiana State University.

December 8 - ASLA's The Dirt blog

A student idea brought to life, bring.BUDDY is a smartphone app that connects packages that need to be delivered with people who are already headed in that direction. The volunteer deliverers earn points for transit and other goodies.

December 8 - Springwise

A draft of new LEED requirements has been released for public comment, and it includes a new category that accounts for location and accessibility.

December 8 - BuildingGreen.com

Like many other towns, Hooper, Nebraska (pop. 827) started to die when a bypass was built around it. To bring folks back to the town's core, residents and business people of Hooper came together to remind the world of Hooper's existence.

December 8 - New York Times

Alternating current (AC) beat out direct current (DC) because it worked well over short distances. But direct current is significantly easier to control on a smart grid and travels better, says Herman J. Trabish.

December 8 - greentechmedia

In this opinion piece from <em>The Huffington Post</em>, Alex Becker argues that retrofitting suburban landscapes with denser development trumps all other sustainability agendas as the single most important path to a more sustainable future.

December 7 - The Huffington Post

Kaid Benfield of the NRDC thinks it is time to add more specifics to the definition of smart growth. He prescribes a set of six new focus areas, including equity and health, that he argues should be emphasized in the 21st-century smart growth agenda.

December 7 - Natural Resources Defense Council

Hong Kong's oldest living resident, the banyan tree, once lined entire streets in the city and provided an iconic presence that many enjoyed and many felt classified as a nuisance. Now, due to urban expansion, only a cluster of twenty trees remain.

December 7 - The Wall Street Journal

Jonna McKone details her case for integrated, systematic approaches to problems in the realms of urban mobility and sustainability. Can seamless connectivity between sectors such as planning, business, and energy create better long-term solutions?

December 7 - The City Fix

Today Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter announced the ambitious 'Green 2015' plan to turn approximately 500 acres of city land into public green space over the next five years, with a focus on bringing parks to currently underserved communities.

December 7 - PlanPhilly

Officials and thinkers from all over came together to brainstorm with Montrealers on how to go about reigning in decades of sprawl. A new Quebec law requires the city to come up with a land use plan by next year.

December 7 - The Montreal Gazette

Transportation bills are notorious for being chock full of earmarks, and with new attention being brought to curbing them, how will good policy get passed? A handful of experts are discussing the problem over at the National Journal.

December 7 - NationalJournal

A new 28-mile expansion makes the city's system is the largest in the nation, but is it actually changing travel habits? Yonah Freemark investigates.

December 7 - the transport politic

The newly formed Gary Region and Investment Project (GRIP) hopes to bring about a turnaround for the struggling Indiana city.

December 7 - Chicago News Cooperative/The New York Times

Russia has been developing a $2 billion alternative to the American GPS system. This week, a programming error sent 3 critical satellites crashing into the Pacific Ocean.

December 7 - The Christian Science Monitor

A new musical comedy, "In the Footprint: The Battle Over Atlantic Yards," brings song and dance to the conflict over the redevelopment of the Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn. <em>The NY Times</em> reviews it as "fresh, inventive"...and "entertaining."

December 6 - The New York Times

Designers and "movement specialists" in Great Britain are pioneering various street designs that aim to bring traffic speeds down to teens, which they claim is the speed range that allows vehicles to safely share a space with pedestrians.

December 6 - New Urban Network

Ben Brown reviews Dhiru Thadani's new book, The Language of Towns and Cities. Weighing in at 800 pages, this encyclopedic urban design dictionary defines planning terms with extensive graphics.

December 6 - PlaceShakers

In an experiment in social data gathering, Slate's Michael Agger suggests that there is a host of ways we could be contributing our personal data to help make better policy decisions.

December 6 - Slate

Japan's yard-less city dwellers are increasingly drawn to "weekend farming" plots rented from commercial farmers on the urban fringe. Could it help the country's struggling agriculture sector? Kenji Hall reports.

December 6 - Los Angeles Times