The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

Data from the Census shows that 36.7% of U.S. households pay more than 30% of their pretax income on housing, an increase of 1.5 million since 2007.

October 3 - The Wall St. Journal

The Vdara Hotel at CityCenter, designed by architect Rafael Vinoly, has an unforeseen side effect: its curving shape captures and focuses the hot Las Vegas sun, heating up visitors below like bugs under a microscope.

October 2 - BLDGBLG

Last year Toronto became the first North American city to mandate green roofs on all new residential, commercial and institutional buildings larger than 21,500 square feet. Now it has created a 118,000 square foot example on top of the City Hall.

October 2 - Metropolis Magazine

Chemical engineers at MIT were recently able to create solar energy that is 100 times more concentrated than that created by a conventional photovoltaic cell. The secret? Carbon nanotubes.

October 2 - Green Muze

USA Today's traveler reporter asks, "Should the U.S. invest in High-Speed Rail?" (readers check their answer and results are available). He cites the usual critics but also notes the challenges it must face in order to build a successful line.

October 2 - USA Today-Travel

Perceptions about the amount of time transit trips take have been found to fall significantly when people actually take transit, according to a new report.

October 2 - KALW

BLOG POST

<p> The term Green Urbanism keeps showing up unexpectedly in newspaper articles, conference session titles, blog posts, and casual conversation.  While there is an innate, intuitive sense of the meaning, green urbanism may also seem as elusive as it is evocative.  Having given this topic a fair amount of thought over the past several years, I, and my colleague and collaborator Ted Bardacke, arrived at the following working definition: </p> <p> <strong><em>green urbanism:</em></strong><em> the practice of creating communities mutually beneficial to humans and the environment </em> </p>

October 1 - Walker Wells

Keep your eyes on the road - or maybe not, with this bike path fiasco from FAILBlog.

October 1 - FAILblog

A Los Angeles Times investigation finds "widespread instances of corruption, questionable spending and poor accountability" among California's 400 municipal redevelopment agencies.

October 1 - Los Angeles Times

Spride Share is betting that Californians will, and a new bill signed into law by Gov. Schwarzenegger sorts out the insurance issues if they do so.

October 1 - Fast Company

Safety is an escalating issue in America across the maritime, air, highway and rail networks, as revealed in this extensive investigation by The Center for Public Integrity and News21.

October 1 - NEWS21

Density is an imperfect and unreliable measurement of intensity, says architect and city planner Walter Hosack, and must be replaced with a yardstick that can more accurately measure cause and predict effect.

October 1 - Cities and Design

It's needed, it's not that expensive, and it's doable. But there's one little problem in New Haven's new streetcar plan.

October 1 - New Urban Network

Sprawl affects the length of commutes, according to a new study from CEOs for Cities. <em>GOOD</em> visualizes the data with this infographic.

October 1 - Good

After a trip through Eastern Germany in 1990 photographing blasted out buildings from World War Two, photographer Stefan Koppelkamm's second trip ten years later revealed vastly renovated places -- to his disappointment.

October 1 - Der Spiegel

Housing created for the Olympic Village in Vancouver was intended to be reused after the 2010 event as affordable housing. But the province hasn't been able to find an operator. Now the city wants to move ahead without the province's help.

October 1 - The Vancouver Sun

The <em>BBC</em> talks with some of the people involved with counting pedestrians in New York City's Times Square. Since being closed off to cars, foot traffic has greatly increased.

October 1 - BBC

Amtrak has unveiled a $117 billion plan to build and increase high speed rail in the U.S.

September 30 - Fast Company

After nearly collapsing under the pressure of a free-wheeling building boom, Dubai is on the rebound. A new internal accounting effort is trying to explore what went wrong and how to avoid those mistakes in the future.

September 30 - Reuters

As a new park near the Brooklyn Bridge gradually opens in New York, the role it plays in public life in the city is already evolving.

September 30 - Urban Omnibus