The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

SF Streetsblog looks at cities that have timed traffic lights on busy bike streets to best suit their pace, and argues that Valencia St. in San Francisco is a prime candidate for retiming. (VIDEO)

February 1 - Streetsblog

As other power cities struggle through the recession and fall from grace, now may be Washington D.C.'s time to shine, according to Joel Kotkin.

February 1 - The Washington Post

BLOG POST

<p> The second semester in planning school at Penn is defined by a major project in which students are broken into groups, given a problem region, and tasked with, in the space of three months, coming up with a plan comparable to what professionals do in 12 to 18 months. Over those three months, the students get intimate with their designated locale, exploring every nook, cranny and underused land parcel. </p> <p> Helloooooooooo, Cherry Hill, New Jersey. </p> <p> There’s an old John Gorka song called “I’m From New Jersey.” It goes, “I’m from New Jersey/ It’s like Ohio/ But even more so/ Imagine that.” I’d bet good green cash he was driving down Route 70 when he wrote that. </p>

February 1 - Jeffrey Barg

The Honolulu City Council has agreed to slightly re-work the route of the region's recently-approved light rail system to connect with Honolulu International Airport -- a move that has angered some residents.

February 1 - Honolulu Star-Bulletin

Nearly half of Americans want to move to a different part of the country, according to a new survey. Denver and San Diego rated as the most desirable cities to relocate to.

February 1 - USA Today

BLOG POST

<br /> A few weeks ago, I read a newspaper article commenting on a pedestrian who was killed in a car crash; the article suggested “educating pedestrians to cross at intersections.”  But sometimes, some pedestrians are actually safer crossing mid-block.<br /> <br /> Here’s why: when I cross at the intersection nearest my suburban apartment, I have to look for traffic coming from a variety of directions: not just oncoming drivers in both directions who might run red lights, but also drivers turning from the corners of the intersection. <br />

January 31 - Michael Lewyn

As rural villagers abandon farms for the city, tropical lands are reverting to rainforests.

January 31 - The New York Times

Tijuana is literally built with the development waste of nearby San Diego, California. This video by Laura Hanna shows how.

January 31 - The Nation

Transit officials in Eugene, Oregon, have announced plans to install a test route for a magnet-guided bus technology.

January 31 - The Register-Guard

BLOG POST

<p class="MsoNormal"> Two years ago the Planetizen editors asked me to contribute a monthly blog posting. The first one appeared in February 2007 and I have managed to submit <a href="/blog/10386" target="_blank">posts </a>monthly for two years. In accepting the assignment, I decided that I needed to have an angle. I write, teach, and practice about the substance of planning so I decided to do something else—provide advice for students on how to enter and succeed in planning programs. Martin Krieger at USC already provided a terrific <a href="http://blogs.usc.edu/sppd/krieger/" target="_blank">advice column</a> for doctoral students so I decided to focus on students in professional planning programs. </p>

January 31 - Ann Forsyth

In the slow recovery from Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is finally getting into the green movement.

January 31 - MSNBC

The Project for Public Spaces has released a summary of the top ten trends shaping the future of America's communities -- from public markets to community-based transportation planning.

January 31 - Project For Public Spaces

BLOG POST

<p> <span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: 'Courier New'">Perhaps the biggest difference between the design processes in Europe and North America, at the building scale and increasingly at the neighbourhood scale, is in the use of design competitions. I&#39;ve been fascinated by this difference</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: blue"> </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: 'Courier New'">for some time, and make a point while in every competition-friendly city I&#39;m in, to dig a little deeper. </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: 'Courier New'"> </span> </p>

January 30 - Brent Toderian

Hoare Road, East Breast, and North Piddle are actual place names that get a chuckle out of most people. But when it comes to the more "aesthetically unsuitable" names, feelings are divided.

January 30 - The New York Times

A researcher of weird roadside attractions stumbled onto an unusual clash of land uses - cemeteries wedged into parking lots. Here's a collection of photos.

January 30 - Roadside Resort

Wes Marshall and Norman Garrick, after a study of data from 130,000 car crashes in California, have determined that cities built since since 1950 have more dangerous roads than those built before 1950.

January 30 - New Urban News

Queensland University of Technology Prof. Jeannie Sim says that while density has increased in the city, green spaces have diminished.

January 30 - The Brisbane Times

Less than a year ago, downtown Los Angeles was seen as a rising star, on a path towards becoming a vibrant and humming urban core. But the economic dive has stalled many projects, and they could be stalled for quite a while, according to this column.

January 30 - Los Angeles Magazine

Portland's new Westside Express Service officially opens today, carrying passengers from Beaverton to Wilsonville. The Oregonian calls it, "a punch of hard-rolling rust-and-grease."

January 30 - The Oregonian

An organization in Chicago's Little Village gives tours to educate its Mexican-American residents on how they can improve their notoriously polluted community. Grassroots efforts like this are being lauded by environmental justice groups.

January 30 - Chicago Tribune