The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

As officials in San Francisco debate the city's historic preservation policies, this column looks back at some of the ways the city has successfully preserved its past and some of the ways the process is broken.

May 5 - San Francisco Chronicle

In Vancouver, where rents and housing prices are moving beyond the reach of ordinary citizens, the search for proven ways to provide modest market housing is on.

May 5 - The Dependent Magazine

New York City has created its own version of the census to track transportation in the city, a job it says the federal government's counting system does poorly.

May 4 - The New York Times

BLOG POST

By all logic, the comic strip character Dagwood should be fat, sick and impoverished due to his gluttonous eating, sedentary habits, and automobile-dependent lifestyle. Blondie should worry about his high blood pressure and clogged arteries [...]

May 4 - Todd Litman

The capper to the San Pablo Avenue Streetscape Project is to be a public art project that would line the boulevard. But the art commission in charge has rejected the artists' plans as "poorly done" and wants them to come back with a new concept.

May 4 - Patch

<em>National Journal</em> asks its panel of experts whether the U.S. needs more highways, and if they should or shouldn't be a major part of transportation funding in the near future.

May 4 - National Journal

Michel Martelly is the newly elected president of Haiti. He faces the large challenge of rebuilding much of the country's population center, which was devastated by an earthquake in January 2010.

May 4 - Architectural Record

Plans to redevelop former salt ponds in the San Francisco Bay Area have pitted environmentalists against New Urbanists.

May 4 - Grist

FEATURE

Planetizen intern Victor Negrete explains how he made the choice to attend planning school, and the thought process he went through deciding which schools to apply for, and ultimately to attend.

May 4 - Victor Negrete

One of the problems with switching to electric cars is the range of the vehicles per charge. But what if the roads themselves provided a constant charge, like a third rail?

May 4 - Txchnologist (GE)

This article from <em>The Economist</em> explains why America's transportation system is failing, and how the federal government's infrastructure funding mechanisms are contributing to the decline.

May 4 - The Economist

Los Angeles has taxed itself to raise money for transit projects, and now officials want to borrow against those future earnings to speed up projects. This article wonders if that's a model other cities can and should follow.

May 4 - The Minn Post

Megacities are quickly on the rise in China. But as this post from <em>New Geography</em> argues, they've managed to avoid problems currently faced by other megacities in developing nations.

May 4 - New Geography

Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster and a group of local stakeholders is circulating a proposal that would help the state of California and generate revenue for local redevelopment. Is it too late for a win-win in California?

May 4 - The Planning Report

L.A.'s landscape architects are relatively obscure compared to their architect counterparts. Is this obscurity the reason landscape architecture isn't as protected as architecture?

May 3 - Los Angeles Times

Conor Friedersdorf writes that Los Angeles is made up by 88 different municipalities, 10 million residents and a lot of unincorporated territory, making it difficult to decide who controls what.

May 3 - The Atlantic

Counter-intuitively, Natl. Real Estate Investor says that sales in physical stores is supported by increases in broadband, and therefore the internet seems to enhance retail sales in shops.

May 3 - National Real Estate Investor

Public health researcher Anne Lusk argues that installing bike routes separate from motor vehicles will boost cycling and make compact communities work better.

May 3 - New Urban Network

Portland, Oregon, famed in planning circles, has a diversity problem that is only getting worse. Downtown is getting whiter, while the demographics of the surrounding area get more diverse.

May 3 - The Oregonian

The New York City Department of Transportation's yearly statistical smorgasbord adds a new tool: neighborhood travel profiles showing how people arrived in eight neighborhoods. In many of them, the number of drivers was in the single digits.

May 3 - Streetsblog