The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

San Jose is considering a personal rapid transit system for the airport, throwing $4 million at a feasibility study for the "pod cars."

May 26 - The San Jose Mercury News

<em>Wired</em> profiles Charles Komanoff, who's hoping to use his immense spreadsheet of New York City traffic data to clear the city's congestion.

May 26 - Wired

Finding financing is one of the biggest challenges for transit-oriented development. How did Portland convince its lenders to get on board?

May 25 - Streetsblog

James Howard Kunstler uses his time at the Congress for the New Urbanism to reflect on the road the New Urbanists have taken, the opposition they've faced, and the bubble financing that made it all possible.

May 25 - Kunstler.com

BLOG POST

<p class="MsoNormal"><span>For most planning programs in the U.S. this is the end of the semester. Having read literally hundreds of papers over the past few months I have reflected on the lessons of better papers for writing in planning.</span></p>

May 25 - Ann Forsyth

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs basically says that some needs supercede others. Jarrett Walker argues that the need for speed on transit ranks significantly higher than placemaking, fun and other "self-actualizing" concerns.

May 25 - Human Transit

A new App from the Museum of London uses geo tagging and Google Maps to identify locations seen in their artwork, giving users the ability to see how the historic site used to look.

May 25 - Creative Review

Metrics provider Ookla rates the cities in the U.S. and around the world on the speed of their internet connection. No.1, no surprise, is San Jose, CA. No. 2?

May 25 - Gigaom

Taiwan's North-South high-speed rail line has attracted a lot of customers away from a traditional commuter rail line. The traditional line is playing the nostalgia card by bringing out old-fashioned railway box lunches.

May 25 - Focus Taiwan

A Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) rider calls out her least favorite fellow commuters, from inconsiderate people in the handicapped spots to the person munching their fries while everyone is headed home and hungry.

May 25 - Contra Costa Times

DOT Secretary Ray LaHood is taped while speaking at a community meeting in Manhattan's Chinatown expressing enthusiasm for 'tolling', though it's not clear what roads or bridges would be tolled, which was clarified in a subsequent email.

May 25 - Transportation Nation

Philip Kennicott decries the growing number of "windows" in new buildings that are covered from the beginning with advertisements, eliminating their usefulness as "eyes on the street."

May 25 - The Washington Post

Mumbai architect and MIT Professor of Architecture Rahul Mehrotra says that Mumbai is misunderstood as two distinct areas, the "formal" and "informal" city, instead of as a "kinetic" model.

May 25 - The Global Urbanist

Architects in San Francisco say that the Planning Department has gotten increasingly involved in design decisions over the past two years, favoring traditional projects over contemporary designs.

May 24 - Curbed SF

Richard Florida says that his city of Toronto needs to implement some real, physical changes to inspire economic recovery.

May 24 - The Toronto Star

Four years ago, artist Julien Berthier put up a fake business front on a blank wall in Paris. Today the door is still there, one of a handful of fake storefronts in the world, says Geoff Manaugh.

May 24 - BLDGBLOG

In Philadelphia, a recent planning school graduate and his friends are attempting to create a pop-up park in East Passyunk using social media and contest winnings as funding tools.

May 24 - Philadelphia Inquirer

Five young architects have taken over a derelict home in Detroit and are using it as a full-scale studio for new design ideas.

May 24 - The Architect's Newspaper

BLOG POST

Scandinavian countries are often praised for the forward-looking planning practices associated with social democracy. Urban planning there includes lots of enviable features, but a tour of a high-profile project outside Oslo, Norway was a reminder that even an urbanist’s paradise includes political fights, squabbles among interests, and embarrassing delays familiar anywhere else. Progressive politics encourage progressive plans, but the process and pitfalls remain the same.<br />

May 24 - Greg Smithsimon

Though funding is usually the limiting factor in road projects, the current shortage of a chemical is creating a sharp undersupply of the paint used to paint road lines.

May 24 - The New York Times