The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

Plans to create a waterfront rail line in Philadelphia are moving forward, as the city approves funding for environmental studies and early design work.

February 19 - The Philadelphia Inquirer

Graphic designer Martha Kang McGill took commuting data from several American cities and made an easy-to-compare representation of the information using no more than a font and some colors.

February 19 - The Infrastructurist

Google's headquarters in Mountain View, CA is not unlike many suburban office parks, but now the search giant is advocating for mixed-use development around their campus.

February 19 - TechCrunch

This profile from <em>National Geographic</em> takes an inside look at the growing and rapidly changing city of Shanghai.

February 19 - National Gepgraphic

Dr. Lawrence Frank (U. of British Columbia) et.al. looked at Atlanta to make the connection between health reform and transportation reform, devising a clever 'energy index'. While the index rose in denser neighborhoods, it didn't in mixed-use ones.

February 19 - Streetsblog

Columnist Jeanne Haffner goes hands-on to learn how graphic representation is used in the day-to-day work of planning.

February 19 - Next American City

CNN ranks 10 American cities according to housing affordability, and finds that foreclosures, median incomes and the availability of developable land all influencing housing affordability.

February 18 - CNN Money

Officials in Atlanta are pushing forward with plans to build a streetcar, despite being left out of a recent federal stimulus-led package of transportation grants.

February 18 - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Paul Keogh, the new president of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland, says that a politically-driven planning system ran unabated during the Irish boom, emphasizing development at all costs.

February 18 - The Irish Times

Des Moines, Iowa, is undergoing a rapid and thorough urban revival -- at least when compared to other cities. By Des Moines standards, the city's pace is par for the course.

February 18 - The New York Times

Resilience science has typically been applied to ecosystems. But now, scientists are starting to look at how it relates to cities.

February 18 - Seed

<em>Next American City</em> kicks off their new podcast by interviewing the Brookings Institution's Alan Berube about how the economic recession is playing out in American cities and metropolitan areas.

February 18 - Next American City

The abandoned infrastructure for an inner-city rail project in Lima, Peru, has been adapted into a playful amusement park.

February 18 - Treehugger

New housing and apartment construction was up 2.8 percent in January, according to the Commerce Department. That's 591,000 new units.

February 18 - NPR

Five speakers detail how programs to beautify streetscapes, improve neighborhood retail climates and bring fresh food to urban stores paid off for store owners and community residents alike.

February 18 - Urban Farm Hub

Bob Herbert asks, 'What's wrong with us?' in this editorial on America's crumbling infrastructure and the uphill battle to get it fixed.

February 18 - The New York Times

FEATURE

If we are "urbanists," does that mean we're anti-suburban? Or do choice and economics define our choices? Architect Fanis Grammenos reflects on his own history of shelter and the ideology of urbanism.

February 18 - Fanis Grammenos

DOT Secretary Ray LaHood announced $1.5 billion in transportation grants this morning, including $23 million towards a streetcar project in Dallas.

February 17 - The Dallas Morning News

Lowell, Mass. has one of the largest populations of Cambodian immigrants in the country. City officials want to create a "Little Cambodia" neighborhood to capitalize on that strength without exploiting it.

February 17 - The Boston Globe

The US Department of Energy has created a software tool not unlike Sim City that can project scenarios for an actual population's energy, transportation and fuel needs. The software made its debut recently modeling a development in Jinan, China.

February 17 - Common Current