The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

Planners in Park Slope have been experimenting with adjusting the price of on-street parking during peak hours on busy Fifth Avenue.

June 10 - Streetsblog

With what some are calling the worst classroom conditions in the nation, California is trying to solve the problem by replacing all of its portable classrooms with green buildings.

June 10 - Good

City officials in Houston are set to consider plans to incentivize broad pedestrian walkways near existing and planned light rail stations within the city.

June 10 - The Houston Chronicle

A new 350,000-person eco-city is being planned in China, this time with cooperation from Singapore. Planners are hopeful that it can serve as a sustainable model for development in countries with high population growth.

June 10 - Guardian

Italian car designer Pininfarina has announced that it will release a fully-electric, partially solar-powered car in Europe in 2010.

June 9 - Inhabitat

Boulder's open space planners are calling for the intervention of different interest groups, including dog lovers, equestrians and hikers, to set rules for the city's most popular trails.

June 9 - Daily Camera

Less than a week after Times Square became an outdoor lounge, it is already hard to find a seat there.

June 9 - The New York Times

Though they are still striving for social tolerance, mobile homes have managed to achieve a certain legal acceptance.

June 9 - Virginia Lawyers Weekly

BLOG POST

<p> <em>&quot;Buyers value the dollar per square foot, and the builder responds by delivering as many square feet of conditioned space as possible for $X. If he can deliver 100 more square feet than the competition, most buyers think it&#39;s a better value.&quot;</em> </p> <p> <em>-Ron Jones, Green Builder Magazine, in <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/06/AR2007040600934.html" target="_blank">The Washington Post</a>.</em> </p>

June 9 - Tim Halbur

A roundtable discussion on the projected growth in the Bay Area of California, and the planning tools being unveiled that will help mitigate the projected increase of an additional 2 million inhabitants to the region by 2035.

June 9 - KQED.org

American artist Mike Bouchet constructed a full-sized replica of a standard American suburban home to float outside the Venice Biennale art exhibition. Instead, the house sank, suggesting new meanings for the artwork.

June 9 - AFP

A new growth management law in Florida is both good news and bad news, says Jane Healy of the Orlando Sentinel.

June 9 - Orlando Sentinel

BLOG POST

<p> The growth in hybrid car sales is a welcome sign that a major change in the automobile industry is afoot.  The shift to transport infrastructure that is not based on the archaic complexity of an internal combustion engine, with its hundreds of moving parts and compressed fuel explosions, has been long put off by an automobile industry, happy with status quo, partnered with oil cartels with the power to price their product as if it were in endless supply.  But with smack-in-the-face-reality fuel prices last summer, the collapse of the so-called “Big Three” over the winter, and the simultaneous heralding assertion of alternative energy technologies (Daimler AG <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/19/news/companies/tesla_daimler_electric/index.htm?postversion=2009051915">bought a 10% stake in Tesla Motors</a> last month!), the fallout of western economic near-collapse has changed everything we’ve known to be sacrosanct; Leonard Lopate even waxed nostalgic about the “<a href="http://www.wnyc.org/shows/soundcheck/episodes/2009/06/08">Death of the Car Song</a>” yesterday on National Public Radio’s local station, WNYC.

June 9 - Ian Sacs

The Morris County Planning Board indicates that no new residential subdivisions of 20 or more lots were received in 2008, which signals the end of large-tract developments.

June 9 - Daily Record

Hayward, which is an East Bay suburb of San Francisco, has laid the groundwork for a nearly car-free housing development for environmentally conscious living.

June 9 - San Francisco Chronicle

The City of Santee is using Twitter and Facebook to protest a planned prison expansion on nearby county land.

June 9 - San Diego Union-Tribune

BLOG POST

<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt">One important planning approach for sustainable living is how to locate and integrate the natural and man-made attributes of the land to configure a low-carbon site for large scale development.

June 8 - Rick Abelson

The Chicago Architecture Foundation is showing a scale model of the Loop and nearby areas on Michigan Avenue.

June 8 - Chicago Tribune

BLOG POST

<p> Thanks to the <a href="http://www.vacantproperties.org/index.html">National Vacant Properties Campaign</a> for another important conference on vacant properties - this time in Louisville.  I was duly <a href="/node/27856">impressed with the first conference</a> on the subject a year and a half ago but what struck me this time was the growing diversity of voices concerned with the issue. </p> <p> At the last conference, I (and I assume many others) had the feeling that it was a therapy session of sorts for like-minded spirits.  &quot;Older industrial&quot; cities were sharing information and ideas because, while all cities are unique, we share a lot of the same challenges.   </p>

June 8 - Scott Page

Fort Lauderdale joins a national program which will provide $3.7 million to change foreclosed homes into affordable housing.

June 8 - Sun-Sentinel