The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

BLOG POST

<p> The military has recently opened <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/us/05army.html?_r=4" target="_blank" title="Urban Tool in Recruiting by the Army - An Arcade - NYTimes.com">a new type of recruitment office</a> known as <a href="http://www.thearmyexperience.com/" target="_blank" title="Army Experience Center Website">&quot;The Army Experience Center&quot;</a> in a Philadelphia shopping mall. It&#39;s like an arcade, where video games and other interactive technologies provide visitors a glimpse of what it might be like to be in the military. It&#39;s a new approach, one that capitalizes on the modern teenager&#39;s affection for video games to attract them to the military life. You could call it persuasive, cajoling, or even a thinly-veiled attempt to con kids with flashy games, but, as it provides exactly what its target audience wants, the bottom line is that it&#39;s very effective. Why couldn&#39;t a city do the same thing?

January 24 - Nate Berg

An obscure new rule pushed through the Federal Highway Administration requires public toll roads to collect 'fair market value' from drivers, rather than to serve the public interest.

January 24 - On The Commons

BLOG POST

<p> Usually planners get involved in the allocation and details of creating both public and private spaces for groups of people engaged in a wide range of variety of activities.

January 24 - Rick Abelson

Boise's degrading air quality and the fear it may lead to a loss in federal transportation funding is causing local governments to improve public transit options to get commuters out of their cars. The alternative, smog testing of cars, is resisted.

January 24 - The New York Times

San Francisco building codes encouraged the creation of privately-owned, publicly-accessible spaces across the downtown. These spaces have gone underused and are little understood. A new report from SPUR attempts to clear the fog.

January 24 - Streetsblog

Architects form the University of British Columbia are calling on cities to "go wild" -- mainly by integrating ecological features into the cityscape to make it more self-contained. The result would be both sustainable and exciting, they say.

January 24 - The Tyee

Street furniture is a critical part of the urban makeup in cities. New developments in the Middle East are beginning to recognize its importance.

January 24 - Construction Week

Need a sustainable slogan to show your green cred? Look no further than Building Magazine's Sustainability Buzzword Generator.

January 23 - Building

In a new twist of "managed lanes", this comic looks at ways to accommodate cell phone users so as not to affect those not using their cells.

January 23 - Go Comics

Granville Bridge was built in 1954 for a growing Vancouver, with giant cloverleaf offramps on each end. Today, the city has taken a different direction.

January 23 - Price Tags

Jon Zemke ponders the many possibilities for building a world-class transportation network throughout metro Detroit.

January 23 - Metromode

2008 saw one of the greatest number of deaths worldwide from natural disasters. Factors contributing to the high number of deaths include extreme weather brought about by climate change, as well as rapid urbanization in vulnerable areas.

January 23 - The Globe and Mail

A massive WWII-era airfield in Berlin has been closed down, but city officials are looking for ways to take advantage of the large space. New ideas abound -- from a proposal for a "red light" district to plans for an artificial mountain.

January 23 - Der Spiegel

Landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx, featured in a new exhibition in Rio de Janeiro, used the principles of cubism and abstraction to create modern landscapes using native tropical plants.

January 23 - The New York Times

The long-term planning principles that have made the National Mall a successful and adaptable public space were in the spotlight during the Inauguration. Cities should take a lesson, argues Christopher Hawthorne.

January 23 - Los Angeles Times

Plans to scrape hundreds of thousands of acres of the Mojave Desert for solar panel installations may endanger wildlife and are pitting environmentalists against each other.

January 23 - Salon.com

As the Federal government prepares to pour massive amounts of funding into road infrastructure, James Russell sends up a warning that the 'shovel-ready' projects may just be more bridges to nowhere.

January 23 - Bloomberg.com

FEATURE

John Norquist, President and CEO of the Congress for the New Urbanism, believes that President Obama should reconsider committing stimulus funds to decades-old freeway expansion projects and take transportation policy in a new direction.

January 22 - John Norquist

BLOG POST

<p> It is a chestnut of urban planning that a neighborhood must have a certain number of dwelling units per acre (usually around 8 or 10) in order to have adequate bus service. But the quarter-acre lot seems to get no respect: too dense for estate-home luxury, not dense enough to constitute &quot;smart growth&quot;. But a 9 year-old girl recently taught me that, at least for children of a certain age, these medium-density neighborhoods have their advantages. </p>

January 22 - Michael Lewyn

Secretary of Transportation appointee Ray LaHood spoke to the Senate today about Amtrak, toll roads, and sustainability.

January 22 - Grist