The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

<p>Los Angeles and Orange counties are once again home to the longest amounts of time drivers waste in traffic congestion, at 72 hours per year. Nationally, the average amount of time lost to traffic congestion is 38 hours -- nearly a full week's work.</p>

September 18 - The Los Angeles Times

<p>Rapid development is expected to bring the population of Albuquerque, New Mexico, over the 1 million mark within 15 years.</p>

September 18 - The Albuquerque Tribune

BLOG POST

<p class="MsoNormal"> It&#39;s like something out of a Flannery O&#39;Connor story. The setting is the small town of Natchez, Miss., which was built on an unstable, water-soluble bluff. An entire street, Clifton Avenue, collapsed about 20 years ago. Swallowed up. A few years back—in 1995, to be exact, Sen. Trent Lott urged Congress to shore up the bluff to save not just people—two women died in a 1980 street collapse—but &quot;to protect these historically significant properties and to prevent potential loss of lives,&quot; as he put it. </p>

September 18 - Margaret Foster

<p>Residents in the Bolivian city of Sucre are mounting an effort to have their city regain its status as the country's capital -- a designation is lost in 1899. But the costs of transferring the political infrastructure from La Paz would be immense.</p>

September 18 - International Herald Tribune

<p>The city's lauded framework plan for implementing smart growth practices has failed to deliver on its promises, say some residents and experts.</p>

September 18 - Voice of San Diego

<p>A new study shows that property values have spiked around the proposed parkway, threatening to price lower-income residents out of their homes.</p>

September 18 - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

<p>Connecticut could learn a lesson from neighboring New Jersey about how to improve its transit infrastructure.</p>

September 18 - The Hartford Courant

<p>Six years after 9/11, skyscrapers continue to be planned for dozens of American cities.</p>

September 18 - The San Diego Union-Tribune

<p>Literary fans and preservationists push for the recognition and historic designation of a Los Angeles bungalow once occupied by poet and novelist Charles Bukowski. The property is currently up for sale and threatened with demolition.</p>

September 18 - Time

<p>With constant complaints from the public and consistent reports of drug dealing and prostitution, Seattle's automated public toilets may be on their way out.</p>

September 18 - Los Angeles Times via San Francisco Chronicle

<p>A proposal to combine the planning and development services departments could give San Diego's planning director the power to plan for the long-term -- or perhaps lead to more political scandal.</p>

September 18 - San Diego Union Tribune

<p>A plan by city officials to trade public land to a developer in exchange for a new firehouse and library is under fire from residents and activists who believe the deal shortchanges the city.</p>

September 17 - Christian Madera

<p>Forgotten in the ongoing debate about new high-density development is the city's long history of multi-family and mixed-use housing.</p>

September 17 - The Los Angeles Times

<p>Property taxes along Atlanta's proposed Beltline -- a 22-mile loop of park and trails ringing downtown -- are rising sharply, threatening to displace the poor that live in adjacent areas.</p>

September 17 - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

<p>Buffalo is grappling with a blight of abandoned homes - which are directly correlated to crime rates in neighborhoods. It shares much in common with other cities well past their heyday, such as St. Louis, Detroit, and Youngstown.</p>

September 17 - The New York Times

FEATURE

With Americans living in ever larger homes, the growth of the self storage industry demonstrates the irony of an American solution to an American problem -- overabundance.

September 17 - Sriram Khe

<p>Two buildings in Baltimore were recently approved by the city's historic preservation commission as being worthy of historic designation. The only problem is that the owners don't want it.</p>

September 17 - The Baltimore Sun

<p>The Washington D.C. Council is expected to pass legislation that will require bicycle parking at apartment buildings.</p>

September 17 - San Francisco Examiner

<p>The report couldn't have come at a worse time, as Chicago prepares for fare hikes and transit cuts to make up for budget shortfalls.</p>

September 17 - The Chicago Tribune

<p>The nationwide slump in the housing market is manifesting itself in the shrinking square footage of new McMansions.</p>

September 17 - The Wall Street Journal