The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

<p>New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg views citizens as customers and city workers as assets. How does this translate into a new city hall transparency and vastly improved city services?</p>

June 20 - Business Week

<p>"The Unforeseen," a new documentary, takes a thoughtful look at the various interests at stake in the development of sprawling real estate in Austin.</p>

June 20 - NOW

<p>With many developers touting their various projects as "smart growth", the term is losing much of it meaning.</p>

June 20 - The Hartford Courant

<p>A rash of illegal tree cutting in Seattle has prompted local officials to act on the city's decreasing amount of trees and canopy cover. Tree-planting efforts hope to build the canopy back from less than its current city coverage of less than 20%.</p>

June 20 - The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

<p>Hong Kong's unique system of escalators, moving walkways, and pedestrian bridges has transformed the neighborhoods it connects.</p>

June 19 - Pruned

<p>LA Times architectural critic Christopher Hawthorne examines the depressing-looking new and massive 104-acre U.S. embassy compound being constructed in Iraq within the 'Green Zone'.</p>

June 19 - The Los Angeles Times

<p>China is establishing a living wall of vegetation to hold back the Gobi desert that is heading southeast to Beijing.</p>

June 19 - Seed

<p>Amidst Miami's highrise condo boom, the Design District offers buildings and plazas with innovative design at a more human scale.</p>

June 19 - The Miami Herald

<p>Despite big plans to make the city a national example for environmental friendliness, some say Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's measures have failed to produce the intended results.</p>

June 19 - The Chicago Tribune

<p>Sandy Springs, Georgia, with 80,000 residents, has apparently successfully outsourced all government functions, except for police and fire services.</p>

June 19 - The Tampa Tribune

<p>Margaret Wente lists Chicago's strengths and criticizes Toronto's mayor for the city's problems.</p>

June 19 - The Globe and Mail

BLOG POST

<span style="font-weight: normal"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">I recently got <a href="/node/24909" title="Mass Transit Unsustainability">taken to the proverbial wood shed on Planetizen Interchange</a> for arguing that mass transit is unsustainable. So, I decided that it might be useful to look at the mass transit system that seems to be the most successful in nation: New York City. New York has the density and economic activity to sustain transit—perhaps a best-case scenario in the U.S.

June 19 - Samuel Staley

<p>Despite a booming oil economy and a population of almost a million people, Alberta's capital city of Edmonton finds "place branding" a struggle.</p>

June 19 - The Globe & Mail

<p>Wayne Senville is on a trip across the U.S. on Route 50. He reports on how Creve Coeur, Missouri, is a well-kept suburb west of the city of St. Louis, is handling the trend of ranch homes are being torn down and replaced with McMansions.</p>

June 19 - Greetings From Route 50

<p>A long-planned transit tunnel connecting the greater Washington D.C. region to Dulles International Airport is coming up for a vote, but officials say the only way to keep the plan alive is to approve what is a seriously flawed proposal.</p>

June 19 - The Washington Post

BLOG POST

<p class="MsoNormal">An acquaintance of mine is trying to decide whether to move to Los Angeles or New York. <span> </span>Having spent most of her life in the Northeast, New York is a familiar city where she has good friends and job connections. However, she can’t help but feel the draw of the West Coast, and on a recent visit to Los Angeles, she was rather keen on settling down in Southern California, especially when she was comparing the rents in L.A. to those in New York. While rents in New York are increasingly stratospheric, L.A.’s are just exorbitantly high.</p>

June 18 - Christian Madera

<p>BBC One has commissioned The Planners, a fiery, funny and touching new fly-on-the-wall documentary series that will give viewers a unique glimpse inside some of Britain's local planning authorities.</p>

June 18 - BBC (Press Office)

<p>Researchers at UCLA and the University of Virginia have developed the largest and most complete virtual reality simulation of a historic city ever created -- Rome in AD 320.</p>

June 18 - The Los Angeles Times

<p>New regulations requiring higher density housing have some worried about the threat to urban green space in the UK.</p>

June 18 - BBC

<p>Two towers climbing hundreds of feet high above the rest of the neighborhood has some Upper West Side residents upset about the resulting transformation of their community.</p>

June 18 - The New York Times