The Daily Source of Urban Planning News
Seattle's Transit Authority Announces $17.9 Billion Plan
<p>Sound Transit is putting a major bus and rail plan on the November ballot. The Seattle Times has the details of where the money will go.</p>
An Architect-Designed Mega Plan in Istanbul
<p>One of the world's largest urban renewal projects is about to break ground in the Kartal area of Istanbul, and every aspect of the new neighborhood is designed by a star architect. The Wall St. Journal reports on the new "city-building industry".</p>
Starbucks Closing Hundreds of Stores
<p>After seemingly endless expansion, Starbucks begins closing some 600 stores, prompting a "save Starbucks" campaign.</p>
'Hotel of Doom' Resumes Construction in Pyongyang
<p>After a 16-year hiatus, construction has resumed on a gigantic North Korean hotel that some architects and engineers fear is so poorly built that it will never be occupied.</p>
Cuckoo Clock Comes To City Square
<p>A Dallas suburb considers whether to change its sign regulations to allow a massive cuckoo clock in a public space. European cities often have them, but American cities rarely do.</p>
NIMBYs On Vacation
<p>Next American City nails NIMBYs for their vacation choices.</p>
Friday Funny: Developers Bad at Naming Streets
<p>Developers often see naming streets as their way of making a mark, naming streets after daughters, alma maters, or the family dog. But they often find themselves tangled up in regulations and the limits of their own creativity.</p>
Friday Funny: 'Guide Ferret' Banned From Bus
<p>OC Transpo (Ottawa's transit authority) says that Frances Woodard can no longer bring her pet ferret on transit.</p>
Moscow Tops List of World's Most Expensive Cities
<p>Moscow tops an annual ranking of the world's most expensive cities. The survey examines housing, transportation, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment for corporations and government agencies determining living costs for expats.</p>
Motor City Reconsiders Transit
<p>After over fifty years without public transportation, new support for transit from Detroit leaders.</p>
A Portrait of New Urbanism
<p>Terrain.org profiles Bradburn Village, a successful New Urbanist project in Westminster, Colorado. As one resident puts it, 'Bradburn is designed around community.'</p>
Time for a National Water Policy in the U.S.
<p>Former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega laments the incredibly disjointed and ad hoc approach to freshwater management in the United States.</p>
Personal Rapid Transit: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?
<p>Malcolm Buchanan writes that advances in control technology and the upcoming launch of the Heathrow Airport PRT mean that Personal Rapid Transit is ready for the spotlight.</p>
Coconut Grove Looks to Revamp, Modernize Waterfront
<p>Miami's Coconut Grove waterfront neighborhood may receive a makeover if city commissioners approve a new master plan. However, one questions remains: who is going to fund it?</p>
NPR's Talk of the Nation Highlights Amtrak Long Distance Travel
<p>Former travel editor Catherine Watson is interviewed on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" about her Amtrak trip on three long-distance trains from Minnesota to New Mexico that illustrate the difference between travel and transportation.</p>
SF's New Federal Building is Green and Safe, But Is It Good?
<p>Witold Rybczynski visits Thom Mayne's new Federal Building in downtown San Francisco. He finds a number of energy conservation innovations at play, but concludes that precious little else is playful or human about the architecture.</p>
America's Dying Middle Class
<p>Rolling Stone pundit Matt Taibbi writes that the media are missing the real story: that millions of Americans are financially drowning under home heating costs, gas prices and debt, and the middle class is disappearing.</p>
Does CA Drought Mean No Growth? Bill Fulton Says No
<p>Although water is a natural resource and often discussed as such, the real issue for California is how water gets used. Bill Fulton argues that California has plenty of water. What it needs is political will to make the best use of the water.</p>
Highway Funding: The Last Bastion of Socialism in America
<p>Since 1956, federal, state and local governments have invested nine times more capital funding in highway subsidies than in transit.</p>
Appalachia Creates a 'Suitability Map' to Entice Responsible Development
<p>A key idea of western North Carolina's Mountain Landscapes Initiative is to create a map of land already in conservation, layered with land that <em>should</em> be preserved, so that developers, builders, and residents together can plan responsibly.</p>
City of Mt Shasta
City of Camden Redevelopment Agency
City of Astoria
Transportation Research & Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University
City of Camden Redevelopment Agency
Municipality of Princeton (NJ)
Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada
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