The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

Excellent transportation, telecommunications and utilities helped Vancouver, British Columbia take the top spot in The Economist's ranking of the world's most livable cities; not a single U.S. city makes the top 10.

October 5 - The Globe and Mail

Google's interest in providing wi-fi for San Francisco is good news for municipal wireless.

October 4 - Governing.com: 13th Floor

A new research paper examines Florida's ideas, focusing on the evidence in British cities, and finds little evidence that 'creative' cities do better.

October 4 - Insitute for Public Policy Research

A proposed 55-story hotel next to the downtown Convention Center already has other area hotel owners ready to fight the City Council in court.

October 4 - The Los Angeles Times

The FBI and Building Industry Association of Washington are offering $100,000 for the conviction individuals responsible for criminal acts claimed by the Earth Liberation Front (ELF).

October 4 - Nation's Building News

A group is trying to save one of the last examples of Googie architecture in Las Vegas.

October 4 - Abhijeet Chavan

The FAA approves a $15 billion budget to expand O'Hare airport -- and just as quickly, a federal court halts the project.

October 4 - The Chicago Tribune

The cost of maintaining and furnishing large houses, cost of fuel, interest rates, and land prices may be causing a "downsizing" trend in house sizes across the nation.

October 4 - The New York Times

Home size has been expanding since the middle of the last century. Meanwhile, lots are getting smaller. Economics is driving home builders to more compact, vertical homes.

October 4 - The Los Angeles Times

After Hurricane Katrina, energy conservation and renewable energy make a comeback.

October 4 - The New York Times

The Los Angeles Times architecture critic chastises the massive Los Angeles school district for not using its historic building boom to improve the architecture and planning of new schools.

October 4 - The Los Angeles Times

BLOG POST

<img src="http://66.28.40.163/images/NTEN/RegConfLogos/Logo_NTEN_Conferences.gif" align="right" alt="NTEN Conference Logo" />Abhijeet presented last week at the <a href="http://www.nten.org/">Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network</a> (NTEC) 2005 San Diego Regional Conference on open source content management frameworks for building websites for nonprofit. He published his fabulous presentation online under a creative commons license:<br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.urbaninsight.com/~chavan/2005/nten/">Building Websites For Nonprofits With Open Source Content Management Frameworks</a><br /> <br /> He really knows what he's presenting on, since much of his presentation is based on his hands-on experience with a massive project we just completed here at Urban Insight.

October 3 - Chris Steins

A high-powered group of acadedmics and critics join together to consider the positive aspects of sprawl. Are new exurban development getting better?

October 3 - The Boston Globe

Traffic simulation models offer significant benefits, but after 35 years of development and application, they still have shortcomings. A new study seeks to fill in the gaps.

October 3 - Institute of Transportation Studies Berkeley Online Magazine

Dharavi, a slum in Mumbai, India, may appear at first to be a squalid concentration of misery. It is also the prosperous home of some 5,000 single-room factories and tens of thousands of entrepreneurs.

October 3 - The Globe and Mail

FEATURE

October 3 - David Goldberg

Iowa county hopes incentives will boost population and economy.

October 3 - Michigan Land Use Institute

Austan Goolsbee explains why a short-term increase in fuel prices is unlikely to change Americans' driving habits.

October 3 - Slate

The Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission has published its comprehensive land-use guide, the 2040 Regional Framework Plan, to facilitate collaboration at the local and regional levels.

October 3 - The Chicago Tribune

The City of Boston and a group of private developers will seek to develop the last downtown frontier by adding 3 million square feet of development on what is currently a sea of parking lots.

October 3 - The Boston Globe