The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

The initial presentation of a 40-story tower, designed by Chicago architect Jeanne Gang, working for developer Tishman Speyer, prompted John King to argue in favor of the project. But will city planners and electeds grant the project an exception?

July 17 - San Francisco Chronicle

Writing for Rust Wire, Angie Schmitt wonders about the odd-person out in a proposal to redesign Public Square in downtown Cleveland: bus riders.

July 17 - Rust Wire

A pair of articles in the Times-Picayune, along with a new study from advocacy group Ride New Orleans, finds the transit system in New Orleans doing less with more.

July 17 - The Times-Picayune

Baltimore's urban gardening program dates back to 1978. A recent article details how the program works and the opportunity presented by a recent expansion to a new kind of property.

July 17 - Seedstock

Following the Rebuild by Design competition, which awarded $920 million in June, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced another $1 billion competition for innovative resilience projects in communities recently struck by disasters.

July 17 - Next City

Jonathan Walters shares news of a new study out of Johns Hopkins University finding a connection between affordable housing and the intellectual ability of children. Spend more, or less, than 30 percent on housing, and intellectual ability suffers.

July 17 - Governing

BLOG POST

What are the philosophical and practical commitments of an approach to urban planning that respects cultural differences in ways of being and building?

July 17 - Dean Saitta

By a vote of 367-55, the House passed Rep. Dave Camp's "pension smoothing" bill to provide ten months of funding for the deficit-plagued Highway Trust Fund through May. A long-term (five- or six-year) funding plan will be attempted then.

July 16 - Politico Morning Transportation

Students in Atlanta have designed a tiny house village inside a parking garage to help better understand how livable micro-housing projects can be.

July 16 - Pop-Up City

Helsinki, capital of Finland's, is working to create a "mobility on demand" system that integrates shared and public transit in a single payment network. The idea is that with such a system in place, residents would no longer need cars.

July 16 - Guardian Cities

A combination of environmental factors exposes Virginia’s coastal dwellers to some of the nation’s most severe climate change-related hazards, yet the state has almost zero plans for adaptation. Could that be about to change?

July 16 - Pacific Standard

Iowa Governor Terry Branstad supports the Keystone XL Pipeline, as do most Republican leaders. Then again, it doesn't go through his state. Not so for the newly proposed Bakken Pipeline that cuts across the heart of Iowa. No word on his position yet.

July 16 - The Des Moines Register

Although some cities in California already have mandatory water restrictions in place, the State Water Resources Control Board adopted drought regulations this week that direct water agencies to ban wasteful practices.

July 16 - Los Angeles Times

Not so fast, San Francisco Prop B (the approved measure requiring voter approval for projects exceeding height limits along the waterfront). The State Lands Commission has a legal bone to pick.

July 16 - San Francisco Chronicle

Allison Arieff tells the sordid tale of a "modestly modernist" house in Oakwood, a historic district in Raleigh, North Carolina. Despite the fully permitted house being 85 percent complete, a lawsuit by a neighbor could force its demolition.

July 16 - New York Times

BLOG POST

Transit-oriented cities are safer than car-dependent cities of comparable size, especially if one considers traffic fatalities in car-dependent cities.

July 16 - Michael Lewyn

A new study by economists Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti claims to have found the cost, in economic growth, incurred by the high price of housing in expensive coastal cities. Hint: the word trillion is involved.

July 16 - Vox

A new study by Laura Wolf-Powers at the University of Pennsylvania finds inherent conflict in the three varieties of response by community development practitioners to the foreclosure crisis.

July 15 - Science Daily

A writer laments the lack of return on investment reflected by a state DOT's decision to fund a highway-widening project for $20 million that will serve 1,100 daily car trips.

July 15 - Streets MN

A proposal for a radical reinvention of the fare structure for the country's transit systems—one that balances the cost of transit with that of driving, generates more revenue from fares, and enables more capital investments.

July 15 - CityLab