The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

<p>Mom-and-pop shops in New York are being rapidly replaced with chain stores, according to a new count that shows more than 5,700 chain outlets in the city.</p>

August 6 - The Daily News

<p>A new high-speed rail line has opened in China, just in time for the Olympics.</p>

August 6 - BBC

<p>Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels recently announced a plan to close off certain roads to cars on Sundays starting this month. Local business owners are worried that closures will keep people away.</p>

August 6 - The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

<p>San Francisco has passed some of the strictest green building requirements in the nation, for new construction and renovations.</p>

August 6 - The San Francisco Chronicle

<p>A Montreal business group sold sponsorship rights to Budweiser for an outdoor event on a closed street, but restauranteurs setting up outside think the deal goes too far as they are forced to sell the watery beer to their patrons.</p>

August 6 - The Globe and Mail

<p>Early buyers in new housing developments are finding themselves stranded in virtual ghost towns as developers go belly up.</p>

August 5 - Wall St. Journal

<p>Streetsblog reports that Hillary Clinton has followed the lead of Congress and introduced a version of their recent transit bill.</p>

August 5 - Streetsblog

<p>Alex Steffen of WorldChanging proposes that globalization could soon change direction as transportation costs increase.</p>

August 5 - WorldChanging

<p>Simmons Buntin tours metropolitan Denver with local planner Carolyn Dooling and finds a host of vibrant developments.</p>

August 5 - The Next American City

<p>In Boston, architecture firm Utile and non-profit developer Urban Edge bring a new, stylish look to affordable housing.</p>

August 5 - The Boston Globe

<p>Wendell Cox looks at commuting patterns, and finds that the old supposition that most commuters are going from suburban housing to urban jobs no longer holds water.</p>

August 5 - newgeography

<p>In the aftermath of a grisly and unprovoked murder on a Greyhound Bus, Transport Canada and municipalities are looking at how to improve security on buses and trains.</p>

August 5 - The Montreal Gazette

<p>Southern Maine planners, who have long subscribed to the idea that they worked in rural, car-dependent communities, are beginning to embrace density, mixed-uses, and transit.</p>

August 5 - Portland Press Herald

<p>Official sources show that Minnesota had been long diverting bridge repair funds to build new highways.</p>

August 5 - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

<p>The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, the MPO for the Philadelphia metropolitan region, has introduced an innovate way of making people aware of the benefits of older, established suburbs: market them.</p>

August 5 - The Philadelphia Inquirer

<p>Neal Peirce sums up the movement across the country in cities like Houston, Denver, and Charlotte towards improved transit systems, while latecomer Atlanta wakes up to their transit deficit.</p>

August 4 - Citiwire.net

<p>Rock Port, Missouri, population 1300, has become the first community in the country with more wind power that it can use.</p>

August 4 - National Public Radio

<p>Andres Duany and other experts discuss how the convergence of high gas prices and the foreclosure crisis may reverse years of cheap gas and cheap exurban land. He's pushing mixed uses and reformed zoning in suburbia, and he's betting on Texas.</p>

August 4 - U.S. News & World Report

<p>Citizens in Weston, Massachusetts, one of America's toniest suburbs, continue to block a local college's effort to build senior housing, raise its endowment and provide scholarships for low-income students.</p>

August 4 - The Boston Globe

<p>HUD's new report shows an astonishing decline in homelessness across the United States, but some groups are saying that they are too good to be true.</p>

August 4 - Newsday