The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

<p>City planners in Charleston, SC would like to see some local malls redeveloped as mini-downtowns, filling in their parking lots with buildings, but local developers think they're insane. 'This really horrifies me,' says one business person.</p>

August 4 - The Post & Courier, Charleston, S.C.

<p>For China, the Olympics represent a struggle between letting people in and controlling what they see and do. This is a problem, writes Andrew Yang, that implicates the Olympics-related architecture in a bad way.</p>

August 4 - The Architect's Newspaper

<p>This is Mississippi's third year in a row topping CalorieLab's United States of Obesity report. The BBC goes to Jefferson County, MS to find out why.</p>

August 4 - BBC

<p>In many cities across the U.S., commuters are taking to their bikes as gas prices climb. But as the Wall St. Journal reports, it takes guts to bike in Los Angeles, where bike lanes and racks are a rarity.</p>

August 4 - Wall St. Journal

FEATURE

Wes Marshall and Norman Garrick illustrate the problem with parking plans today, and how to fix them.

August 4 - Wes Marshall and Norman Garrick

<p>In this op-ed, a builders association representative argues that proposals for inclusionary zoning laws in Minnesota that require a certain percentage of affordable housing do not achieve the goals they aim for.</p>

August 4 - The Pioneer Press

<p>Dickson Despommier, a professor at Columbia, says that global climate change will require us to reconsider growing food indoors, and proposes that farming go vertical.</p>

August 3 - Big Think

BLOG POST

<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <tbody> <tr> <td class="content" valign="top" bgcolor="#f1f1f1"><span style="font-family: Arial"> <div> <span style="font-family: Arial"><span style="font-family: Arial"> <div> <p> <span style="font-size: x-small">For over a year now, calls have multiplied to give the surface transportation program a new sense of direction. With near unanimity, the transportation community, along with most congressional lawmakers and state and local officials, have concluded that the current program has lost its focus and lacks a clear mission and a guiding purpose. A bipartisan consensus has developed that perpetuating the status quo is not the answer.

August 3 - Kenneth Orski

<p>The new Harley-Davidson Museum recently opened it's doors to the public, and the architecture firm Pentagram designed both the enormous exhibit space and the outdoor public spaces that connect the museum to the grid.</p>

August 3 - The New York Times

<p>An audio artwork called "Bus Station" will be installed in Olympia, WA's downtown transit station, to be heard over the public-address system.</p>

August 3 - The Olympian

East Fourth St. is a popular spot in downtown Cleveland, an alley lined with tables from onlooking restaurants. A recent renovation has resulted in an explosion of flowers.

August 3 - The Cleveland Plain Dealer

<p>In the summer, a handful of New Yorkers like Calvin Tsao remake public space into their own personal dining rooms.</p>

August 3 - The New York Times

<p>Architect Robert Adam likens modern architecture to modern democracy, where decisions made on high supposedly represent the will of the people.</p>

August 2 - Building

<p>This article from <em>The New York Observer</em> looks at how New York City might be different with more "livable streets".</p>

August 2 - The New York Observer

<p>Robert Poole, director of transportation at the Reason Institute, delivers an open letter to Los Angeles-area elected officials in the hopes of persuading them to adopt a federally-supported pricing system for the region's freeway network.</p>

August 2 - The Planning Report

<p>The 'Winglet' is a new, Segway-like vehicle in development by Toyota. The video shows the Winglet in action.</p>

August 2 - The Guardian U.K.

<p>San Francisco's latest attempt to mandate employers to provide benefits to their workers is to provide economic incentives to use public transit or vanpools. However, unlike prior mandates, e.g. health care, the business sector appears OK with it.</p>

August 2 - The San Francisco Chronicle

<p>This just in from The Onion.</p>

August 1 - The Onion

<p>Author Alan Ehrenhalt says that conditions are ripe for the permanent return of downtown residential neighborhoods, and that a "demographic inversion" has already begun in Manhattan, Chicago and Washington, DC, among other cities.</p>

August 1 - The New Republic

<p>In the same week that Congress passed the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, Los Angeles announcemed the New Generation Fund, a $100 million program for affordable housing.</p>

August 1 - The Planning Report