The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

A huge crowd braved un-Texas-like weather this weekend in Dallas to participate in the "Festival of Ideas." The Dallas Morning News hopes the citizens of Big D will keep up their momentum in working to improve their city.

March 4 - The Dallas Morning News

In some places, it might be hard to imagine even considering a cap on the development of commercial development. Palo Alto, home to Stanford University and a hot bed of California's tech industry, did just that in City Council earlier this week.

March 4 - Palo Alto Weekly

The Wall Street Journal examines desalination efforts on the Central and South Coasts, starting with the reactivation of a Santa Barbara plant. Notwithstanding criticisms on costs and environmental damage, eight plants have been built since 2006.

March 4 - The Wall Street Journal

With as many as a half-dozen groups vying to develop an NFL stadium in Los Angeles, things were bound to get ugly. And they did. A report warns of a possible terrorist attack at one stadium site. The report's publisher? Backers of a rival stadium.

March 4 - California Planning & Development Report

A sweeping remodel of Cleveland's Public Square (designed by James Corner Field Operations) will begin construction later this month, to be complete in time for the 2016 Republican National Convention.

March 4 - The Cleveland Plain Dealer

Alain de Botton has an idea that beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, when it comes to cities anyways. He also proposes a system for evaluating the beauty of the world's cities (spoiler: most cities don't qualify).

March 4 - CityLab

FEATURE

"Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land-Use Regulation," by Sonja Hirt, describes the exceptional characteristics, compared to European land use regulations, that make U.S. zoning laws so conducive to sprawl.

March 4 - Josh Stephens

OpenStreetMap has released an animated map to illustrate the impressive growth of the project over the first ten years of its existence.

March 3 - Maps Mania

The Nissan Leaf, the world's best selling electric vehicle (EV), has a major depreciation problem: leasing contracts are so favorable that when the lease expires, dealers return many of them to the manufacturer because of low demand.

March 3 - The Wall Street Journal - Business

Historic planning documents, like those found in the APA's Planning Advisory Service, are full of lessons about how past planning doctrines failed their intentions, and it's always a good time for planners to re-evaluate their antecedents.

March 3 - Strong Towns

An exhibit at LA’s Annenberg Space for Photography looks at how different communities are adapting in order to become resilient to the threats of climate change - a review by LA County planner Clement Lau.

March 3 - UrbDeZine

An article by Sven Borg for the Idaho Statesmen introduces the concept of infill while also detailing some of the challenges facing a wave of development in Downtown Boise.

March 3 - Idaho Statesman

California's cap-and-trade market saw its largest carbon sale, $1.02 billion, thanks to millions of motorists now paying about a dime a gallon for the right to emit carbon for the first time since the program began in November 2012.

March 3 - The Sacramento Bee

Streetsblog NYC analyses one of the street design standards in place in New York City that will make it impossible to achieve zero pedestrian fatalities under Vision Zero.

March 3 - StreetsBlog NYC

A free app, still very nascent in its adoption, alerts drivers to the presence of bikers.

March 3 - The Chicago Bicycle Advocate

A proposed development in in the North Loop section of Minneapolis would be the first of its kind. According to the architect behind the design, the "T3" project, as its known, could be a harbinger of buildings to come.

March 3 - MinnPost

The Brookings Institution has been using new media formats to illustrate the striking demographic changes sweeping the country.

March 3 - Brookings

Officials in the country of Spain have proposed a crackdown on drunk walking. The effect of the law would be to equate the pedestrian's use of the road with the drivers of automobiles.

March 2 - Guardian Cities

Let's discuss how community planning could be fundamentally reorganized to improve both efficiency and placemaking.

March 2 - Better Cities & Towns

One of the largest ongoing planning efforts in the city of Los Angeles is an update to the Mobility Element of the city's General Plan. A revised version of the draft "Mobility Plan 2035" was released in February.

March 2 - Curbed LA