The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

While transportation activists in Los Angeles are getting behind a plan to cram 30 years of transportation projects into a decade, environmentalists in nearby San Diego want to do 50 years worth in the same amount of time.

January 26 - Streetsblog LA

Getting around Atlanta can be a challenge, according to some in the city. And as growth continues, public transit will need to play a bigger part in moving the city, according to this article.

January 26 - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

With a downtown largely devoid of trees, Minneapolis is considering a new plan that would add more green life and greenspace to the city's center.

January 26 - MinnPost

This debate from <em>China Daily</em> offers a point-counterpoint over whether Chinese cities should be embarking on major subway building projects.

January 26 - China Daily

Yonah Freemark tackles the big question, as House Republicans deliver an agenda to reduce federal spending that proposes deep cuts to transit spending.

January 25 - the transport politic

Artist Tracy Snelling makes obsessively detailed miniature reconstructions of mundane landscapes like liquor stores, strip clubs, McDonalds and Walmarts.

January 25 - Hi Fructose

With a new plan called "Connecting El Paso", the Texas city is on track for a transit-oriented future. Kaid Benfield says the plan is "nothing less than a comprehensive guide to smart growth design and implementation."

January 25 - NRDC Blog

The Boston Globe discovers that midsize towns across Massachusetts are ditching the mall and revitalizing their downtowns.

January 25 - The Boston Globe

The U.S. spends far less on its infrastructure than many other countries, which some say will hurt the nation's competitiveness. The U.S. needs to build infrastructure, but as Neal Peirce argues, with a few caveats.

January 25 - Citiwire

Officials in New York are pushing a plan known as Vision 2020, which is aimed at restoring the city's waterfront areas and creating new public spaces. It also hopes to create preconditions for waterfront industries and businesses to grow again.

January 25 - The Gotham Gazette

Building owners in downtown Chicago are hoping to push forward a project aimed at creating a "smart grid" of energy-efficient and energy-producing buildings.

January 25 - The Architect's Newspaper

The U.S. war in Afghanistan is also a broad infrastructure building effort, according to military officials who talk about a rail building effort known as the Silk Road Initiative

January 25 - Transportation Nation

Brookyln City Councilman David Greenfield is introducing legislation that would allow pregnant women special parking passes if they have a note from their doctor.

January 25 - New York Daily News

The rural Midwest produces much of our nation's food supply, and yet small towns in the heartland and around America are increasingly and ironically becoming food deserts - places where citizens have little access to fresh, healthy foods.

January 25 - Grist

Scott Thill makes the case for high speed rail, and how it can contribute to a more sustainable future nationwide -- but conservative politicians at the state level appear set to derail it.

January 24 - AlterNet

Redevelopment agencies are vital to job creation and necessary for central cities to stem suburban job sprawl, claims Gerald Metcalf, executive director of a SF urban think tank (SPUR), countering CA Gov. Jerry Brown's proposed elimination of them.

January 24 - San Francisco Chronicle - Sunday Insight

Peace and Security professor Michael Klare warns that we are entering a period of global resource scarcity and unrest.

January 24 - AlterNet

With many scratching to make a living in a badly damaged economy, coworking is springing up to meet the needs of independent workers.

January 24 - New Urban Network

There are 12 community benefit districts in San Francisco, which raise their own taxes to create funds for various local projects. But some argue they favor big businesses.

January 24 - San Francisco Chronicle

The city of Detroit is increasingly characterized through imagery of its abandoned and decaying buildings. This piece from <em>The New Republic</em> says it's time to stop.

January 24 - The New Republic