The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

With the centennial of the Panama-California Exposition that created San Diego's Balboa Square approaching, the city is considering turning back the neighborhood to its former car-free glory.

September 8 - The Architect's Newspaper

In this essay from Lapham's Quarterly, Lewis Lapham muses on the nature of the city: how it is perceived, by whom and for whom; and how it incubates new ideas and facilitates democracy.

September 8 - AlterNet

Cambodia has announced that it will build a new skyscraper that will be the tallest in Asia at 1,820 feet. Fast Company asks, why, in the face of grueling poverty, would they do such a thing?

September 8 - Fast Company

The City of West Vancouver is piloting a new program to help drivers slow down for the back to school season: they are projecting a hologram onto the road featuring a young girl running after a ball to call attention to driving safety.

September 8 - Globe and Mail

Dallas, Texas is building a new park on a deck over the Woodall Rodgers Freeway, a strategy for creating new public spaces that is being tried across the country.

September 8 - Governing Magazine

The Southern California Association of Governments rebuffed the CA Air Resources Board by deliberately setting lower targets for greenhouse gas emissions per SB 375, the 2008 law intended to reduce GHG emissions from transportation.

September 8 - LA. Streetsblog

BLOG POST

<p> <span style="line-height: 115%; font-size: 12pt"><span style="font-family: Calibri">Over the past decade more than $75 billion in public dollars has been invested in rail transit. Los Angeles, Seattle and Denver alone are investing an additional $65 billion to expand their systems and enhance the livability of their communities. The federal government will be asked to play a major role in funding each of those systems. Up until now the federal role in major transit investments has largely avoided the question of how we ought to design our transit systems to be good neighbors and leverage livable communities. </span></span> </p>

September 7 - G.B. Arrington

In 1970, visionary architect Paolo Solieri began envisioned a utopian city in Arizona. The resulting development, Arcosanti, and its architect have struggled for relevancy ever since.

September 7 - The Arizona Republic

The front yard of a home in suburban Plymouth, England is completely enveloped by a leylandii tree. Neighbors say it's an eyesore, the owner says he's being unfairly targeted.

September 7 - The Guardian U.K.

Shifting federal transportation dollars to transit projects could help create up to 180,000 jobs and not raise the federal deficit, according to a new report.

September 7 - Streetsblog

Most crosswalks are straight lines, but many people walk across streets in an arc. One designer has proposed changing the way crosswalks are painted to improve pedestrian safety.

September 7 - Fast Co. Design

A new book by Robert Gatje gives public squares and piazzas the coffee-table treatment, meticulously detailing what makes these historic spaces work.

September 7 - The Architect's Newspaper

Contention over how California's high speed rail train from Los Angeles should access the Bay Area appears to be the dispute that won't go away. Having just lost their case in court only 2 weeks ago, approval of the Pacheco Pass may continue.

September 7 - San Francisco Chronicle

The New York Times reports that yes, construction is beginning to move more rapidly at Ground Zero.

September 7 - The New York Times

Developing countries have begun importing Western-style pro-sprawl urban planning policies, often to their detriment. Kuala Lumpur and cities across the communist world are examined.

September 7 - Market Urbanism

The BBC reports that there is a surge in urban beekeeping in Paris, with 400 hives and growing within the city limits.

September 7 - BBC News

Low income housing can also be green housing. A new trend in home design and community activism is giving even inexpensive housing a green sheen.

September 7 - Los Angeles Times

The recent controversies surrounding the building of mosques in cities across America have their resolution in one simple acronym: RLUIPA.

September 6 - The New York Times

Mary Newsom questions the current and diminishing lack of public worth in the United States today. " Americans have stopped believing that value is something everyone deserves," she writes.

September 6 - Charlotte Observer

BLOG POST

<p> It&#39;s already disappearing. The temporary city that forms during the annual Burning Man event is fading away, as the tens of thousands of people who traveled out to live in the desert of northwestern Nevada for the past week have filed out of the void and returned back to the rest of the world. The event&#39;s organizers and volunteers are still erasing the traces of the event, from demolishing structures to removing fencing to picking up trash. Within another week or so, the entire city will have disappeared.<br /> <br /> It&#39;s an interesting way for a city to exist -- just a few weeks at a time, once a year. But it&#39;s been working for Burning Man and Black Rock City, the name of that temporary city that forms and disbands almost as soon as it comes to full life. On top of what&#39;s already a unique experiment in citymaking, the theme of this year&#39;s event was Metropolis, which spurred the tens of thousands of people and artists who make up the city to think a little more about how their &quot;party in the desert&quot; is actually a little city and community (the fourth largest city in Nevada during its run), and how it relates to their world beyond the desert.

September 6 - Nate Berg