The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

FEATURE

With the auto industry struggling and car dealerships closing shop, what future do you see for empty car lots? Vote on ideas submitted by the Planetizen community, or suggest your own.

May 15 - Planetizen

According to the 2000 Census, the City of Lowell, Massachussetts has 105,000 people. Mayor Edward "Bud" Caulfield says they were wrong, and is doing everything he can to make the 2010 numbers accurate.

May 15 - The Lowell Sun

Water is predicted by many to be the reason for future conflicts. But are water wars really in our future? <em>SEED</em> magazine asks a panel of experts.

May 15 - Seed

With growing concern over safety, Chico, CA, is considering creating new zoning restrictions to control where medical marijuana can be grown.

May 15 - ChicoER.com

Legislation is being introduced in Congress to guide the course of the next five years of federal transportation spending, focusing on reducing per capita vehicle miles traveled and decreasing truck freight shipping.

May 15 - The Washington Post

Minorities are on the rise in the U.S., but the rates of growth for Hispanics and Asians are slowing down, according to recent Census figures.

May 15 - The New York Times

Anthony Flint says that we have a lot of work ahead of us to retrofit America for the next century, from replacing water heaters to replacing old government structures with new, more regional ones.

May 15 - Citiwire.net

There is a near-consensus on the deficiencies of big box retail, but municipalities don't have the will to turn them down. Provinces must step in with development guidelines, writes Christopher Hume.

May 15 - Toronto Star

In an effort to raise some cash, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed selling off some of the state's historic landmarks -- including San Quentin Prison and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

May 14 - Los Angeles Times

Regional bus service will commence for the first time between Miami and Broward County with the completion of the I-95 Express (HOT) Lanes. Recovery Act funds provided for new diesel-hybrid and articulated buses, GPS and shelters.

May 14 - Miami Herald

City councillors in Ottawa, Canada are caught up in a convoluted struggle over their ability to control the region's urban growth boundary.

May 14 - The Ottawa Citizen

Plans to build a 12,000 home waterfront development on the San Francisco Bay have some environmentalists up in arms. But the developers claim the project will exemplify "smart growth".

May 14 - San Jose Mercury News

Utopian modernism turned on its head in Caracas, where residents have made fifty-year-old superblock housing projects into the locus of sprawling improvised settlements.

May 14 - Triple Canopy

BLOG POST

<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"> Shared streets, the contemporary vernacular used to describe streets that have been intentionally redesigned to remove exclusive boundaries for pedestrians, bicyclists, cars, etc., work well within a special set of conditions.<span>  </span>It is, in reality, just a new way of describing the original use of streets (see <a href="/node/38401">this previous post</a> for more on that).<span>  </span>The most promising candidates for shared streets are those where traffic volumes are not too heavy, the route is not a critical corridor for vehicular through-traffic, activities and attractions along the street are plentiful, short distance connectivity is viable, and a critical mass of pedestrians (perhaps enough to pack sidewalks at certain times) exists.<span>  </span>A shared street may also be suitable in places where there is a desire to induce such conditions; however, care must be taken to understand the larger network effects of shifting or slowing down vehicular traffic.<span>  </span>But in some instances, seemingly unrelated changes to traffic patterns or the effects of a coincidental collection of the above conditions sometimes go unnoticed until a street that may have been all about cars gradually shifts into something I refer to as a “<em>de facto</em> shared street”.

May 14 - Ian Sacs

Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) is sponsoring the bill, with the goal of creating more parking spaces for big rigs in cities.

May 14 - Transport Topics Online

Montreal has unveiled a new bike sharing program. Though similar to the Paris Velib system, Montreal's new program differs in that it is not operated by a private advertising company.

May 14 - The New York Times

Washington's top transportation official has indicated support for the idea of beefing up transportation funds by taxing drivers by the mile.

May 14 - The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Due to the downturn in the housing market, plans for a new development that would essentially become a 20,000-person suburb in the San Francisco Bay Area have been abandoned.

May 14 - San Jose Mercury News

Old buildings could be to blame for much of a city's energy waste. That's the case in New York, where officials are putting together a plan to retrofit older buildings to be less wasteful.

May 14 - Grist

FEATURE

These are just a few of the ways Prof. Peter Bosselman of UC Berkeley analyzes the built environment in his latest book, <em>Urban Transformation: Understanding City Design and Form.</em> Julia Galef brings us this review.

May 14 - Julia Galef