The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

America 2050 recently released a report ranking the best intercity corridors for high speed rail investment.

September 21 - The Infrastructurist

Barring that, he has some eight proposals for the transportation reauthorization bill, including eliminating long-range transportation planning and clean air mandates.

September 20 - The Cato Institute

Retailers like Best Buy, Kohl's and Apple evidently think the market is looking up, and are planning to open new stores. But, Retail Traffic Magazine reports, retailers are going to be a lot pickier about site selection this time around.

September 20 - Retail Traffic Magazine

This report from <em>NPR</em> looks at Houston's growth pattern, and the evolution of a city that at once provides a high quality of life but also creates a big environmental impact.

September 20 - NPR

Portland is well-known for many things in the urban planning community. Now, it's being recognized as a leader in stormwater management.

September 20 - The Oregonian

Palm Springs officials are working to fill the windows of empty storefronts with art and movie posters in order to keep the streetscape feeling lively.

September 20 - The Los Angeles Times

Planetizen's Nate Berg reports on advertisers in Los Angeles using steam cleaners to put corporate logos into the grimy sidewalk. Advertisers claim, "If anything, we've improved public property. We've cleaned up streets that were normally filthy."

September 19 - LA Weekly

Matsys, an experimental architecture firm, used the book <em>Dune</em> as a starting point for its design of a terraced, sunken city form focused around preserving water.

September 19 - BLDBLOG

Arlington, Texas, is home to the Dallas Cowboys' football stadium. But as the largest American city with no public bus or rail lines, getting to the stadium is no easy task.

September 19 - The Dallas Morning News

By combing through images on Flickr, a team of researchers has created a 3-D model of the city of Rome constructed from 150,000 tourist snapshots.

September 19 - Gizmag

Imagining cities of the future can bring about some pretty wild predictions. But when they're visions of existing cities, these futuristic predictions can be almost realistic.

September 19 - io9

A German filmmaker seeking publicity pulled a hoax on the German news, creating a fake terrorist attack on the fake California City of Bluewater. The elaborate hoax involved creating fake websites for the city and the local TV station.

September 18 - boingboing.net

We've gotten a lot of responses on our Top 100 Urban Thinkers list, particularly those wanting to separate out the 'bad' from the 'good'. Mary Newsom was inspired by the list to ponder, who was the worst?

September 18 - The Naked City

This year, the Environmental Protection Agency will expand its WaterSense program to label newly built homes which are 20 percent more water-efficient than standard homes. The label's landscaping clause is causing a stir among grass enthusiasts.

September 18 - The Wall Street Journal

Federal authorities recently announced $45 million in support of plans to construct a magnetic levitation train line between Las Vegas and Southern California, re-igniting a debate over two proposed rail connections.

September 18 - The Las Vegas Sun

BLOG POST

<p> Traffic is essentially &quot;an engineering issue,&quot; says author Tom Vanderbilt. &quot;But there&#39;s also a layer of culture.&quot;<br /> <br /> That layer of culture determines, to a large extent, how traffic can become a problem. This idea is explored in Vanderbilt&#39;s 2008 book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307264785?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=planetizen&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0307264785" target="_blank" title="Traffic, by Tom Vanderbilt - on Amazon">Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)</a>, a <a href="/books/2009" target="_blank" title="Planetizen Top Books 2009">Planetizen Top Book</a> of the year. He recently expanded on that idea for a discussion about traffic put on by <a href="http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/" target="_blank" title="Zocalo Public Square">Zocalo Public Square</a> in (where better?) Los Angeles.

September 18 - Nate Berg

A public art park has sprung up on a corner in Manhattan on loan from a local developer waiting to build on the land.

September 18 - The New York Times

A profile of James Mallory, GISP, whose job in the Oklahoma County assessor's office sometimes involves using GIS to locate historic trails and treasure.

September 18 - The Journal Record (OK)

Citing the estimated current cost of repairs as a partial reason for noncompliance with federal law, Caltrans heads to court against disability advocacy groups. The agency has failed to maintain or upgrade thousands of curbs and intersections.

September 18 - Los Angeles Times

In the Seattle suburb of Medina, security cameras are now capturing all vehicle driving into the city, and using license plate recognition software to check cars and drivers for criminal records.

September 18 - The Seattle Times