The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

<p>The F-Market is a streetcar line in San Francisco that features restored historic streetcars. When it was built in 1995, many saw it as a novelty, but today it is so popular and crowded that it has become an inefficient means of transportation.</p>

August 7 - The San Francisco Chronicle

<p>After years of being ranked one of the worst bicycling cities in America, the City of Boston is moving forward with bicycle infrastructure development as a means to cutting congestion and pollution.</p>

August 7 - The Boston Globe

<p>A psychology site reviews <em>Mental Health and Social Space: Towards Inclusionary Geographies</em>, a book by Hester Parr that looks at new ideas in including (or excluding) people with mental disabilities from public spaces.</p>

August 7 - Metapsychology.com

<p>The prospect of a looming MTA deficit and rising transit fares is prompting a second look at congestion pricing in Manhattan, a project defeated by the state Assembly in April, notwithstanding a federal grant for $360 million.</p>

August 7 - The New York Times

<p>Australian designer Hamit Kanuni Kuralkan has designed a transit concept lined with one-person compartments for personal space. </p>

August 7 - Treehugger

<p>China is rapidly becoming home to more and more mega-cities, and there's little sign of it slowing down.</p>

August 7 - The Washington Post

<p>New York's Chinatown is a popular place for filming, which brings a lot of film crews to the neighborhood. A temporary film crew parking ban has been put in place, but the results are mixed.</p>

August 6 - The New York Times

BLOG POST

<p> As gas prices keep rising, the public demand for buses and trains keeps growing. Yet in some cities, government is actually cutting back transit service, because rising gas prices make transit vehicles more expensive to operate.(1) But as a matter of substantive policy, service reductions are not only less desirable than service increases, but also less desirable than fare increases. As a bus rider, I’d rather pay $1.50 and know that my service is safe from fiscal crises than pay $1 and worry that my service might be reduced or canceled next month. Moreover, if fairness means spreading pain equally throughout the population, it is fairer to have everyone pay a little more than to have some neighborhoods be left without service. </p>

August 6 - Michael Lewyn

<p>We shouldn't be blaming biofuel production for rising food prices and environmental degradation while ignoring the immense harm of industrial meat production, writes Frances Cerra Whittelsey.</p>

August 6 - AlterNet

<p>The National Bridge Inventory completed in the wake of the I-35W collapse in Minneapolis has revealed numerous gaps in data and delayed inspections at the State level.</p>

August 6 - MSNBC

<p>This commentary from <em>Reason</em> looks at the prospect of a national infrastructure bank and argues that much more needs to be done.</p>

August 6 - Reason

<p>Boing Boing reports on Axel Peemoeller's award-winning parking lot design, which has giant words that snap into focus when you stand (or drive) in the right position. </p>

August 6 - Boing Boing

<p>Mom-and-pop shops in New York are being rapidly replaced with chain stores, according to a new count that shows more than 5,700 chain outlets in the city.</p>

August 6 - The Daily News

<p>A new high-speed rail line has opened in China, just in time for the Olympics.</p>

August 6 - BBC

<p>Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels recently announced a plan to close off certain roads to cars on Sundays starting this month. Local business owners are worried that closures will keep people away.</p>

August 6 - The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

<p>San Francisco has passed some of the strictest green building requirements in the nation, for new construction and renovations.</p>

August 6 - The San Francisco Chronicle

<p>A Montreal business group sold sponsorship rights to Budweiser for an outdoor event on a closed street, but restauranteurs setting up outside think the deal goes too far as they are forced to sell the watery beer to their patrons.</p>

August 6 - The Globe and Mail

<p>Early buyers in new housing developments are finding themselves stranded in virtual ghost towns as developers go belly up.</p>

August 5 - Wall St. Journal

<p>Streetsblog reports that Hillary Clinton has followed the lead of Congress and introduced a version of their recent transit bill.</p>

August 5 - Streetsblog

<p>Alex Steffen of WorldChanging proposes that globalization could soon change direction as transportation costs increase.</p>

August 5 - WorldChanging