The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

<p>A homeowner on the verge of foreclosure in Las Vegas is not going down without a fight. He is literally destroying his home from the inside out.</p>

June 25 - CBS 8 Las Vegas

<p>Landscape architect Gary Sexton worked on a tight budget and dodged commissions and regulations to create a beautiful vision for downtown Bremerton (near Seattle).</p>

June 25 - The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

<p>Fort Worth, Texas officials try to tackle the thorny issue of gas pipelines snaking through residential neighborhoods.</p>

June 25 - Fort Worth Star-Telegram

<p>Toronto's Metrolink brings together city and transportation planners to brainstorm the transit of the future.</p>

June 25 - The Toronto Star

<p>Two new parks in San Francisco show how great neighborhoods are defined by their public spaces, according to this article from the <em>San Francisco Chronicle</em>.</p>

June 25 - The San Francisco Chronicle

<p>Following on the success of its bike-sharing system, Paris is planning to unveil a citywide green car-sharing system.</p>

June 24 - The Guardian

<p>Steven Malanga writes about the resurrection of Bushwick, a Brooklyn neighborhood, from its decrepit past.</p>

June 24 - City Journal

<p>An unusual art installation in Trafalgar Square draws attention to Vancouverism: Westcoast Architecture and City Building, an exhibition about the city's achievements in urban development, engineering and architecture.</p>

June 24 - The Vancouver Sun

<p>Boston's Fort Point Channel neighborhood, New England's largest artist community, is struggling to retain its identity as developers continue to transform studio space into condominiums.</p>

June 24 - The Boston Globe

<p>A year after a new freeway was completed in Southern California, traffic data shows increased use. Officials plan to widen the freeway to handle the increased load.</p>

June 24 - The San Bernardino Sun

BLOG POST

<p> In August of 2006, an unknown Irish company called Steorn took out a full-page ad in The Economist to announce that they had created a magnetic technology that produced more energy than it used- essentially, a perpetual motion machine, the Holy Grail of energy. </p>

June 24 - Tim Halbur

<p>A developer in New Jersey is looking to shipping containers as building blocks for affordable housing.</p>

June 24 - Courier-Post

<p>In this excerpt from his forthcoming book, Subprime Solution, economist Robert J. Shiller writes of our tendency to succumb to "bubble thinking," and the role this has played in the current mortgage crisis.</p>

June 24 - Atlantic Monthly

BLOG POST

<p> Yesterday’s Washington Post contained <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/23/AR2008062300297.html?hpid=news-col-blog">a list of elite public schools</a>- schools where the average student SAT is over 1300. Since suburban schools generally have better reputations than urban schools, one might expect that all the schools on the list would be in prestigious suburban school districts. But in fact, this is not the case. Three New York City schools (Stuyvestant, Hunter College, Bronx High) and one school near downtown Richmond (Maggie Walker) are on the high-SAT list- despite the fact that the New York City and Richmond school districts, like nearly all urban school districts, have mediocre reputations. </p>

June 24 - Michael Lewyn

<p>Transit officials in Chicago are calling on the city to rebuild its historic streetcar system. Rails still exist on many streets, but city officials are leaning away from streetcars and towards bus rapid transit.</p>

June 24 - Chicago Sun-Times

<p>In this op-ed piece, Kevin C. Phelan and Yanni Tsipis argue that Boston's 'Big Dig' has only fought half the battle, calling for a more proactive approach to building over the city's other auto sewer, the Massachusetts Turnpike.</p>

June 24 - The Boston Globe

<p>Despite predictions that the city was dying, St. Louis has just won an "All-America City" award. Neal Peirce looks at how the city turned itself around.</p>

June 24 - The Washington Post Writers Group

<p>A new airport overlay district in Sioux Falls, South Dakota has nearby homeowners crying 'taking!' Airport officials say, 'All we're trying to do is make sure we have good neighbors.'</p>

June 24 - The Argus Leader

<p>Building a strong country is reliant on strong urban regions, according to Senator Barack Obama, who recently spoke with a conference of U.S. mayors about the importance of urban growth. Federal funding, however, will be limited, he said.</p>

June 23 - The New York Times

<p>This story from <em>NPR</em> looks at a new bike lane in New Orleans, and other efforts the city is taking to update its street infrastructure.</p>

June 23 - NPR