The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

<p>Record gas prices have helped the nation's transit systems attract record numbers of riders. Notably, the biggest increases have occurred in the South and West, where public transportation has traditionally been underutilized.</p>

May 12 - The Seattle Times

BLOG POST

<p> <span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Verdana">We’ve all been subject to them – the endless powerpoint presentations that extol the worst aspects of animated text and mind-numbing bullet points.<span> </span>While Edward Tufte has written about the <a href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html">horrors of powerpoint</a>, I see it as just a tool and like any tool it can be used wisely or poorly.<span> </span>After all, David Byrne, the former Talking Heads front man, makes <a href="http://www.davidbyrne.com/art/eeei/index.php">art with powerpoint</a> so it can’t be all bad.<span> </span>But one thing struck me at the American Planning Association’s (APA) conference two weeks ago:<span> </span>some sessions would have been much better if the powerpoint presentation (or abuse thereof) didn’t get in the way.<span> </span>In actuality, some of the best presentations I attended didn’t use powerpoint at all.

May 12 - Scott Page

<p>UCLA Professor Donald Shoup has criss-crossed the nation lecturing about the many benefits from market pricing of parking -- but he says too many cities are still making decisions based on politics.</p>

May 12 - The Toronto Star

<p>Melbourne, Australia, has its own brand of suburban sprawl: suburbia without the space. A new comprehensive plan aims to address the woes of suburban Melbourne, but some say it doesn't go far enough.</p>

May 12 - The Age

<p>This segment from <em>NPR</em> looks at plans for the carbon-neutral Masdar City in Abu Dhabi.</p>

May 12 - NPR

Washington D.C. has successfully invested more than $600 million in a new baseball stadium, but the city's infamous infestation with rats is nowhere near resolved. Reason's Matt Welch asks why.

May 12 - Reason

<p>The city of Rock Port, Missouri, recently celebrated the fact that its four wind turbines produced more energy than the town needed, becoming the first community in America to be completely powered by wind.</p>

May 11 - KOMU

<p>While plenty of investors and homeowners are feeling the pain of the current real estate market, groups trying to protect land from development are welcoming the downturn.</p>

May 11 - The Wall Street Journal

<p>Plans call for raising the tolls on the San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge depending on the time of day, but commuters have so far reacted negatively to the plan, arguing there are too few alternatives.</p>

May 11 - The San Francisco Chronicle

<p>A Los Angeles activist and artist has taken to placing street signs mimicking the city's no parking signs on traffic islands, declaring them parks.</p>

May 11 - The Los Angeles Times

<p>After a decade spent redesigning the public realm, Melbourne, Australia is a haven of people-oriented development and mobility.</p>

May 11 - Streetsblog

<p>In this travelogue, <em>Dwell</em> tours the often-overlooked infrastructure that keeps the metropolis of Los Angeles running.</p>

May 10 - Dwell

<p>By looking closely at the key factors that helped London's congestion charge succeed, other cities can decipher whether a similar scheme would work in their jurisdictions.</p>

May 10 - The Toronto Star

<p>A planned New Urbanist development in Northern California wants enable its eventual residents to live within their prescribed ecological footprint.</p>

May 10 - The Washington Post

<p>Planning students today care as much about the social aspects of cities as they do of their physical design, says Mohsen Mostafavi, the new dean at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design.</p>

May 10 - The Boston Globe

<p>One country stands out in Europe in surpassing the greenhouse gas emission reductions required by the Kyoto Protocol - Sweden. While it used several environmental technologies to achieve those reductions, experts give credit to its carbon tax.</p>

May 10 - The Guardian

<p>A mom has filed a $100 claim against the city of Norwalk, Connecticut, after her one-year-old son stepped in dog feces on city property.</p>

May 9 - Stamford Advocate

<p>Urban farms are popping up in New York and elsewhere, providing residents with access to fresh, affordable produce.</p>

May 9 - The New York Times

<p>The developer of the Tejon Ranch agreed to a plan to put permanent conservation easements on almost 375 square miles of ranch lands and wilderness 60 miles north of Los Angeles, in exchange for rights to develop 10 percent of its land holdings.</p>

May 9 - The New York Times

<p>Massachusetts wants to require affordable housing developers to pay construction workers a "prevailing wage", but with costs already totaling $200,000 or more per unit, the proposal may ultimately decrease the amount of affordable housing built.</p>

May 9 - The Boston Globe