The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

<p>Ellen Dunham-Jones, director of the architecture program at Georgia Tech, thinks architects and planners need to understand suburbia better before they can begin the work of retrofitting our sprawling development patterns towards smart growth.</p>

August 1 - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

<p>The city's new mayor is hoping to follow the footsteps of Bogotá's Enrique Peñalosa and transform the Mexican capital of 20 million inhabitants into a people- and environmentally-friendly metropolis.</p>

August 1 - AP via Michigan Live

BLOG POST

Every summer I make a pilgrimage to Scott and Zelda&#39;s graves, in Rockville, Maryland. Sure, I could pay homage by going to Cap d&#39;Antibes, where they whooped it up every summer, but the Euro is so high. And Rockville is so ... scenic.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>F. Scott Fitzgerald and his rather nutty wife are buried under a huge live oak next to St. Mary&#39;s Church, where their daughter moved them in the 70s. She probably wouldn&#39;t have done it if she had known what would happen to Rockville: the Rockville Pike, an endless strip mall that crescendos with Bloomingdale&#39;s and eventually fizzles out with Marlo Furniture. </div><div><br /></div><div>

July 31 - Margaret Foster

<p>Whether is a proposal for congestion pricing in 2007 or the advent of parking meters in the 1930s, Americans have a way of being hostile towards plans that interfere with their 'constitutional right' to free driving and parking.</p>

July 31 - Streetsblog

<p>Municipal officials, real estate professionals, and neighborhood residents are struggling with the new suburban phenomenon of home abandonment.</p>

July 31 - The Arizona Republic

<p>In Kalamazoo, Michigan, citizens of all ages are engaging each other to create and maintain safe and active neighborhoods.</p>

July 31 - Kalamazoo Gazette

<p>William Fulton observes that while high-income households are flocking to the inner-city and gobbling up pricey condos, poor families are having to double and triple up just to afford a home in the suburbs.</p>

July 31 - The Los Angeles Times

<p>City officials are considering ordinances that will allow builders to construct more housing units downtown.</p>

July 31 - The Los Angeles Times

<p>Though officials proposed several promising schemes, a lack of quickly executable plans knocked the region from contention for federal funds.</p>

July 31 - The Chicago Tribune

<p>Planners and environmentalists are hopefully that the use of transfer development rights (TDR) in the Chattahoochee Hill Country south of Atlanta can serve as a model for land conservation efforts nationwide.</p>

July 31 - USA Today via Builder Online

<p>Even with a voter approved plan, the Kansas City metro region is only beginning to talk about light rail construction -- to its determent, argues one columnist.</p>

July 31 - The Kansas City Star

<p>A developer that had offered to make the residents of a Florida seaside community overnight millionaires has walked away from the deal after negotiations stalled.</p>

July 31 - AP via ABC News

<p>Johannesburg's Ponte City, a once-exclusive whites-only address now at the center of a dangerous, abandoned part of the city, will undergo a major renovation project featuring affordable housing, with the aim of turning the neighborhood around.</p>

July 31 - The Globe & Mail

<p>Columnist Neal Peirce highlights the University of Pennsylvania's efforts at improving its Philadelphia neighborhood -- and the resulting improvements for Town and Gown.</p>

July 30 - The Seattle Times

<p>A Los Angeles Times investigation reveals a highly-paid manager for the Los Angeles City Housing Authority rigging bids worth nearly $1 million over four years.</p>

July 30 - The Los Angeles Times

<p>With the cost of fighting fires having risen dramatically, a recent op-ed suggests that cities and counties reign in sprawl and prevent home construction in forest areas.</p>

July 30 - The Salt Lake Tribune

<p>An ambitious 5 year project will attempt to catalog all the historic properties in the city using an interactive website.</p>

July 30 - The Los Angeles Times

<p>An Atlanta city councilwoman is trying to launch an affordable-housing program based on leveraging homes abandoned due to the mortgage-lending crisis.</p>

July 30 - Atlanta Business Chronicle

<p>Even with a $1 billion surplus this year, mouting debt payments for MTA may force an increase in the $2 bus and subway fare next year to keep the budget in the black.</p>

July 30 - The New York Times

<p>"Progress" and developers are carelessly expanding the reach of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area.</p>

July 30 - The Kansas City Star