The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

<p>Cheap hydroelectric power helped Quincy, Washington -- population 5,300 -- hit the high-tech economy jackpot. But with land prices skyrocketing and local services taxed, might the boom be too much of a good thing?</p>

March 8 - The Wall Street Journal

<p>Video billboards are coming to a town near you. But critics worry that these 'TVs in the sky' are a major safety hazard for motorists.</p>

March 8 - USA Today

<p>Richard Luov, author of Last Child in the Woods, writes of unique partnerships forming to support the growing movement to reconnect children to the natural world.</p>

March 8 - Orion Magazine

<p>State legislators have introduced a bill to connect the Green Line light rail with LAX.</p>

March 8 - The Daily Breeze

<p>Architectural critic John King finds 'starchitects' to be great designers, but troubling to cities.</p>

March 8 - The San Francisco Chronicle

FEATURE

It's not so easy to measure urban density -- either by sight or calculation -- but thoughtful analysis of development intensity can illustrate useful insights into our cities and regions.

March 8 - Terry Holzheimer, PhD

<p>Homes built on large lots in farming areas are causing concern amongst land conservationists who say the patchwork of housing severely compromises the produictivity of the land.</p>

March 8 - Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

<p>Growing school districts in Minnesota look at ways of subdiving new large high schools to give students that "small school" feeling.</p>

March 8 - Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune

<p>Can soliciting too much public input on civic decisions result in nothing getting done? Seattle's efforts to figure out what to do with the Alaskan Way Viaduct provides a "textbook" example.</p>

March 7 - The Los Angeles Times

<p>A wave of women has moved into urban Bolivia, and brought with them the ambition to make their home amid the slum conditions and crumbling infrastructure.</p>

March 7 - The Washington Post

<p>With the end of a federal subsidy intended to soften the blow to rural forest economies, an entire public library system in Oregon is being shut down.</p>

March 7 - The San Francisco Chronicle

BLOG POST

<p style="margin: 0pt 0pt 6pt" class="MsoNormal"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">During my term of office as president of the American Planning Association, I made my theme “telling the planning story.”<span> </span>My point then – and today – is that we need to do a better job of explaining to our many publics what it is that planners do and why it makes a difference.</font></p>

March 7 - Eric Damian Kelly

<p>Time-sensitive commuters would benefit from proposed toll express lanes for D.C. area freeways, which would be built on congested carpool lanes by private companies. Carpools would still use the lanes free of charge.</p>

March 7 - The Washington Post

BLOG POST

<p><img src="/files/u10403/shockney9.jpg" alt="" hspace="10" vspace="6" width="268" height="162" align="left" />The French postmodern philosopher <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudrillard">Jean Baudrillard</a> <a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/03/06/europe/EU-GEN-France-Obit-Baudrillard.php">died yesterday</a> (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0679720200/ref=sib_dp_pt/105-3662130-2734002#reader-link">&quot;or yesterday maybe&quot;</a>). He wrote a lot about simulation and simulacra; if you went to college in the late 1980s like me, you quoted him in your thesis. Lots of stuff about how things in the world were actually perfect simulations of real things, and what that meant for our experiences of them.</p><p>Postmodernists. Weird guys.</p><p>But I remembered—misremembered, actually—a salient bit from his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/America-Jean-Baudrillard/dp/8433925059/ref=pd_bbs_sr_4/105-3662130-2734002?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1173293088&amp;sr=8-4"><em>America</em></a>. Tracked it down in a recent issue of the <a href="http://www.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol4_1/levy.htm"><em>International Journal of Jean Baudrillard Studies</em></a>. It&#39;s coming after the break.</p>

March 7 - Anonymous

<p>A federal jury sided with Alameda County, California, in a lawsuit brought by a Christian school whose permit was denied, claiming religious discrimination under the Religious Land User and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000.</p>

March 7 - The San Francisco Chronicle

<p>The independent Bureau of Governmental Research finds the Unified New Orleans Plan "fails to deliver a cohesive, workable road map for recovery."</p>

March 7 - New Orleans Times Picayune

<p>The desire for slower pace, more security and the ability to carry out transactions from anywhere via the internet are fueling a renewed interest in rural living.</p>

March 7 - ABC News

<p>Last year, one-third of Amtrak trains reached their destinations behind schedule. Making passenger rail competitive with other modes will require massive capital investment.</p>

March 7 - Governing

<p>Proposals to transfer revenue from gasoline taxes are floated as local leaders demand greater funding from the national government.</p>

March 7 - CBC

<p>A proposed mixed use development on one of the city's last open spaces in a sea of housing and retail has Annapolis, Maryland, locals up in arms about the possible negative impacts of the development.</p>

March 7 - The Baltimore Sun