The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

The United Kingdom's major rail company is expecting a 30% increase in freight traffic over the next 10 years, and ideas to help cope with the increase include double-decker commuter trains and altered routes.

September 7 - The Guardian

Artists in Melbourne, Australia, have been evicted as the city seeks to turn their studios into condos. The city likes the artist culture, but the artists cannot provide the higher rents the gentrifying city requires.

September 7 - The Age

The seemingly endless controversies over the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site may have encouraged members of the public to look elsewhere for ways to understand and commemorate the disaster.

September 7 - The New Yorker

Recognized as one of the world's most influential female Arabs, architect Zena Malek has emerged as the most outspoken critic of how cities are being built in the Arab world.

September 7 - Arabian Business

A plan is unfolding to create a 22-mile loop of green space and transit routes in downtown Atlanta, one of the most car-dependent cities in America. The plan started out as a graduate student's thesis and is now fully adopted by the city.

September 7 - The New York Times

Kenya's land surveyors, town and physical planners, engineers, and architects will target Nairobi's blighted areas and try to prevent future unplanned developments.

September 7 - The East African Standard (Nairobi), All Africa.com

Congestion and gas prices are creating a boom for light rail and buses across the nation. Cities are using technology and imaginative enticements to counter Americans' reluctance to abandon their cars.

September 6 - The Economist

Australian urban planning critics are casting planning as the 'villain' in destroying the rapid suburbanization that has fueled a home-ownership dream. But this is a dangerous view, writes urban management professor Brendan Gleeson.

September 6 - The Australian

Scotland calls on Andres Duany and his firm to develop a housing plan for Inverness, which is facing rapid population growth. Duany plans to employ the charrette to hear the voice of the Scottish people, who have been engulfed in sprawl for decades.

September 6 - The Press and Journal

Property rights in Venezuela's largest city continue to be strained by Caracas Mayor Juan Barreto who hopes to seize two elite, private golf courses and convert them to low-income housing to tackle Caracas' chronic housing shortage.

September 6 - The New York Times

High-rise developments are increasing across the country, refuting many critics who predicted the end of the high rise after September 11, 2001. In San Francisco, many planners and developers want to go up in a big way, despite the terror threat.

September 6 - The San Francisco Chronicle

A California architect is trying to recreate cities on a smaller scale in an effort to reduce the negative impacts of global warming facing the world's cities. He is called a 'visionary' by some, but criticized as unrealistic by others.

September 6 - The Contra Costa Times

A detailed look at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin Fellowship offers new insights about the iconic architect's "unorthodox design process." It also uses "melodrama, spiritualism and sexual innuendo" to reveal rivalries and politics at his studio.

September 6 - The Los Angeles Times

Large housing developments popping up in Washington D.C. are gaining praise from the city's leadership for reinvigorating a once desolate area. But the developments are also garnering criticism for failing to weave residents in with the city.

September 6 - The Washington Post

Bush administration proposals to sell public land face strong opposition even from allies such as the National Rifle Association.

September 6 - The Los Angeles Times

The New York metropolitan region has the highest rate of public transit ridership in the nation, and a new Census Bureau survey reports that ridership is rising.

September 6 - The New York Times

Without a viable mass transit system and concentrated employment centers, Atlanta should reduce allowable density and build more roads, says one columnist.

September 5 - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

In the most important fuel improvement since lead was removed from gasoline a generation ago, 97% of the sulfur from diesel fuel will be removed, dramatically reducing particulate emissions, resulting in improvements to health and longevity.

September 5 - The Oakland Tribune

Prime Minister John Howard says that a lack of residentially zoned land is to blame for Australia's growing affordable housing shortage.

September 5 - Melbourne Herald Sun

Long a magnet for international talent, Hong Kong is struggling to attract overseas workers due to its worsening air quality.

September 5 - Forbes