United States
A Call for Urban Infrastructure Investments
A recent article laments the missed opportunity of President Obama’s recent calls for increased spending on infrastructure: a lack of acknowledgement that cities are the best places to spend those dollars.
Evaluating the Growth of Transportation Network Companies like Uber and Lyft
Transportation network companies like Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar are growing quickly. A recent article examines the potential of such networks to build new efficiencies into urban transportation, as well as some of the risks to that potential.
What Cars Took: Lives
“There’s an open secret in America: If you want to kill someone, do it with a car,” says a recent article titled “Murder Machines.”
What Cars Took: the Middle Class
Following on the recent, promising news of increased transit ridership around the country, one writer calls for an end to the institutional bias toward cars. The key point of the appeal: public transit infrastructure benefits the middle class.
Can New Financing Mechanism Deliver Multi-Modal Safety in Low-Income Areas?
A new bill in Congress would create a new $11 million program amidst the $1 billion Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) loan program. But can it deliver more safety improvements to under-served populations?
Supreme Court Delivers Blow to Rails-to-Trails
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a private land owner in Wyoming, who sued to reclaim land once granted to a railroad under an 1875 law. The ruling undermines the legality of the nation’s network of public trails built on former rail right-of-way.
People Get Ready: Here Come the Millennials
As they settle into early adulthood, the anticipated and far-reaching impacts of the Millennial generation are formidable. Community planners, get ready. Change is a-comin.
Increases in Transit Ridership Overthrowing Assumptions About Why We Ride
A recent report by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) shows transit ridership increasing to historic levels. The surprise is that the increase occurs as gas prices have fallen.
USDOT Continues to Overestimate Future Vehicle Travel - When Will They Learn?
The USDOT's "Conditions & Performance Report" predicts that VMT will grow between 1.36% and 1.85%, although current demographic and economic trends have resulted in flat or negative growth in recent years. Why won't they learn?
'Towers Because Gardens'—Reviewing MoMA's Frank Lloyd Wright Exhibition
In reviewing MoMA’s recent exhibition “Frank Lloyd Wright and the City: Density vs. Dispersal,” Thomas de Monchaux explores the personal life and motivations of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Wisconsin Struggles with Interstate Tolling Option
State transportation leaders are scrambling to increase funding as MAP-21 draws to its expiration on Oct. 1. Interstate tolling is being eyed by more than a few. While the Wisconsin Assembly likes the idea, Gov. Scott Walker rejects it.
Questioning the National Flood Insurance Program’s Repeat Payouts
The National Flood Insurance Program is unable to keep up with the pace of storms and sea level rise since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and is now $24 billion in debt. Why then, do the same houses receive repeated payouts?
Obama Administration Proposes $1 Billion for Affordable Housing Fund
The $1 billion proposed by the Obama Administration for affordable housing would be the first allotment to the National Housing Trust Fund, created in 2008. Is $1 billion enough?
Record Fine for Coal Company
The largest ever fine for polluting waterways, $27.5 million plus $200 million in clean-up costs was assigned to a coal company. NewsHour co-anchor Gwen Ifill interviews Dina Cappiello of The Associated Press to discuss water pollution from coal.
On the Land Use and Transit Implications of 'Take Me Out to the Ballgame'
The decision of where to locate ballparks, and to what extent the public should subsidize that location, can have ripple effects throughout the land use and transportation systems of a region.
Urban Planning Fundamental: Facilitate a Strong Labor Market
Wendell Cox reviews a new working paper by Alain Bertaud called “Cities as Labor Markets.” Cox calls the lesson contained therein “Urban Planning 101” and a “much needed midcourse correction to urban planning around the world.”
Transportation Reauthorization Funding Mechanism May Be Settled
How best to "plug the growing hole" in the Highway Trust Fund which provides the federal revenue for roads and transit: increase the gas tax, new vehicle miles traveled fees, more road tolls, or "corporate tax reform"? All but one is a user fee.
EPA's New Rules for Clean Cars and Gasoline
In EPA’s leadership blog, Administrator Gina McCarthy announces the agency's new standards to reduce the sulfur content in gasoline by 60% in 2017 and new Tier 3 emission standards for cars and light trucks to reduce criteria and toxic air pollutants
New Motto for Nonprofit Housing: The Impossible Takes a Little Longer
Nonprofit housing developers are able to succeed at what often seems impossible. Nonprofits all want the projects done faster and better, but is all the well-meaning input from the activists and intellectuals just more mud in in a dragging field?
Why Urban History Matters
Chuck Wolfe's recent reconnaissance of Edinburgh provides a foil for his rallying cry: Going forward, let’s not discount the influence of history’s recurring themes in how we redevelop the urban realm.
FREE Course: Walkable City 1: Why Walkability?
After describing his path towards focusing on walkability as the essence of good planning, Jeff Speck marches through his five principal reasons for making more walkable places.
Reinventing Malls: Planning Alchemy—Turning Gray Fields Into Gold
The course focuses on the opportunities and imperatives that shape reinvention of mall sites.
One Hundred Miles
County of Mendocino
planning NEXT
The Architects Foundation
University of Cincinnati Online
Montrose County
Northern Illinois Transit Authority (NITA)
The Pocatello Development Authority
