United States

A bribery scandal recently uncovered by The New York Times is undoing years of hard work the retailer has engaged in to "polish its reputation and give elected officials, community groups and shoppers a reason to say yes to their stores."

May 1, 2012 - The New York Times

April 30, 2012 - Christopher Mitchell

Tanya Snyder examines the various ways in which bicyclists bring increased business and added value to their local communities.

April 30, 2012 - DC Streetsblog

Forget for a minute what the answer to that question may be, and focus first on why the two ideas are associated with each other. As Dave Reid explains, it's no accident, but rather the result of a relentless marketing scheme by the auto industry.

April 29, 2012 - Urban Milwaukee

SAFETEA-LU, the 2005 surface transportation funding bill, expired two years and seven months ago. Nine extensions later, the House and Senate will sit down and work out its successor in a conference committee after the House passed a tenth extension.

April 29, 2012 - The Hil

Released earlier this week by the Institute for Economics and Peace, the annual United States Peace Index (USPI) analyzes peacefulness at the state and city levels, and the costs associated with violence. Richard Florida discusses its findings.

April 27, 2012 - The Atlantic Cities

Joanna Zelman reports on the good news and bad news contained in the American Lung Association's just released study, "State of the Air 2012." If you live in California, you may not want to read on.

April 27, 2012 - Huffington Post

Real estate's favorite tool for gauging neighborhood walkability now has a companion for transit, Kaid Benfield reports.

April 26, 2012 - Switchboard

As repeated pleas for the need to repair and replace America's crumbling infrastructure go unheeded, a new report outlines "practical, actionable ways to sell the American public on the need to invest in the nation’s transportation infrastructure."

April 26, 2012 - The Washington Post

Nate Berg looks at a new study analyzing the cost benefits of large-scale green infrastructure projects, which demonstrates that governments are wasting billions of dollars a year by not going green.

April 25, 2012 - The Atlantic Cities

After a decade in ascendance, smart growth is showing its age. As its agenda becomes "formulaic and even clinical," Kaid Benfield argues for the need to reinvigorate, or move beyond, smart growth with more attention paid to the quality of a place.

April 24, 2012 - Switchboard

As the concept of infrastructure banks gets increasingly bandied about (see Emanuel, Rahm and Obama, Barack), Aaron M. Renn examines what exactly they do for us that we can’t already do.

April 24, 2012 - Urbanophile

As San Diego is paralyzed by the cost to maintain its infrastructure, Howard Blackson revels in a eureka moment, provided by Chuck Marohn, in recognizing the city's explicitly suburban pattern of development is a well-documented financial blunder.

April 24, 2012 - PlaceShakers

NYC's long-declining waterfront industry is expected to experience a new boom time, as the expansion of the Panama Canal will allow double the cargo and much larger ships to call at New York's harbor by 2024.

April 24, 2012 - MetroFocus

With the March 31, three-month transportation extension signed, the House passed another to begin July 1. It includes the authorization of the Keystone XL Pipeline in defiance to the President. The next step is a conference committee with the Senate

April 23, 2012 - The Hill: E2 Wire

Using case studies from across the country, a toolkit released earlier this month by the National League of Cities aims to provide local leaders with concrete strategies to assist the growth of their local entrepreneurs and small businesses.

April 23, 2012 - CitiesSpeak.org

With the help of a little GIS wizardry, Susan Spano and Aviva Shen map the 20 most cultured small towns in the U.S., from Gig Harbor, WA to Naples, FL and everywhere in between.

April 22, 2012 - Smithsonian

Brittany Kubinski and Jennifer Evans-Cowley turn to twitter for a detailed analysis of the trends that emerged from this year's APA national conference, and for a comparison to last year's popular topics.

April 21, 2012 - PlanningTech

As bike share systems spread across the country, Danielle Kurtzleben looks at their profitability, or lack thereof, and asks whether cash-strapped cities or the federal government will want to sink money into systems that struggle to break even.

April 21, 2012 - U.S. News & World Report

Nate Berg examines new research linking restrictive land use regulations to academically stratified neighborhoods.

April 21, 2012 - The Atlantic Cities