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The Planetizen News Brief

10 April 2008 - 5:00am
Smart City Radio

The Planetizen News Brief is a weekly rundown of some of the most interesting and important news and issues of the past week.

The Planetizen News Brief airs every week on the nationally-syndicated radio program "Smart City", which is broadcast in cities across the U.S. Learn more about Smart City and listen to archived shows.

Full Transcript

New York City’s congestion pricing plan is dead. A small group of lawmakers in the state assembly decided earlier this week that there was not enough support amongst their colleagues to bring a vote on the proposed pricing plan that would have charged drivers a fee to enter certain parts of Manhattan. The congestion pricing plan was a major part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s broad environmental agenda, and would have been the biggest such pricing system set up in an American city to date. The New York Times reports that the state was under tight pressure to act on Bloomberg’s proposal, which needed to be approved by April 7th to be eligible for more than $350 million in federal funding. But with no vote, Bloomberg and his plan have been dealt a major blow, one from which the city’s congestion pricing plans have little hope of recovering any time soon.

Meanwhile, across the country, what some might rightly call more significantly troubling than the failure of congestion pricing are recent government estimates that say at least 36 states will face water shortages in the next five years. Natural News reports that the government is predicting sharp declines in the availability of freshwater in most American states, laying the blame on a variety of culprits, including sprawl, high rates of population growth, and climate change. Areas especially hard hit will be the Southwest and the Great Lakes region, as well as the Georgia-Alabama-Florida region, which has already begun to feel the pinch of water shortages. Many officials are calling on municipalities to plan now for the coming shortages by setting up regional conservation efforts – and fast.

And while regions are being called on to conserve their water, a court in California is calling on officials in one city to preserve their history. A judge has ordered the central California city of Stockton to delay the destruction of up to seven historic hotels in the city’s downtown. According to The Stockton Record, the city has been planning to demolish four of the hotels to build surface parking lots. Preservationists have been rallying against the plan for months and have achieved a temporary victory as the demolition has been delayed to allow a formal lawsuit challenging the city’s plans to be heard. Though city officials say the parking lots are needed to help the historic downtown compete with surrounding suburbs, the preservationists are planning to take their lawsuit all the way to save the hotels they say give downtown Stockton much of its historic character.

Stories discussed in this week's Planetizen News Brief

Congestion Pricing Plan Dies in New York Assembly

Water Supply Crisis Facing 36 States

Court Blocks City from Razing Historic Downtown Hotels

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