Infrastructure

The small town of Perugia, Italy has left its traffic worries behind by implementing various driving restrictions and transportation solutions like escalators and a "minimetro".

February 3, 2011 - National Geographic

The demand for air travel may seem to be on the decline, but it's actually rising -- and playing a major role in determining which places are more economically successful.

February 3, 2011 - The New York Times

Beneath Paris is an underground network of tunnels and quarries, long closed to the public. National Geographic takes a tour of this forbidden part of the city, where urban explorers keep tradition alive.

February 3, 2011 - National Geographic

Of all the environmental problems facing California, depletion of its groundwater may be the most important according to this piece.

February 2, 2011 - NRDC Switchboard

This slideshow from The New York Times looks at a variety of examples of large-scale planning efforts that never materialized.

February 2, 2011 - The New York Times

Suburban Waukesha seeks to be the first city to pipe water from the Great Lakes since the 2008 Great Lakes Pact. But will approval just mean more sprawl in a sprawling region?

January 28, 2011 - Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Haitian government hires planners who propose a better urban environment than existed prior to the devastating earthquake.

January 27, 2011 - New Urban Network

China plans to create the world's largest mega-city, which will be geographically 26 times larger than Greater London and double that of Wales.

January 27, 2011 - The Telegraph

Two soccer teams in England are in the midst of a battle over who will take over the stadium being built for the 2012 Olympics in London. They're arguing over who will leave the better legacy.

January 27, 2011 - The Guardian

Planners in Jacksonville are getting behind plans to encourage more infill development by getting rid of an older rule that was seen to contribute to sprawl.

January 26, 2011 - The Florida Times-Union

While transportation activists in Los Angeles are getting behind a plan to cram 30 years of transportation projects into a decade, environmentalists in nearby San Diego want to do 50 years worth in the same amount of time.

January 26, 2011 - Streetsblog LA

This debate from China Daily offers a point-counterpoint over whether Chinese cities should be embarking on major subway building projects.

January 26, 2011 - China Daily

The U.S. spends far less on its infrastructure than many other countries, which some say will hurt the nation's competitiveness. The U.S. needs to build infrastructure, but as Neal Peirce argues, with a few caveats.

January 25, 2011 - Citiwire

Officials in New York are pushing a plan known as Vision 2020, which is aimed at restoring the city's waterfront areas and creating new public spaces. It also hopes to create preconditions for waterfront industries and businesses to grow again.

January 25, 2011 - The Gotham Gazette

Building owners in downtown Chicago are hoping to push forward a project aimed at creating a "smart grid" of energy-efficient and energy-producing buildings.

January 25, 2011 - The Architect's Newspaper

The U.S. war in Afghanistan is also a broad infrastructure building effort, according to military officials who talk about a rail building effort known as the Silk Road Initiative

January 25, 2011 - Transportation Nation

A new project is seeking to create the first citywide, comprehensive urban agriculture plan for New York City.

January 24, 2011 - Urban Omnibus

This TIME video is titled, "What Makes Cities Smart?" But the mayors interviewed - Villariagosa, Daley, Nutter - are mostly obsessed with building public transit and high-speed rail.

January 24, 2011 - Time

Streetfilms looks back at Professor Donald Appleyard's pioneering work observing the social life of streets, which proved that streets with less traffic fostered more social interactions than those with heavy traffic.

January 23, 2011 - Streetfilms

Officials in Jordan are moving closer to creating an ambitious project aimed at producing food, fresh water and energy in the Sahara Desert.

January 22, 2011 - Gizmag