The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

A local architect produced a DIY design to push the Illinois Department of Transportation to think big with the "Redefine the Drive" project on North Lake Shore Drive. With the proposal: invitations for more local designers to participate.

July 10 - Chi.Streetsblog

Mark Fahey cites data from Crain's and the New York Building Congress showing that New York City's improving economy has percolated big numbers of hires through all levels of the building industry.

July 10 - Crain's New York Business

A $10.7 billion funding plan to continue federal transportation spending at the current rate through May 2015 has been offered by Republicans in the House Ways and Means Committee. The General Funds transfer would be offset by "pension smoothing."

July 10 - Bloomberg News

BLOG POST

While concern over foreign investment in the local real estate market is perfectly valid, the concern is irrelevant to the reasons and need to increase density and the supply of housing.

July 10 - Reuben Duarte

A long read by Eric Jaffe serves as a primer on the "Level of Service" (LOS) requirement in the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), as well as predicting the large impact of LOS reform on planning in the state and around the country.

July 9 - CityLab

While much of the concern of how to regulate transportation network companies like Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar comes down to questions about safety and access, recent findings show that the apps have reduced DUI arrests in the City of Brotherly Love.

July 9 - PlanPhilly

The proposed expansion of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art recently got a major revision—now instead of cantilevering over the La Brea Tar Pits, the building would bridge Wilshire Boulevard.

July 9 - Los Angeles Times

Habin Kwak reports that Brad Pitt’s home-building operation, Make It Right, is expanding its operations outside of New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward and a subsequent expansion in Kansas City.

July 9 - The Architect's Newspaper

In what's described as a transformational trend, a new article claims that more and more Chinese-made buildings, infrastructure, and urban districts are under construction in Africa.

July 9 - Metropolis

Jillian Glover writes of her new perspective on what makes a city welcoming and safe for young families—the newest perspective, in fact. She's a new mother.

July 9 - Sustainable Cities Collective

The EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program has significant potential to drive more resources into America’s distressed urban cores, according to a recent report authored by Initiative for a Competitive Inner City.

July 9 - Governing

Streetsblog recently launched a series that will highlight Pittsburgh as a city "shedding its 'Rust Belt' image and emerging as a leader in progressive street design." The first case study: the city's three shared streets projects.

July 9 - Streetsblog USA

A group that coined the term, "stack and pack" to deride density and its role in reducing carbon emissions lost in court when the judge rejected their argument that only technological improvements in cars and fuels were necessary to reduce emissions.

July 9 - San Francisco Chronicle

FEATURE

A satirical post welcomes the metaphorical zombie state experienced by humans in the modern built environment as the path of least resistance for a literal, future zombie state.

July 9 - William Riggs

NPR's Scott Simon, Peabody-winning journalist and the Saturday host of Morning Edition, recently set off a Twitter-storm when he called out bikers as scofflaws.

July 8 - Medium

A growing water crisis in California has become an opportunity for some to cash in. Private firms and landowners that have stored spare water are selling to the highest bidder.

July 8 - Next City

Philadelphia Inquirer Architecture Critic Inga Saffron writes of a possible political awakening among Millennials in Philadelphia in response to the old guard's efforts to stifle progressive parking and zoning decisions.

July 8 - Philadelphia Inquirer

With 41 percent of the Cincinnati region’s 1 million jobs located in neighborhoods without public transportation, the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority is developing the "Go Forward" plan to lean on bus service to fill the gap.

July 8 - Cincinnati Business Courier

Two projects proposed for the South Rim plateau of the Grand Canyon have raised alarms at the National Park Service, who see a serious threat from impacts to the views, water supply, and ecology of the canyon.

July 8 - Los Angeles Times

G.M. Donley pens an impassioned plea to reject "ready made" narratives about the decline of Cleveland Heights, an inner suburb of Cleveland, after the murder of local bar and restaurant owner Jim Brennan.

July 8 - Belt Magazine