The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

Beset by a large budget deficit and overwhelming poverty, Newark's local government services director has warned that the city might require state supervision.

May 9 - Al Jazeera America

An uptick in the Los Angeles housing and lending markets has precipitated the return of mansionization. A 2008 citywide ordinance adopted to prevent outsized homes on small residential lots is proving inadequate to the task.

May 9 - Los Angeles Times

Ten years ago, Chicago held a design competition for pedestrian bridges at five locations on the lakefront. As the projects have languished, so has improved access between neighborhoods like North Kenwood and Oakland to nearby Burnham Park.

May 9 - Chicago Tribune

Artist Luke Jerram recently installed a 300-foot waterslide on Park Street in Bristol, UK. The "Park and Slide" event was massively attended and wildly popular.

May 9 - Sustainable Cities Collective

The same week that the New York Police Department released a boat load of data about traffic collisions comes news that exercise app Strava will sell its data on the how, where, and when bikers and runners use streets.

May 9 - Wall Street Journal - Digits

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will deliver $10.2 billion in dividends to the U.S. Treasury next month, but Congress could soon "wind down" the companies by approving the significant Johnson-Crapo bill.

May 9 - Forbes

In what is being billed as the first emergency order of more to come, the Department of Transportation (DOT), the federal regulator of transporting crude oil by rail, hopes to quell the growing national furor over what some call 'ticking time bombs'.

May 9 - The Tribune

Recent commenters have described cities as the locus for a new type of liberalism that benefits a broader swath of demographics. Dissenters wonder whether certain progressive cities, enabled by privilege, are merely drivers of inequality.

May 9 - New York Times

The Eastside Trail of the Atlanta BeltLine is immensely popular. With funding still in question and construction behind schedule on some of the transit that would integrate with the BeltLine, one writer re-examines the trail's vast potential.

May 8 - Atlantic Cities

Inspired by a recent death-defying trip to the polls, a blogger lists some of the basic facilities that should be accessible to all pedestrians.

May 8 - The Black Urbanist

A recent article addresses the illogical planning agenda set by states (Missouri, in this case) because local governments (St. Louis, in this case) lack a coherent planning vision. The situation is surely not unique in the annals of planning.

May 8 - nextSTL.com

The GOP-backed 2015 Appropriations Bill would cut funding for TIGER grants, historically a friend to cities and metro areas looking for funding for multi-modal programs, and make it, essentially, a roads program.

May 8 - Streetsblog USA

The popularity of Google Maps is well-documented, and as more users are using the software on their phones (remember when you had to print maps before you left your home or office?), Google's recent updates includes a bunch of new mobile features.

May 8 - Gizmodo

If President Obama is waging a "war on coal," as his critics claim, then Europe must be enjoying a love affair with America's high-carbon fossil fuel, and the most polluting variety at that. How could the world's greenest continent turn so brown?

May 8 - The Wall Street Journal - Business

In a big victory for safe streets, New York City has released to the public an online database of crash data for the city. Previously, poor and incomplete data made creating safe streets "next to impossible."

May 8 - WNYC: Transportation Nation

Jeff Caldwell, of Litchfield Landscape Elements, goes out on a limb and names the five best examples of American architecture. Is he right?

May 8 - UrbDeZine

Richard Florida opines that among many factors in the most walkable neighborhoods, "[who] our neighbors are, and how similar or different they are from us, matters too."

May 8 - Atlantic Cities

BLOG POST

The “Status of the Nation’s Highways, Bridges, and Transit: Conditions and Performance, Report To Congress” is intended to provide a comprehensive and objective evaluation of our transportation system. Let’s evaluate this evaluation.

May 8 - Todd Litman

BLOG POST

Niehoff Urban Studio brings students from different departments together to work on bettering Cincinnati's built environment.

May 8 - Anna Bergren Miller

The MonkeyParking app works similarly to sharing economy stars Airbnb or Uber, except for sale is an inside line on parking spaces. That means that private users would be auctioning the use of public space. That can't be legal, can it?

May 7 - Uptown Almanac