The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

On the first anniversary of the Main Street light rail line, the Houston Chronicle's transportation columnist offers his own MetroRail IQ test.

January 25 - The Houston Chronicle

A new generation of "megacity urbanists" is emerging.

January 25 - WorldChanging

Cities and counties across the country are undetaking a massive effort to count the homeless.

January 25 - The Los Angeles Times

It may soon be too late to fight global warming says a new report. For the first time in a document of its kind, it also identifies a threshold beyond which it would not be possible to reverse the impact of climate change.

January 25 - The Independent

What's less than five feet wide, eight feet long, seats two, and gets more than 60 miles per gallon?

January 25 - The Christian Science Monitor

BLOG POST

The United States has a wicked high infant mortality rate compared to the rest of the industrialized world. Possible reasons: better reporting in the US, a more diverse population in the US, and a lack of universal health care. All those things are true.<br /> <br /> Another possible reason is that we have a lot of poor people in the States, relative to comparable nations. So a couple of researchers at NYU and Boston University decided to put that last assertion to the test. In the January issue of the <em>American Journal of Public Health</em> (subscription req'd; here's the <a href="http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/abstract/95/1/86">abstract</a>

January 24 - Anonymous

Fords envisions a vehicle for the future -- the SNYus. Is America's urban future so bleak that soccer moms need armored SUVs with non-opening bullet-resistant windows?

January 24 - Naparstek

"Sun, Sin & Suburbia An Essential History of Modern Las Vegas", by Geoff Schumacher, may be the definitive work about the fastest-growing place in America.

January 24 - The Los Angeles Times

Houston's center is beginning to flourish but there are still challenges ahead.

January 24 - The Houston Chronicle

A new study evaluates satisfaction with HOPE VI 'New Urbanist' housing versus other public and private housing.

January 24 - University Of Louisville

An index of environmentally sustainable nations prepared in collaboration with World Economic Forum lists Finland, Norway and Uruguay at the top. How does the U.S. rank?

January 24 - The New York Times

A battle to expand a camp for the blind runs into a self-styled Thoreau fighting to save one of the last pristine streams left in Southern California.

January 24 - The Los Angeles Times

BLOG POST

<img src="http://www.planetizen.com/tech/files//Las Vegas.jpg" alt="" width="300" align="right" border="0" hspace="2" vspace="2" />Another city experimenting with another wireless network: this time it's Las Vegas, and according to <a href="http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/jan05/0105wvega.html">this</a> article in the always-educational <em>IEEE Spectrum</em> they're building not WiFi but a mesh network, and it's for municipal services, not bloggers drunk on the Strip. <br /> <br /> A mesh network, as almost everyone reading this will know better than I do, is nodeless -- that is, instead of having a hub that directs traffic to and from spokes, mesh networks treat every user as a place to route data.

January 24 - Anonymous

The problems faced by the D.C. area Metro could be solved by using a system that has been successful in major cities around the world.

January 24 - The Washington Post

A new collection of essays, 'The Resilient City' explores how cities bounce back after a catastrophe.

January 24 - Newsweek

An city dweller shares her experiences relocating to a farm.

January 24 - The Washington Post

In Canada, as gambling has quadrupled in the past decade, groups are now asking lawmakers to study the social costs.

January 24 - The Christian Science Monitor

Can Hans Monderman's apparently anarchical 'shared space' roadways result in safer communities?

January 23 - International Herald Tribune

'Pod thinking' results in planning that fails to look beyond the small community and encourages NIMBYism, BANANAs, and NIMTOOs.

January 23 - Los Angeles Downtown News

Readers talk back about the Christian-right take on environmentalism

January 23 - Grist Magazine