The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

Shelby County and Memphis are on the verge of adopting a new smart growth zoning code to slow urban sprawl and breathe reinvigorate urban centers. The county's Main Street Mall will remain car-free. "Pedestrian-friendly" is the new planning theme.

May 27 - The Commercial Appeal (Memphis

BLOG POST

<p> A friend introduced me yesterday to rambunctious bicycling advocate Fred Oswald via a <a href="http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/05/_scott_shaw_the_plain.html">recent article</a> out of Cleveland’s press. Much debate swirls around his not-so-uncommon opinions. Mr. Oswald’s argument can be boiled down to two points: supporting a critical need for much more bicycling education on sharing public roadways with other vehicles, and fighting an industry-borne fallacy that breaking up streets with allocated spaces, such as bike lanes, is good for the biking community. The former is, of course, not contestable. We all agree that safety and training are absolutely critical to developing a strong and healthy bicycling community.

May 27 - Ian Sacs

With communities balking at the purported ugliness of windtowers and solar panels, a Dutch company proposes using nature's own designs.

May 27 - Fast Company

The new documentary <em>The Greening of Southie</em> follows construction workers in Boston as they adapt to the new rules and regulations of green development (sometimes unwittingly).

May 27 - GOOD Magazine

Construction begins on Aerotropolis Atlanta, an unusual "live-work-play mini-city" development going up close to Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport- so close, in fact, that there will be a connecting walkway directly to the new international terminal.

May 27 - Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Peter Calthorpe is in Markham, Ontario working on, in his words, 'the highest manifestation of transit-oriented development I have been involved in.'

May 27 - The Toronto Star

A battle over the height of a proposed skyscraper in San Francisco emphasizes the need for an update to the city's 25-yr old plan, says critic John King.

May 27 - San Francisco Chronicle

Germany's experience in implementing environmentally-friendly concepts like green roofs, wind power and other renewables is pointing the way for many American decisionmakers.

May 27 - The New York Times

BLOG POST

I’d been obsessed with it ever since I saw <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0203632/"><em>The Princess and the Warrior</em></a>. (Between that and the funicular in <em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085549/">Flashdance</a></em>, there is just something about bad-ass chicks that commute via unique transit.) So, when I found myself with an unexpected free morning in Essen, Germany, after especially cooperative weather for photographing the day before, I hopped on the S-Bahn towards Wuppertal to see the famed train.  <p class="MsoNormal"> <img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3405/3506113776_77e7083411_d.jpg" width="500" height="375" /> </p>

May 26 - Jess Zimbabwe

USA Today reports on a growing trend of cities like Dallas and Seattle that are connecting their airports to their downtowns via rail.

May 26 - USA Today

Seems some developers are taking Planetizen's recent poll to heart and are looking at closing car dealerships as perfect locations for new, dense development.

May 26 - The Boston Globe

A water- and chemical-intensive process to mine natural gas may pose a threat to the watershed supplying drinking water to 14 million people.

May 26 - AlterNet

The Seasteading Institute, a group that advocates creating sovereign nations in international waters, announces the winner of their seastead design contest.

May 26 - National Geographic

Titan Worldwide, a company that sells advertising on the sides of buses for the cities of New York, Boston and Minneapolis, is unable to pay millions of dollars in ad revenue it owes to transit authorities.

May 26 - The New York Times

BLOG POST

<p class="MsoNormal"> For many students graduate school is the time to learn how to write professional reports and memos. One of the skills many planning students seem eager to master is writing the content-free document. This kind of writing is a little tricky to do. Accordingly, in this last blog in my series on planning skills I provide tips on how to create sentences, paragraphs, and whole reports and PowerPoint presentations that convey the absolute minimum of important information. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <em>Titles </em> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> Titles should never reveal the actual content of the report. This is the guideline I find easiest to follow myself. </p>

May 26 - Ann Forsyth

Dealing with abandoned and foreclosed properties should be high on the list of priorities for the new White House Office of Urban Affairs, says Justin Hollander, assistant professor at Tufts.

May 26 - American City & County Magazine

Construction crews moved in to Times Square Sunday night to start work on another ambitious leg of New York's pedestrianization project.

May 26 - The Huffington Post

Three cities - three directions on how their transportation infrastructure was shaped by national transportation and housing legislation, and the role of influential leaders like CO Gov. Lamm, OR representative Earl Blumenauer, and NY's Robert Moses.

May 26 - PBS

A subdivision in Florida's Dade County is left half-finished, leaving early buyers to live in a ghost town.

May 26 - The Miami Herald

Bethelem, PA, long famous for its steel industry, has faced years of hardship when the jobs went away. Locals are pinning their hopes on a new casino opening over the ruins of a steel factory.

May 26 - The New York Times