The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

It's been a rough week for the Cincinnati Bell Connector.

January 19 - WLWT

A 51-year-old bicyclist became the second fatality in the first week of revenue service. It was the fourth fatality since the summer for the diesel train, which operates from West Palm Beach to Fort Lauderdale.

January 19 - Sun Sentinel

Philadelphia preserves affordable housing by investing $40 million into a new Housing Preservation Loan Program that will provide low interest loans of as much as $25,000 to fix up aging homes.

January 19 - The Philadelphia Inquirer

With the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule on the ropes, a legal strategy has emerged to challenge HUD's plan to delay enforcement.

January 19 - CityLab

The What Works Cities initiative has grown quickly since it launched in 2015.

January 19 - Route Fifty

Portland has implemented one of the most sweeping commitments to traffic safety of any city in the United States: 20 mph speed limits over the vast majority of the city's streets.

January 19 - Streetsblog USA

In the days before Google Maps, when AAA TripTiks and Thomas Guides ruled the planet…

January 19 - National Geographic

We asked more than a dozen urban experts: How will cities gain or lose from the competition to host Amazon's second North American headquarters?

January 18 - Penn IUR Urban Link

Residents will live in solar powered homes and ride around the community in self-driving, solar-powered shuttles. Babcock Ranch outside of Fort Myers, Florida, has been in the making since 2005. A city of 50,000 is forecasted.

January 18 - CBS This Morning

To get a handle on drivers whizzing through its main road, the small town of Betterton, Maryland installed a "smart" radar speed sign. The data it collected helped the local sheriff's department improve traffic enforcement.

January 18 - Governing

A Harvard study found that, in 27 communities and cities with both private and city owned internet, the municipal broadband was almost always cheaper.

January 18 - Boing Boing

Affordability is elusive in many of America's cities, but some of them made concrete efforts to fight that trend in 2017.

January 18 - Next City

In September, 238 applicants dreamed the impossible dream of attracting the second headquarters of Amazon, along with some 40,000 jobs. Today, all but 20 of those applicants will have to find a new quest.

January 18 - The New York Times

The drop in crime in cities has extended American life expectancies, especially those of black men, and brought more wealthy people into urban areas.

January 18 - The New York Times

Faced with commercial vacancies around 11 percent and the prospect of new office supply coming online soon, D.C. stakeholders are pushing for a bill that would provide incentives for conversions of office buildings into residential units.

January 18 - The New York Times

The city of Pittsburgh is responding to complaints by residents of poor road conditions after snow and ice coated the city's rad this week.

January 18 - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

FEATURE

A manifesto for street livability, health, and humanity in the era of driverless cars.

January 18 - Bruce Appleyard

Around the world, car crashes are the tenth leading cause of death, and while the United States is spending money on transportation, that money isn't making the roads safer.

January 17 - Curbed

A study from the USGS using five decades of data shows salinity and alkalinity are up in waterways across the United States.

January 17 - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Oregon was the first to conduct a pilot program in 2006, followed by California and Colorado last year. With financial backing from the U.S. DOT, at least four more states are exploring charging by the mile driven rather than the fuel burned.

January 17 - Governing