The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

Anthony Flint says that we have a lot of work ahead of us to retrofit America for the next century, from replacing water heaters to replacing old government structures with new, more regional ones.

May 15 - Citiwire.net

There is a near-consensus on the deficiencies of big box retail, but municipalities don't have the will to turn them down. Provinces must step in with development guidelines, writes Christopher Hume.

May 15 - Toronto Star

In an effort to raise some cash, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed selling off some of the state's historic landmarks -- including San Quentin Prison and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

May 14 - Los Angeles Times

Regional bus service will commence for the first time between Miami and Broward County with the completion of the I-95 Express (HOT) Lanes. Recovery Act funds provided for new diesel-hybrid and articulated buses, GPS and shelters.

May 14 - Miami Herald

City councillors in Ottawa, Canada are caught up in a convoluted struggle over their ability to control the region's urban growth boundary.

May 14 - The Ottawa Citizen

Plans to build a 12,000 home waterfront development on the San Francisco Bay have some environmentalists up in arms. But the developers claim the project will exemplify "smart growth".

May 14 - San Jose Mercury News

Utopian modernism turned on its head in Caracas, where residents have made fifty-year-old superblock housing projects into the locus of sprawling improvised settlements.

May 14 - Triple Canopy

BLOG POST

<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"> Shared streets, the contemporary vernacular used to describe streets that have been intentionally redesigned to remove exclusive boundaries for pedestrians, bicyclists, cars, etc., work well within a special set of conditions.<span>  </span>It is, in reality, just a new way of describing the original use of streets (see <a href="/node/38401">this previous post</a> for more on that).<span>  </span>The most promising candidates for shared streets are those where traffic volumes are not too heavy, the route is not a critical corridor for vehicular through-traffic, activities and attractions along the street are plentiful, short distance connectivity is viable, and a critical mass of pedestrians (perhaps enough to pack sidewalks at certain times) exists.<span>  </span>A shared street may also be suitable in places where there is a desire to induce such conditions; however, care must be taken to understand the larger network effects of shifting or slowing down vehicular traffic.<span>  </span>But in some instances, seemingly unrelated changes to traffic patterns or the effects of a coincidental collection of the above conditions sometimes go unnoticed until a street that may have been all about cars gradually shifts into something I refer to as a “<em>de facto</em> shared street”.

May 14 - Ian Sacs

Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) is sponsoring the bill, with the goal of creating more parking spaces for big rigs in cities.

May 14 - Transport Topics Online

Montreal has unveiled a new bike sharing program. Though similar to the Paris Velib system, Montreal's new program differs in that it is not operated by a private advertising company.

May 14 - The New York Times

Washington's top transportation official has indicated support for the idea of beefing up transportation funds by taxing drivers by the mile.

May 14 - The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Due to the downturn in the housing market, plans for a new development that would essentially become a 20,000-person suburb in the San Francisco Bay Area have been abandoned.

May 14 - San Jose Mercury News

Old buildings could be to blame for much of a city's energy waste. That's the case in New York, where officials are putting together a plan to retrofit older buildings to be less wasteful.

May 14 - Grist

FEATURE

These are just a few of the ways Prof. Peter Bosselman of UC Berkeley analyzes the built environment in his latest book, <em>Urban Transformation: Understanding City Design and Form.</em> Julia Galef brings us this review.

May 14 - Julia Galef

An article in the New York Times this week profiled Vauban, Germany, a town without cars. NYTime's Room for Debate Blog asked planners and developers to envision a car-free town in America.

May 13 - The New York Times

Richard Register argues that we can do much more to redesign cities and city functions to reduce energy consumption, primarily by ceasing to plan for automobiles.

May 13 - Foreign Policy in Focus

At the sixth busiest stop on the busiest train line in the country, developers are realizing the potential for transit-oriented development around the station.

May 13 - The Architect's Newspaper

This piece from <em>Utne Reader</em> looks at Ecuador's recent extension of inalienable rights to nature and why other countries should follow this lead.

May 13 - Utne Reader

BLOG POST

<span style="font-size: small"> <p> Can a city&#39;s &quot;design culture&quot; be deliberately grown and fostered? If so, can City Hall be part of such a fostering, or must it come from the grass roots, from the cultural or design communities themselves? </p> <p> Readers know I&#39;ve been musing on these questions for a while. A few years back, after arriving here in Vancouver, I wrote on the difference between our city&#39;s reputation as a <a href="/node/23462" target="_blank">&quot;city BY design&quot;,</a> and the reputation some other cities have, as &quot;cities OF design&quot;. </p>

May 13 - Brent Toderian

The ongoing effort to improve Japantown shows just how difficult it can be to shed the past.

May 13 - The San Francisco Chronicle