Urban Planning
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What Can SF Learn from Other Cities’ Urban Water Projects?
(Editor's note: This is Part 3 in a 3-part series on the Bay Area watershed. In Part 1, we examined a radical new daylighting proposal in Berkeley; and in Part 2, we looked at the changes that SF streets may face under a bold plan by the Public Utilities Commission.)
April 16, 2010
Bay Area Cities Rediscover the Creeks Under Their Streets
(Editor's note: This is Part 1 in a 3-part series on the Bay Area watershed)
April 9, 2010
Planning and Public Life
San Franciscans, like residents of most big cities, are in a continuous process of reshaping public spaces. There are pilot programs for new ways to use Market Street, for pocket parks in areas covered with underutilized asphalt, for Sunday Streets closures, for opening sidewalks to “green sewers,” and even some tentative efforts to launch more public art and/or urban agriculture in empty lots. All of these experiments are welcome departures from the long-simmering biases favoring the total unquestioned domination of private automobiles over public space.
March 25, 2010
New Analysis: Major Cities Still Shortchanged by Transportation Stimulus
The Obama administration's awarding of $1.5 billion in competitive transportation stimulus grants on Wednesday sparked elation in cities such as Kansas City and New Orleans. But those celebrations were more than just anecdotal evidence of the so-called TIGER program's urban impact, according to a new analysis from the Brookings Institution's Rob Puentes.
February 19, 2010
A Modest Proposal: Ask Developers to Help Pay For Better Transport
At today's debate on conservative support for transit, developer Chris
Leinberger had a modest proposal for lawmakers who are desperately
seeking new transportation financing strategies in an era of diminishing gas tax returns: Ask real-estate developers to pay for projects that will increase their profits.
February 2, 2010
The Urbanist Case Against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), an advocacy group working to
reform local development practices, is seizing on House Financial
Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank's (D-MA) recent call for a new system of housing finance to replace government-controlled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
January 29, 2010
StreetUtopia North Beach
StreetUtopia is a new community organizing effort centered in North Beach. Launched by Hank Hyena and Phil Millenbah at an inaugural event in early January, they drew upwards of 150 people to an empty historic storefront at 1 Columbus Avenue, where they showed Streetfilms, had a small art exhibit, and conducted a survey of the folks who turned out. Hank Hyena explained his motivation in terms of European cities which are often greener, more bike-friendly, and with more pedestrian-centers than US cities. Along with several other parents of children at Yick Wo Public School, including co-instigator Phil Millenbah, a San Leandro city planner, they staged an inspiring evening of art, film, and conversation.
January 25, 2010
Obama Previews His New Budget’s Urban Policy Moves
When it comes to re-centering the Washington bureaucracy to better
accommodate cities' needs, the first year of the Obama administration
has brought its share of progress (a three-agency partnership set to spend $150 million on sustainable development) and hiccups (a White House urban affairs office with lots of talk but little action).
January 22, 2010
What if America’s Urban Economies Were National Ones?
The U.S. Conference of Mayors released a
report this week with some dire conclusions for the nation's cities:
Even the payroll growth that many prognosticators anticipate this year
won't make a dent in double-digit urban unemployment. Half of the 363
biggest metro areas won't return to their pre-recession jobs levels
until 2013 or beyond.
January 21, 2010
How Will Obama’s Sustainability Team Spend Its $150M? A Preview
Before the U.S. DOT gave some early clues as to how the agency would craft its new transit funding rules, deputy housing and urban development (HUD) secretary Ron Sims answered another question that’s been on the minds of transit and local-planning wonks: How will the Obama administration’s three-agency partnership for sustainable communities spend its $150 … Continued
January 21, 2010