Infrastructure
Cities Pursue Different Paths to One Goal: Safer Streets
In the face of rising pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities, the District of Columbia's police department began deploying automated photo enforcement technologies while San Francisco took a multi-agency, collaborative planning approach.
Has CA's High-Speed Rail Been Dealt a Mortal Blow?
In issuing two stinging decisions on Monday, a superior court judge has erected significant obstacles to the construction of California's high-speed rail project. His invalidation of the project's financing plan has put its future in doubt.
Chicago Infrastructure Bank's Low Balance Challenges its Founding Vision
When it was launched by Mayor Emanuel and Bill Clinton, the Chicago Infrastructure Trust was promoted as an innovative model for how U.S. cities could fund improvements. But after a year and a half, the bank is struggling to fulfill its promise.
College Towns Provide a Master Class in Bike-Friendliness
New data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that college towns are even better at encouraging bicycle commuting than the most notable big cities (Portland, Seattle, etc); even when excluding commuting for school. What's their secret?
12 Bold and Bizarre Visions for Cities
There's no shortage of bold and bizarre ideas for how to make our future cities more livable, sustainable, and efficient. Whether many of these ideas are feasible is another story.
Mapping New York's Toxic Legacy
In bright blues, greens, and reds, an interactive map developed by property information website Property Shark documents New York City's cornucopia of polluted properties. Check the map to see if you might be living next door to a leaking oil tank.
Synchronized Street Repairs Save Chicago Residents Money and Aggravation
Tell me if this sounds familiar: A city repaves a crumbling street only to dig it up again 9 months later to replace an aging water main. Chicago's new Project Coordination Office (PCO) is intended to prevent such unnecessary and costly headaches.
California Ballot Measure Will Propose New Fee to Fund Roads
Would you be willing to increase the annual license fee you pay on your vehicle if the funds were to go to road repair and expansion? That's the question Californians will be asked to decide if the Road Repairs Act qualifies for the Nov. 2014 ballot.
5 Principles for Creating Safer Streets
Through diligence and innovation, New York has been able to make the city's streets the safest of any big city in America. This month, it published a guide to help livable streets supporters anywhere replicate its success.
Super Sharrows: "Feel of a Bike Lane" or Wasted Paint?
New "sharrows on steroids" are being tested In the Allston neighborhood of Boston. Are the markings - parallel dashed lines bracketing a bicycle icon - a legitimate improvement on the controversial practice or "an underwhelming innovation"?
The Promise and Peril of Eco-Crowdfunding
Officials in Oregon, New York, and California have embraced crowdfunding as a way to push forward with environmental projects in a time of constrained budgets. Though the emerging tool is attractive to many, others see danger.
Lessons From a Failed Anti-Highway Campaign
A decade-long campaign to stop the $2.6 billion Ohio River Bridges project in Louisville has apparently lost out to intrenched interests. With the help of the campaign's founders, Angie Schmitt examines where the popular grassroots effort went wrong.
10 Ways Cities Are Turning Back Time
It's back to the future for global cities, now that we've realized what a mess the 20th century was.
Market on Wheels Serves Chicago's Food Deserts
A nonprofit has converted a former Chicago city bus into a mobile grocery store to bring fresh food to the city's underserved neighborhoods. After stopping operations in August, the service will return with a sustainable business plan this month.
Detroit Struggles to Turn the Lights Back On
After forty years of disinvestment in public lighting, Detroit's tens of thousands of broken street and alley lights contribute to incidents of crime and traffic accidents. Can a new lighting authority grow the city's glow?
A Transportation Funding Bill Named for the Tea Party
Make that a 'defunding' bill, technically described as a devolution bill. The concept is simple: roll back the federal gas tax to 3.7 cents per gallon, shift transportation responsibility to the states and use block grants to provide federal funding.
Visionary Concepts Make "Rebuild by Design" Shortlist
10 bold ideas for building the New York area's resiliency have been selected to move to the final round of a design competition run by HUD. The best designs could tap into billions of dollars in Hurricane Sandy relief funds.
How to Turn $10 billion into $300 Billion: Create an Infrastructure Bank
It's certainly not a new idea - what's new is the current bipartisan Senate bill, cutely abbreviated as the BRIDGE Act, seeded with $10 billion of federal funds that would attract funds from the private sector to be loaned to worthy projects.
Attacks Shut Down American Power Grid ... In Massive War Game
Matthew L. Wald reports on the massive cyber war game called GridEx II that simulated a coordinated assault on America's power grid this week.
Toronto Bails Out its Bike Share System
Apparently Toronto's dysfunctional mayor hasn't stopped the rest of the city's government from functioning. With the city's bike share program facing insolvency, the city council voted to provide the Bixi-operated system with an infusion of cash.
Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.
EMC Planning Group, Inc.
Planetizen
Planetizen
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research
NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
