California
Sidewalk Busted? Fix it Yourself
The city of Los Angeles is considering a plan to stop paying for repairs to broken sidewalks and driveways, shifting the economic burden to property owners.
Mix of Successes and Failures for Pedestrian Malls
New York's Broadway goes pedestrian, while Sacramento's K Street goes back to having car traffic. Are pedestrian plazas a relic of the past, or the wave of the future?
Peak Hour Parking Pricing Working In Greenwich Village & Brooklyn
Marketplace reports on the parking market from NYC. Peak hour parking is being applied on Sixth Ave in Greenwich Village as a trial to increase parking availability and decrease congestion. Due to positive results, it's now being tried in Brooklyn.
City Planners Caught in Porn Scandal
Three planners and the zoning administrator in San Francisco's Planning Department are accused of circulating raunchy emails around the office and are at risk of losing their jobs.
The Urban Jungle, Expressed Literally Through Art
Los Angeles developer Barry Shy commissioned a muralist to paint an "urban jungle" in the lobby of his new residential high-rise. He got lions and waterfalls snuggled up against the downtown LA skyline.
Economic Woes Decimate Planning Departments
The budget crisis in California, as elsewhere, has forced planning departments statewide to bid farewell to valuable staff members and come up with creative ways to handle caseloads.
A Crowdsourced Tree Census for Cities
GOOD points us to a new project that harnesses the power of citizens to create a census of trees in San Francisco.
California Bill Would Allow Personal Vehicle Sharing
Does your car sit unused for long periods of time? A proposed law in California would allow you and your car to be part of a unique car-sharing system.
Reintroducing Cars To Pedestrian Malls
Downtown Sacramento's 'K' St. has been one of the city's most notable economic failures. Banning cars while providing the light rail an undisturbed path never fulfilled the hopes that urban planners had for the pedestrian mall. Now cars will return.
L.A. is Still #1
In terms of smog, metropolitan Los Angeles is still the worst city in the United States. In fact, all 10 of the smoggiest counties are in California, according to an annual report from the American Lung Association.
Toxic Suburbia
A 50-acre section of the Los Angeles suburb of Carson is contaminated with methane gas and benzene. Owners of the 285 homes in the area are left with few options.
Electrify Or Die
That's the verdict from a report released April 22 by officials of Caltrain, the nearly 150-year-old commuter line connecting San Francisco, San Jose, and Peninsula suburbs. In turn, the key to electrification is cooperation with the CA HSR Authority
Consolidating Stops to Make Buses Run Faster
Riders of San Francisco's Muni bus system often complain that the buses stop too much. Now, evidence is building that simply consolidating bus stops will help to make the buses run faster and more reliably.
Vintners in the City
The Wall St. Journal reports on a growing trend for wineries to set up show in cities, trucking their grapes to warehouse "cellars" to be closer to the people.
Comparing San Francisco's Tenderloin and L.A.'s Skid Row
This blog post from Governing explores the similarities between San Francisco's troubled Tenderloin district and Los Angeles' Skid Row-adjacent Spring Street corridor, and why one struggles and the other has found some developmental success.
From Bedroom Communities to Jet Engine Communities
More and more people working in the San Francisco Bay Area are opting for cheaper housing outside the region. Some are going way outside the region, commuting by airplane from Portland or Seattle.
Market Crash Leaves L.A. Flush With High-Priced Plots
Bought at the height of the real estate market and intended for conversion into high-priced luxury apartment buildings, empty plots of land are littered throughout Los Angeles, undeveloped and quietly back on the market at greatly reduced prices.
Saving Modernism in Palm Springs
Palm Springs is seen as a haven for Modernist architecture, but so far no local buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Suburb That Never Was
California City, California was designed to be the state's next great metropolis. But today it's hardly more than a dream. Geoff Manaugh reports on this modern-day ghost town.
Portland the Weird
The Economist looks at Portland's "weirdness" with an arched eyebrow, and asks, is this the next great model for the American city?
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
