Planning news

Ontario is among a number of places that is considering striking down the clothesline bans, arguing that they are environmentally irresponsible.

Events, exhibitions, discussions and tours.

If the developers who want to tear down the vacant Bendix factory don't get the zoning change that would permit them to build a home-improvement store in the Loch Raven area, they have a Plan B in place. The project has already been approved for the planned unit development process, which eliminates some zoning and development regulations for projects deemed a benefit to the community.

The rezoning would remake 125th Street, one of the city’s liveliest streets and home to many small businesses like clothing stores and hair salons into a regional business hub.

Should the plan for the Parke-Bernet Gallery building be approved, it would only underscore the bizarre thinking behind decisions governing historic landmark cases today.

Video and presentations from CNU XVI, the Congress for the New Urbanism's (CNU's) April 3-6 event in Austin, Texas, are now available online. Nearly 1500 attendees worked on solutions to climate change, household gasoline dependency, and troubled real estate markets.

In "21st Century Land Development Code" from APA Planners Press, two of the nation's leading experts in land-use law and planning provide a comprehensive guide to drafting and updating land-use regulations.

Author John I. Gilderbloom draws on case studies in Houston, Louisville, and New Orleans and analyzes census information as well as policy reports in "Invisible City", a book that outlines how housing can be remade with a progressive vision.

The Brookings Institution's Walkable Urbanism topic offers views from around the country on creating pedestrian-friendly communities, and how the desire for more walkable urban spaces is changing the housing market in America's cities as people seek alternatives to driving.

The Iowa Department of Economic Development has published its Green Communities 2008 Action Plan, a set of services and initiatives that encourage community sustainability.

Michigan NOW explores Michigan through the stories of the state's people, in their own words, through radio journalism. The website offers archives of past stories and content is available in both streaming audio and text formats.

"We are totally committed to reducing emissions, but it requires rethinking the way we do our activities," said King County, Washington, Executive Ron Sims about the need for greater urban densities and less car use "in an age of global warming," a statement marking one key goal of the emergent climate-change debate, while District of Columbia Office of Planning Director Harriet Tregoning outlined another, stressing that the city wants to become green not only "for greenhouse-gas benefits," but also to be "globally competitive" and increasingly attractive both to residents and tourists.

Reached after two years of tough negotiations, a deal between Lebec-based Tejon Ranch Co. and five environmental groups -- the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Audubon California, the Planning and Conservation League, and the Endangered Habitat League -- ensures preservation of 240,000 acres of the 270,000-acre farm in the Tehachapi Mountains and allows concentrated smart-growth development on 30,000 acres at the farm's western edge along I-5, some 60 miles north of Los Angeles, with Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger pledging state help in implementation of "this far-sighted" plan.

Featured with her husband Craig in a National Public Radio (NPR) series on American farmers, "smart-growth, anti-sprawl crusader" and 1000 Friends of Iowa co-founder LaVon Griffieon watches a wave of rooftops visible from their 1,100-acre family farm near Ankeny, some 10 miles north of central Des Moines, telling Des Moines Register writer Marc Hansen the family has been farming there since 1868, six generations have lived on the land, and it won't be sold and subdivided for 1,100 homes.

Inspired by Louisville's 2005 bicycle summit, which secured major safety improvements for cyclists and pedestrians and a riverside bikeway, many city residents hope their just-concluded Healthy Hometown Pedestrian Summit will produce similar results, with St. Nicholas Academy teacher Debbie Green saying she would like to walk to a local park or grocery store and even the 3.5 miles to her work, but without sidewalks "(y)ou have to get in a vehicle and drive to all of those places."

Now that last month's election of another smart growth advocate to the Columbia City Council has secured a four-member majority, the Planning and Zoning Commission sees this as the right time to draw up a badly-needed comprehensive plan and overhaul the outdated zoning code, last reworked in 1983 -- both recommended by neighborhood activists and developers in their joint 2006 Process and Procedures Stakeholders Committee Report, which also advised greater community input in development decisions, better mediation between stakeholders, and elimination of duplicate public hearings.

With a combination of vehicle miles traveled (VMT), mileage per gallon, and fuel carbon content making the U.S. responsible for 45 percent of global tailpipe emissions, the nation must cut these emissions through better land use, compact development and more transportation choices, or it won't be able to cut its total greenhouse-gas emissions by 15 to 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, being 20 percent above those levels now, said Smart Growth America (SGA) Communications Director David Goldberg at a North Brunswick workshop on the Urban Land Institute's study, "Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change."

Citing the American Planning Association's (APA's) Planning magazine projections for 33 percent population growth -- to 400 million by 2034 -- and for related construction of some 70 million housing units and 100 billion square feet of offices, stories, factories, institutions, hotels and other commercial facilities, with two-thirds of the 2050 stock yet to be built, the White Plains, Westchester County-based Pace Law School announced the region's first master's degree program in real estate law, to prepare lawyers for developers, tenants, financial institutions and environmental groups throughout the "vibrant and growing real estate market, full of opportunity and riddled with complexity."

Some 30 miles southeast of Houston, the city of Santa Fe has recently annexed 30 percent more land and added at least 1,500 residents to its population of about 10,000, which may reach 19,000 by 2028, with Mayor Ralph Stenzel and other officials calling for a smart-growth plan to help the city retain the charm of its country living, invest prudently and maintain quality services, reports Galveston County Daily News writer Chris Paschenko, quoting the mayor, who said, "You can't stop growth, but we're trying to keep the tax rate down."

To minimize the prospective damage from climate change, Charlottesville region communities, like others elsewhere, should work for the necessary shift toward compact mixed-use development, with housing, schools, jobs, shops and recreation in easy walking or biking distance, said University of Maryland's National Center for Smart Growth Professor Reid Ewing, co-author of the landmark "Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change" report, at the United Jefferson Area Mobility Plan (UnJAM 2035) forum, pointing out that smart-growth planning can help residents to drive 40 percent less.