January 2005

Chicago Tribune Cultural mega-project transforms downtown Chicago, but has well run dry? (January 2)

New York Times For years, debate raged over plans to transform the High Line, the defunct Chelsea freight railway, into an elevated public park. Now, as the city and a nonprofit group are moving ahead on those plans, central Queens has set out on a similar mission for its equivalent of the High Line. (January 2)

Michigan Land Use Institute As the founder and director of Walkable Communities, Mr. Burden earns his keep helping towns and cities across the United States and Canada become better places by convincing residents and public officials to embrace walking as a central feature of their community’s design.

LA Times Texas publishes plans a massive $175-billion transportation blueprint for the next 50 years -- built largely with private funds. (January 4)

Baltimore Sun Tenants of Annapolis’s Market House were evicted to make way for an up-scale grocery store; some residents see the displacement of the seven merchants from a lunchtime institution as another example of Annapolis losing its small-town feel. (January 5)

Michigan Land Use Institute The $200 million that Michigan schools spend each year on food is a potentially huge new market for farms and a saving grace for farmland, which struggling farmers often convert to subdivisions to stay afloat. (January 10)

New York Magazine Defenders of 2 Columbus Circle in New York City call the building unattractive, yet significant; should it be preserved? (January 17)

New York Times Profile of PPS Board Member Tony Goldman. (January 16)

Star Tribune The Lake Street Sears in Minneapolis has been vacant for 10 years, and is part of a three block redevelopment project that will hold a mix of uses. (January 17)

Chicago Tribune In this, the first winter at Millennium Park, Chicagoans are finding out that the splashy collection of art and architecture looks (and works) very differently than it does when the thermometer reads 85 degrees. (January 16)

Gotham Gazette The impending eviction of the street vendors from the four-year-old Bedford-Stuyvesant Cooperative Market, while especially senseless, presents some questions with city-wide implications. For example: Is gentrification the same as community development? (January 2005)

The Scotsman With Edinburgh enjoying a real surge of growth and development right now, there is an opportunity not just to make good architecture, but, more importantly, to make good places. (January 19)

Daily News Luxury apartments planned for the redesigned Brooklyn Bridge Park will turn the public waterfront space into a manicured front lawn for wealthy Brooklyn Heights residents, critics charge. (January 14)

New York Times A Dutch traffic engineer believes that removing all traffic lights, speed signs, pedestrian crossing and the segregation of uses in some roadways makes everyone more cautious and aware of each other. (January 22)

Toronto Star Without the conventional rules and regulations of the road in place, drivers tend to slow down, open their eyes and develop a 'feel' for their surroundings. (January 16)

Los Angeles Downtown News Recent heavy rains and a groundbreaking for a 60-acre park in Taylor Yard have re-focused attention on the Los Angeles River. (January 24)

News & Record Center-city supporters are planning a four-mile path around downtown Greensboro that will eventually link up with other city trails. (January 20)

Christian Science Monitor A London neighborhood is planning to unveil a radical solution to traffic congestion: remove the conventional insignia of the road - traffic lights, white lines, guardrails, sidewalks - and create a single "shared space" for everyone, motorized or not. (January 27)

Arizona Republic The federal government formally committed to its portion of the Valley's light-rail system Monday in a funding grant that will pay nearly half of the construction costs of the 20-mile starter line. (January 25)