"By 2043, we're being told, there won't just be 300 million of us -- there will be 400 million. With the roadways around our metropolitan regions increasingly clogged, how will we ever stay mobile?
    
Depending on the tea leaves you choose, some vividly contrasting futures emerge."

A commentary by Neal Peirce.
 

"Bob Chorney wants to put farmers back in farmers' markets.

The executive director of Farmers' Markets Ontario is tired of so-called "hucksters" who simply resell produce they've purchased wholesale and then pass it off as their own at markets — often undercutting the prices of career farmers.

So Chorney is pitching a certified market for Toronto next year that would be open only to farmers who grow their own goods, the first of its kind in Canada."

St. Pancras Station in London tops a list of the 6 most beautiful train stations in the world, chosen by Jonathan Glancey, Architecture Critic for The Guardian.

 

This image of St. Pancras (c) David Sillitoe, Guradian Unlimited 

"What is the measure of a great city or urban region? Its education systems? Its arts? Its business inventiveness? All of the above. But the most overlooked measure is a city's dedication to the public space."

With a few changes, suburbs could be good places to live and interesting places to explore, writes Lawrence Cheek for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

"It boasts hot porridge doused in whisky, fresh ostrich meat, organic beers and hunks of wild boar, and it nestles under the battlements of one of the country's most imposing castles. Welcome to the farmers' market in Edinburgh, officially crowned as the best in Britain.

Now six years old, the Edinburgh market is one of the few in Britain to open every weekend. Its award from Country Life, to be handed over by the magazine's editor, Mark Hedges, tomorrow, is the latest accolade. It has also been judged the UK's best by the Farmers Retail and Markets Association (Farma), the national industry body."     

Rockville's new mixed-use downtown aims to avoid the 'Anyplace U.S.A.' look.

Community groups and politicians are creating new strategies to bring fresh foods into low-income neighborhoods.

There was a golden age of motoring when the multi-storey car park was considered a symbol of pride and progress. But car parks are fast becoming symbols of our congested cities, our heavy carbon footprint, our dependency on oil; a civilisation that once embraced the motor car as an agent of liberation now feels a little sheepish about the whole affair.

"The shape of downtown Los Angeles is still in our hands because we are a young city and have room to grow, even at the core. At the same time, the city has an unmatched record of missing opportunities to become its own place.

On Friday, the state announced Hargreaves Associates as the winner of a design competition for a park at the Cornfield — 32 acres of land north of Chinatown. The proposal is thoughtful and interesting, though constrained by the rules of the competition.

But what the Cornfield competition really points out is how infrequently we are choosing from the best available options, some of which may lie outside the limits of a narrowly conceived exercise."

Eau Gallie organizers initially hoped to attract 200 people to their first farmers market. Their estimates were a bit off, and between !,400 - 2,000 people attended the opening day.

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels announced a citywide emphasis on pedestrian safety and stepped-up traffic enforcement after three pedestrians were struck crossing streets in two days, including the fatality of a city council deputy.

"Seattle police will crack down on drivers speeding or ignoring other laws at intersections. Officers also will be stopping jaywalkers and pedestrians who cross against traffic lights."

Enrique Penalosa famed urban environmentalist and former mayor of Bogota, Colombia who is widely credited for setting that city of 7 million on a course of sustainable development, came Downtown Los Angeles to speak to a rapt audience of politicians, planners and employees of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority at the agency's Downtown boardroom.

Making cities more livable, he told the crowd, requires a shared vision among city leaders that extends beyond bus routes.

"It is not for traffic engineers to decide how we are going to solve transportation problems, it is a political decision," Penalosa said. "How do we want our city to be? How do we want to live?"  

Photo by Gary Leonard, Los Angeles Downtown News

In an attempt to reduce accidents by easing tense muscles of stressed-out drivers, the Malaysian government is opening drive-in massage parlors on the country's main highway.

 

Communications scholars began studying personal space and people’s perception of it decades ago, in a field known as proxemics.  Proxemics helps developers and urban planners understand how people move through public spaces, how they shop, and even what types of restaurants they find most comfortable.

For almost fifty years, the promise of Philadelphia's waterfront has gone unfulfilled. Now, however, there is a glimmer of hope for the waterfront.

On October 12, Mayor John Street signed an executive order authorizing Penn Praxis, under the guidance of Harris Steinberg, to work with Philadelphians to create comprehensive planning for a seven-mile stretch of the Delaware River waterfront running from Oregon Avenue in the south to Allegheny Avenue in the north.

Two Bus Rapid Transit lines are expected to be in service in the Bay Area by 2010.  The area is already served by three lines that are minimalist versions of BRT, which have fewer stops,  and special traffic signal devices that allow them to cut travel times. 

BRT is gaining popularity nationally, as it is efficient, and costs less than rail.

The hunt for new ways of creating moderately priced housing in places with immoderate land prices has led housing experts in New York City to an unconventional thought: Why not tear down obsolete branch libraries and replace them with libraries that not only are bigger and better, but also have apartments built on top?

 

Detroit's downtown -- a cold, empty symbol of urban decay for decades -- is on its way to a warmer, livelier, more entertaining future. Campus Martius, the new downtown square that PPS helped create the vision for, played a role in sparking the revitalization.

"No one wants to stroll Calgary's downtown. The streets are lifeless and the buildings too boring. But things are beginning to change."

Spacing, a quarterly magazine that focuses on the improvement and preservation of, and affection for, Toronto's public realm, is run by a creative community of activists and urbanists.  Over the course of its three years, the magazine has become more and more influential, and has developed major clout at City Hall.

 

"Atlantans hardly need a group of researchers to tell them that traffic in the region is a mess. But a recently released study of transportation patterns shows just how bad it is.

Our average commute time is 31.2 minutes, five minutes longer than in 1990, the highest increase in the country. We have three of the worst bottlenecks in the country. Less than 4 percent of Atlantans take transit to work.

So, not only does Atlanta have some of the worst traffic in the country, but also our attempts to build our way out of congestion are failing."

 

"In a town built on make-believe, Hollywood leaders are hoping to pull off the greatest feat yet: creating a public park out of thin air.

Civic and business organizers want to turn a half-mile portion of the Hollywood Freeway into a tunnel and construct a 24-acre greenbelt swath from Bronson Avenue to Wilton Place on top."

 

"At the base of Alabama 59, several lots once boasting beach houses, restaurants, bars, shops and small amusement parks sit empty, growing weeds as they have since Hurricane Ivan blew through in September 2004.

Though there have been delays...there is a plan in place to transform this central beach area from an intersection of two four-lane highways into a dense, pedestrian-friendly downtown of high-rises, sidewalk cafes, ground-floor retailers, hidden parking lots and wide public spaces."
 

"As they battle sprawl, Washington area leaders say they face a stubborn foe, and it's not greedy developers or the tyranny of the automobile or the desire for big houses. It is the United States government.

In scattering employees to the region's outer edges, local officials and planners say, the federal government has undermined efforts to concentrate growth near public transit and the area's urban core -- the strategy local officials see as key to reducing traffic and conserving resources in a booming region."

Voters in the City of Austin will decide whether to approve a bond issue to build a new central public library downtown.

"Like in other cities, we now have chance in Austin to reinvent the central library," says Loriene Roy, professor of library and information science at the University of Texas and president-elect of the American Library Association. "It can be a point of community pride, a dynamic downtown place everybody can use every day and yet still be something really terrific we leave for the next generation."

Facing a need to either renovate their crumbling transportation infrastructure or remove it, public officials in Seattle are considering a few options. The city could rebuild the highway, or it could invest a little more money to move a new highway underground, leaving the surface available for a waterfront park. A third idea, backed by a citizens’ group, the People’s Waterfront Coalition, is to tear down the old highway, build a waterfront park and smaller boulevard, increase transit service and modernize existing streets.

Image (c) Stuart Isett for the New York Times 

"The “in” thing in real estate used to be sprawling suburban homes with one-acre lots, picket fences and plenty of lawn to mow. But these days, many young professionals, empty-nesters and retirees across the country are either downsizing or looking for a more chic and affordable lifestyle. And they’re finding it downtown.

The number of downtown residents in the nation’s largest cities is expected to grow by 2010, according to a survey by The Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy and The Fannie Mae Foundation. The movement also is being seen in New Hampshire. In Nashua alone, there are 10 projects ranging from high-end condos to elderly apartments either under way or in the planning stages."