Late last week, Councilman Curtis Jones and Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown introduced legislation that would modify the 10-year property tax abatement of new constructions, conversions and big improvements so that it would be contingent upon obtaining LEED certification.

Gov. Rendell is pushing for Pennsylvania's legislature to enact a state building code that would require environmentally friendly, energy-efficient construction. Whether he wants both residential and commercial development included is not yet known.

January 2008
Saving the World Through Zoning
The sustainable community development code comes to the rescue.
By Chris Duerksen

The Office of Planning is leading a multi-year public effort to review and revise the District's zoning regulations. This site contains information on the process and multiple ways for you to get involved. Use this site to sign up for working groups, read draft recommendations, and offer your comments on any phase of the project. Please give us your thoughts and check back often for updates.

The Office of Zoning (OZ) is an independent District of Columbia agency which was created in 1990 by an Act of the City Council. Effective in 1991, OZ provides professional, technical, and administrative assistance to the Zoning Commission (ZC) and the Board of Zoning Adjustment (BZA). The agency receives and processes all zoning related applications, which may be for a zoning change handled by the ZC, or to seek relief from a zoning regulation provision handled by the BZA. OZ schedules ZC and BZA public meetings and hearings and provides follow-up information on their actions and decisions; coordinates the zoning process with the Office of Planning and other District and Federal agencies; maintains, updates and publishes the District’s Zoning Regulations (through the District’s Office of Documents) and the Zoning Map; prepares records of appealed ZC and BZA cases for the courts; and handles all administrative matters associated with the daily functioning of the office. OZ consults with the Office of Corporation Counsel regarding legal issues and monitors the District’s legislative process to keep the ZC and the BZA apprised of matters affecting zoning. OZ also provides public information about the zoning process, the Zoning Regulations, the zoning of specific properties, and the status of cases pending before the ZC and the BZA. OZ, the ZC, and the BZA receive legal advice from the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) to ensure the legal sufficiency of their actions and decisions.

The Healthy Development Measurement Tool is a product of the Urban Health and Place Team at the Program on Health, Equity and Sustainability within the San Francisco Department of Public Health. As described in the background, the HDMT was developed as part of the Eastern Neighborhoods Community Health Impact Assessment (ENCHIA) project.

Planners Network is an association of professionals, activists, academics, and students involved in physical, social, economic, and environmental planning in urban and rural areas, who promote fundamental change in our political and economic systems.

SKOS is an area of work developing specifications and standards to support the use of knowledge organization systems (KOS) such as thesauri, classification schemes, subject heading systems and taxonomies within the framework of the Semantic Web. SKOS & RDF SKOS provides a standard way to represent knowledge organization systems using the Resource Description Framework (RDF). Encoding this information in RDF allows it to be passed between computer applications in an interoperable way. Using RDF also allows knowledge organization systems to be used in distributed, decentralised metadata applications. Decentralised metadata is becoming a typical scenario, where service providers want to add value to metadata harvested from multiple sources.

Process Modeler for Microsoft Visio™ provides more than just a bunch of shapes and objects. It supports the full BPMN standard, which process definitions can be validated against the BPMN standard as well as several export formats to bridge the "Business - IT divide".

Before the advent of business process management systems (BPMS), there was a clear distinction between business process modeling and BPM application design. “Modeling” involved a set of tools for business analysts used to discover, diagram, analyze, and optimize business processes, often in concert with some formal methodology. The ultimate output of this effort, if used to create an automated BPM solution at all, served mainly as a “requirements document” that would (hopefully) be referenced by IT in the solution specification and design.

Anti-Immigration Movement

FAIR Front Group Slams Migrants on Traffic Intelligence Report

Fall 2008

Next time you find yourself stuck in traffic miles from work — or school or home or daycare — don't blame poor urban planning, low carpooling rates or inadequate public transportation.

Blame immigrants.

That's right, according to high-profile ads placed this summer in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The Nation and other publications by a new front group for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and two other anti-immigrant hate groups. The ads, which are based on dubious statistical analysis, claim that an immigration-fueled population boom will dramatically worsen traffic congestion and destroy pristine lands.

 

How Many Americans?

By Steven A. Camarota
Tuesday, September 2, 2008; A15

When the Census Bureau released its new population projections last month, most of the media focused on the country's changing racial composition. But this was almost certainly not the most important finding. The projections show that the U.S. population will grow by 135 million in just 42 years -- a 44 percent increase. Such growth would have profound implications for our environment and quality of life. Most of the increase would be a direct result of one federal policy -- immigration. If we reduced the level of immigration, the projections would be much lower. The question we have to ask ourselves is: Do we want to be a much more densely settled country?

Native-born Americans have only about two children on average, which makes for a roughly stable population over time. But with an estimated 1.5 million legal and illegal immigrants settling in the country each year, and about 900,000 births to these immigrants each year, immigration directly and indirectly accounts for at least three-fourths of U.S. population growth.

An increase of 135 million people by 2050 is equivalent to the entire populations of Mexico and Canada moving here. Assuming the same ratio of population to infrastructure that exists today, the United States would need to build and pay for 36,000 schools. We would need to develop enough land to accommodate 52 million new housing units, along with places for the people who lived in them to shop and work. We would also have to construct enough roads to handle 106 million more vehicles.

 

Boyd Theater makes endangered list

By Inga Saffron Inquirer Architecture Critic

With the celebrated Boyd Theater once again for sale, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has placed the art deco movie palace on its annual list of the 11 most endangered historic sites in America.

WHO WE ARE

& WHAT WE DO

CUP makes educational projects about places and how they change.

Our projects bring together art and design professionals - artists, graphic designers, architects, urban planners - with community-based advocates and researchers - organizers, government officials, academics, service-providers and policymakers. These partners work with CUP staff to create projects ranging from high school curricula to educational exhibitions.

Our work grows from a belief that the power of imagination is central to the practice of democracy, and that the work of governing must engage the dreams and visions of citizens. CUP believes in the legibility of the world around us. What can we learn by investigation? By learning how to investigate, we train ourselves to change what we see.

86 neighborhood planning surveys prepared and published by the Philadelphia City Planning Commission between 1946 and 1990. These reports contain descriptions of current conditions of housing stock; population trends; property turnover; public transportation; community activity. Recommendations are made for future action.

Manual for JBoss Web Server.  Highly optimized, easy to deploy server with java, cgi, .net, and php capabilities.

Town of Blacksburg Planning & Engineering department provides engineering information for town infrastructure, gis information, and town planning documents.

From the website:

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader 

The Philadelphia Neighborhoods Planning History Project creates a web presentation of the full content of 86 neighborhood planning surveys prepared and published by the Philadelphia City Planning Commission between 1946 and 1990. These reports contain descriptions of current conditions of housing stock; population trends; property turnover; public transportation; community activity. Recommendations are made for future action. The project will facilitate university and public research on Philadelphia's architectural and social environment by providing access to a body of material whose content is of current and future interest but whose printed format is ephemeral and subject to physical deterioration and loss. The reports are a primary resource for the study of how the problems and aspirations of Philadelphia neighborhoods were described during decades of debate about urban renewal in Philadelphia. School of Design faculty have affirmed the survey's continuing relevance to the curriculum of the school. At the same tiime, the initiative aligns with the University's stated commitment to Philadelphia as an urban environment.

The Citizens Housing and Planning Council of New York announces:

The William R. Ginsberg Fellowships

Established in 2007, the William R. Ginsberg Fellowships are designed to
encourage public service and civic engagement for two key groups of
talented professionals: senior practitioners and policy makers, and recent
college graduates or graduate students.

The Fellowships provide support for original research and the opportunity
to explore new ideas and practices. Areas of research and empirical study
should be designed to improve the quality of life in NYC's neighborhoods
by focusing on housing, the urban environment and open space, education,
transportation, land use and zoning, or community development.

William R. Ginsberg was a pioneering environmental lawyer, NYC Parks
Commissioner, teacher, mentor, and tireless advocate on behalf of NYC's
civic life, the built environment, and the preservation of open space. He
served on the board of CHPC for more than four decades.

The Fellowship is supported by a generous gift from William R. Ginsberg
and his family.

Promoting a Prosperous and Livable City Since 1937 70th Anniversary 1937-2007

FOR INFORMATION CONTACT CHPC at info@chpcny.org or download applications
at www.chpcny.org

Planphilly is a new city planning and urban design web site for Philadelphia and the region. It will be a place you can come to for timely news about major projects being planned or under way in the city and a place to learn about, and participate in, the challenges and opportunities that our developing city faces.

International Planning Studies; May-Aug2004, Vol. 9 Issue 2/3, p139-153, 15p

 

The terrorist destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City in September 2001 set in motion a planning process meant to rebuild on the site us quickly as possible. The first attempt at plan development-Phase 1-failed. The six planning proposals were unanimously rejected. Phase 1 had to be repeated. What went wrong? This paper examines the event through the lens of the inherent marginality of public planning in the USA, the idiosyncrasies of local and local-state politics, and the interaction of property rights and the public interest.

University of California's Systemwide Library and Scholarly Information Advisory Committee (SLASIAC). Their work has included a resolution on scholarly communication

Philadelphia City Planning Commission site with current plans for Philadelphia neighborhoods.

In 2003, DVRPC began preliminary work on identifying goals for the Year 2030 Plan. The result was "Regional Analysis of What-If Scenarios" which looked at several alternative scenarios and their impact on the future form of the region. "Destination 2030: A Vision for the Future" followed and analyzed current trends and articulated a singular vision as well as developing specific goals for eight critical issue areas: urban revitalization, growth management, economic development, the environment, equity and opportunity, transportation facilities, transportation operations, and transportation finance.

Looks totally fascinating -- GO GO GO. And tell me how it goes.

Taking the high road : a metropolitan agenda for transportation reform / Bruce Katz and Robert Puentes, editors. [0815748272 (paper : alk. paper) ] Washington, D.C. : Brookings Institution Press, c2005.
Call#: Van Pelt Library HE308 .T35 2005

prepared by the Urban Institute and Cambridge systematics, Inc ... with the assistance of the Pennsylvania Economy League.

The TCDI program is intended to assist in reversing the trends of disinvestment and decline in many of the region's core cities and first generation suburbs by:

1. Supporting local planning projects that will lead to more residential, employment or retail opportunities;
2. Improving the overall character and quality of life within these communities to retain and attract business and residents, which will help to reduce the pressure for further sprawl and expansion into the growing suburbs;
3. Enhancing and utilizing the existing transportation infrastructure capacity in these areas to reduce the demands on the region's transportation network; and
4. Reducing congestion and improving the transportation system's efficiency.

This study summarizes the results of a mailed survey and follow-up interviews with municipal and agency representatives from southeastern Pennsylvania and Southern New Jersey townships, boroughs and counties located adjacent to Philadelphia and/or Camden City. The purpose of the survey was to define and evaluate barriers and opportunities for greater collaboration between the cities of Philadelphia and Camden and their adjacent suburban counties and municipalities. The report illustrates the outreach and coordination process that was used to obtain information about current and future collaborative efforts. The outcome of the survey and interview process provides an inventory of current and future potential inter-governmental and inter-agency collaborative activities. Tables and maps highlight the survey findings and analysis. The complete survey and responses can be found in the Appendices.

Session 282
Monday, January 23, 2006, 10:15 AM - 12:00 PM, Hilton
Transportation and Economic Development
Michael Bell, MEB Associates Inc, presiding

Sponsored by:
Transportation and Economic Development Committee (ADD10)

Sharing the Wealth: Targeting Transportation Funding to Economic Development in Low-Income Communities (06-1677)
Shirley M. Loveless, Coleshill Associates

Highway-Induced Development: Evidence from Sri Lankan Household Sector (06-0202)
Kumudu Gunasekera, Parsons Brinckerhoff
William Anderson, Boston University
T. R. Lakshmanan, Boston University

Stochastic Data Envelopment Analysis Based on Choice Theoretic Approach to Analyze Interaction Between Transportation and Economic Development (06-1208)
Jobair B. Alam, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology
Konstadinos G. Goulias, University of California, Santa Barbara

Assessing Economic Impacts of Large-Scale Transport Infrastructure Projects: Case of Lyon-Turin Corridor (06-1256)
Wolfgang K. E. Schade, Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research, Germany

Subject Areas:
Transportation Policy

Sharing the Wealth: Targeting Transportation Funding to Economic Development in Low-Income Communities (06-1677)
Shirley M. Loveless, Coleshill Associates

ABSTRACT Economic development benefits are often cited as justification for transportation investments. For a variety of reasons, Federal transportation funds go mainly to large, regional-scale projects with identified regional economic benefits. Local benefits to low-income communities—where they exist—are usually incidental. The transportation and economic development needs of such communities generally get overlooked in transportation project planning. This has led to distributive inequity. A review of state and regional level transportation programs found few that target transportation investments to economic development in disadvantaged communities, either in effect or in stated purpose. The Transportation and Community Development Initiative (TCDI) program administered by the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC) is one of a very small number of such programs. This program is in its fourth year of competitive grants to local municipalities. While the DVRPC’s municipal eligibility criteria for the TCDI now go beyond strictly disadvantaged communities, in order to serve other goals such as regional growth management, the economic development benefits are still aimed primarily at disadvantaged communities. The program can point to some impressive results in local economic revitalization of disadvantaged neighborhoods that probably would not have occurred without the impetus the TCDI provided. On balance, the TCDI program is a good model for integrating transportation and economic development planning for the purpose of reviving disadvantaged communities. However, even TCDI’s emphasis on revitalization of such communities is no guarantee that their inhabitants will benefit from economic development that might be generated by the program’s projects.

by David E. Boyce [and] Vukan R. Vuchic.