Sam Newberg - Joe Urban's blog

CNU's efforts to work with NAHB and NTBA to encourage Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to relax their standards for mixed-use development has been getting some press. Read our own CNU News release here.

CNU is leading the charge to get new urbanists and firefighters to agree on a set of street design standards that are both attractive, useful, pedestrian-friendly and safer for all.

Here is another excellent article in the Capitol Times about what Madison loses by having Wisconsin send back its $800 million for a rail link between Madison and Milwaukee.

Check out this excellent article in Grist about the Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle, featuring an article with Cary Moon, spokesperson forthe People's Waterfront Coalition.

John Norquist spoke December 15th at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. An article appeared in the Pensacola News Journal featuring John and his ideas about his work with CNU and his time as mayor of Milwaukee.

Take a look at this piece on the ASLA blog discussing the work of Richard Jackson and his thoughts on urban planning and obesity. Jackson, Chair of the School of Health at UCLA, cites several aspects of how we develop our cities as negtively impacting public health.

Check out this terrific and very creative video at the StrongTowns website called Conversation with an Engineer.

Wisconsin and Ohio lost their combined $1.2 billion in stimulus dollars to make passenger rail improvements that were intended to eventually be part of the Midwest high-speed rail network. According to the New York Times, the funding will be rerouted to other states, primarily California and Florida.

Urbanism in Los Angeles was dealt a blow with the December 8th City Council vote to approve a Fresh & Easy grocery store on Crenshaw Boulevard.

Here is an interesting post at Urban Turf indicating that Gen Y prefers a great neighborhood over a great house.