The City Desk: Urban issues and sustainability

• NEW: Long commutes linked to poor health || USA Today
• Urban trees reveal income inequality || Per Square Mile
  
• Czech trains temps travelers off roads || WSJ
  
• What really matters for increasing transit ridership || Atlantic Cities
  
• Revitalized downtown Cleveland attracting population || Cranes
  
• In San Diego, infrastructure deficit disorder || PlaceShakers & Newsmakers
  
• Downtown LA's population on the rise, represents city's multucultural vibe || LA Times
  
• America's foolish detour into shopping malls || Crosscut
  
• James Howard Kunstler dissects suburbia || TED Talks
  
• Why some cities lose when others win || Atlantic Cities
  
• Newest streetcar to remake Seattle's First Hill neighborhood || Seattle Times
  
• LA looks to merge mythic past to glistening future with streetcar line || Wash Post
  
• What Twitter means to Detroit || Atlantic Cities
  
• Washington Union Station begins $35 million makeover || Wash Post
  
• Abolishing parking minimums is not 'anti-children' \\ Atlantic Cities
  
• The impending urban water crisis || Salon
  
• Denver vs. Phoenix: How to build a successful downtown stadium || Atlantic Cities
  
• American suburbs face twin perils of climate change and peak oil || Scientific American
  
• The streetcar as a city's moving symbol || Atlantic Cities
• America's romance with sprawl may be over || USA Today
  
• Seattle sees yet another downtown boom, with great reset implications || Jon Talton/Seattle Times
  
• The new suburban poverty || NY Times
  
• How Amazon got the urban campus right in downtown Seattle || Atlantic Cities
  
• San Antonio's slow start courting the creative class still stings || SA Current
  
• A block with Andrew Carnegie's stamp || NY Times
  
• Whole Foods' Detroit gamble || Wall Street Journal
  
• What would it take? The carbon-neutral city || Utne Reader
  
• Most Americans want a walkable neighborhood, not a big house || Good
  
• Rochester's survival lessons || NY Times
  
• Why reusing old buildings is greener — and gives a city more soul — than starting from scratch || Seattle Times
  
• Long Beach joins the 'parklets' trend || LA Times
  
• A field guide to false anti-train arguments || NARP blog
  
• Why city matters to your business || Inc magazine
  
• 'Free' parking turns out to be very costly || LA Times
• Free-falling Milwaukee: One city's middle-class decline || The Atlantic
  
• The bold urban future starts now || Salon
  
• Are freeways doomed? || Salon
• How should we design the cities of our dreams? || Salon
  
• Public transportation and community || TreeHugger
  
• The death of the fringe suburb (bad news for Phoenix) || NY Times
• To rethink sprawl, start with offices || NY Times
  
• Why cities should dismantle highways || Smart Planet
  
• Resetting urban land use: What's next || The Atlantic
  
• Goldilocks density: Just right || Treehugger
  
• The myth of the progressive city || Salon
  
• The unbearable cost of sprawl (and what we can do about it) || Atlantic Cities
  
• How suburban sprawl works like a Ponzi scheme || Atlantic Cities
• Real socialism? How about the policies that artificially maintain cheap motoring || Urban Country Bicycle Blog
  
• Cities that get hit the hardest by climate-change's rising sea levels || Washington Post
  
• Which type of people choose a walkable lifestyle || Sustainable Cities Collective
  
• The 'best of the best' of American cities || Scientific American
  
• To attract young talent, companies move back downtown || Fortune
  
• Jim Kunstler on tomorrow's cities || Orion
  
• The top 10 climate-ready cities in America || Triple Pundit
• Light rail for dummies || The Atlantic
  
• Manhattan's High Line isn't just a sight to see, it's an economic dynamo || NY Times
  
• With eye on climate change, Chicago prepares for a hot long-term forecast || NYTimes
• The real best cities for transit (and why the media represented the Brookings report || The Atlantic
  
• LA commits record $4.2 billion to transit projects, mostly rail. || LA Times
  
• Pedestrian perfection: America's most walk-friendly cities. || The Atlantic
  
• Jane Jacobs on New Urbanism, gentrification and her legacy (from 2001).
• Americans (mostly) prefer smart growth to sprawl.
  
• The tragedy of Milwaukee's bus service: Why continued cuts don't work.
  
• Select urban centers draw young, educated adults (no, not Phoenix).
  
• Boomtown 2025: 136 new cities poised to take their place among leading urban centers (no, Phoenix isn't one of them).
• Big surprise: People drive less in compact cities with good transit.
  
• Behind Detroit's shocking 25-percent population loss in a decade.
  
• If the Tea Party went downtown.
  
• Why Australia and Canada have the world's most livable cities.
  
• How Seattle transformed itself.
  
• No downtown in Los Angeles? Think again.
• What does "ruin porn" tell us about the Motor City.
  
• The ever-rising cost of America's highways.
  
• Cities and resilience: The year climate change started to hurt politicians.
  
• Rust Belt cities look to Old World for ideas about growth.
  
• A heartbreaking photo essay on the ruins of the once-great city of Detroit.
  
• The urban density of smart people — and where the smart people are going. (Sorry, Phoenix).
  
• How retrofitting suburbia for transit and walkability could restart the real estate engine.
• In Vancouver, an experiment in suburban-urbanism.
  
• The Great Recession's biggest victim is suburbia.
  
• A post-sprawl Los Angeles.
  
• Why 'free' parking comes at a price.
  
• The age of nations is over. The new urban age has begun.
  
• Urban lands of opportunity in the big reset.
  
• Cities shrinking to survive.
  
• Why do minimum parking requirements still exist?
  
• New Urbanism for the apocalypse.
  
• Richard Florida explains why cities are idea factories.
• City centers gain young whites as suburbs get older, poorer.
  
• The least and most wasteful American cities.
  
• The $300,000 water meter — How one town keeps development out.
• Cost of long commute offsets suburbs' "bargain" housing.
• Construction shifting back to urban cores in many cities.
  
• Getting Jane Jacobs right.
  
• In Des Moines, downtown expands thanks to private investment, public-private partnerships.
  
• The new master plan and the decline of suburbia.
• A boulevard park for Seattle's dense downtown Belltown neighborhood.
  
• Airlines and rail must be teamed up to ease congestion.
  
• Circulator brings free transit to Baltimore.
  
• Death to dead ends in the new suburbia?
• Cleveland sees development boom on Euclid corridor.
  
• What American cities can learn from Barcelona.
  
• More about the myth that roads and freeways "pay for themselves.
  
• A cautionary tale about economic development, mergers and lack of corporate loyalty to place.
  
• Fiscal wreck stymies Denver's visionary rail plans.
  
• First government subsidized sprawl, now it's subsidizing the deterioration of sprawl.
  
• Bloomberg's big-development vision for NYC stalled.
  
• Is your suburb the next slum?
  
• Detroit -- the death, and possible life, of a great American city.
  
• How Pittsburgh bounced back. Renewal is a long process.
  
• Key reasons for Portland's success. Most of all it's comfortable with being urban.
  
• The green case for cities: If you want to save energy, leave the suburbs.
  
• Hilarious and accurate send-up of Samuelson's anti-rail rant in Newsweek.
  
• Cities to learn from in the creative economy (Phoenix need not apply).
  
• Fast trains to the airport prove popular and cost-effective.
  
• A tour through the ghastly auto-centric sprawl-opolis that Wal-Mart built.
  
• Transportation stimulus gives short shrift to metros that produce most of America's GDP, hold most of its people.
  
• Retailers head for the exits in Detroit (a city with no national grocery chains).
  
• Improved rail lines spur urban revival.
  
• Civic crime: The abandonment and likely demolition of Detroit's priceless Michigan Central Station.
  
• Is Denver in danger of screwing up Union Station project?
  
• Richard Florida on the rise of anti-urbanism.
  
• Youth magnet cities hit midlife crisis -- but hipsters keep coming.
  
• Germany imagines suburbs without cars.
• Toronto gets sleek new streetcars.
• Chicago unveils ambitious downtown plan.
• Walkability grows as a real-estate plus.
• Dubai: How not to build a city.
• Inside Obama's urban policy.
• Reinventing America's cities: The time is now.
• Fifteen Chinese cities are building subways.
• Bus rapid-transit done right.
• Texas county will build commuter rail line to Dallas.
• As projects grind to a halt, subdivisions turn into wastelands.
• Portland's creative economy helps cushion city from crash.
• California areas hostile to development and 'growth,' enjoy least of recession's pain.
• Richard Florida: How the crash will reshape America (Good for real cities. Sorry, Sun Belt).
• Time flies and drinks flow on Germany's high-speed rail.
• With sprawl and little transit, Boise faces rising smog problem.
• Road worriers: Can New Urbanists seize the moment?
• Pittsburgh develops prosperous life after steel.
• Ambitious subway network changing Beijing.
• Let's 'bail-in' GM and let it rebuild the streetcar systems it conspired to destroy.
• Thanks to transit, New York grew but traffic didn't.
• Being green proves good business for Portland.
• Seattle Council approves large streetcar expansion.
• Urban loneliness largely a myth.
• Mass transit projects fared well at the polls.
• Korean firm bets big on ambitious downtown LA project.
• Pyramid fails to lift Memphis' blues.
• Downtowns across U.S. see streetcars as essential part of multi-modal mass transit system
• Trading places: Affluent move to city centers, as poor move to suburbia.
• Cities in "road warrior" South and West embracing light-rail systems.
• Charlotte sees upswing in center city near light-rail line, while many suburbs decline.
• Urban living kinder to the planet than suburban lifestyle.
• Light rail success in Dallas brings major expansion.
• Across U.S., communities rethinking how they grow, embracing density.
• Oklahoma City's downtown revival includes river for sports.
• An ambitious plan for center city in Las Vegas (yes, Las Vegas).
• House prices fall most in areas with long commute.
• Shanghai's building huge new subway system.
• Steps to speed up train service in the U.S.
• The coming slums of exurbia.
• While U.S. rail languishes, train in Spain to beat plane.

• Read Jon's columns on cities and urban issues.