The Daily Report » building

Last week Philadelphia’s Mayor Nutter presented a new plan for reviving Philadelphia’s waterfront to packed audience at the Museum of Natural History. I didn’t make it to the event, but have been eagerly awaiting some of the response. As per usual, Philadelphians are pretty down on their city. But now they’re picking on the block where I work (seen at right in earlier days)…

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All the recent Phoenix Mars Lander hullabaloo has got me thinking about what the first Earth-built city on Mars would look like.  Who would get the opportunity to plan that city, and would we find the amenities that make Earth’s best urban spaces also make for the best cities on the Red Planet?

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Everyone knows that deindustrialization in American cities started with the end of WWII and the decentralization of American manufacturing that followed it, right? A recent article in the Journal of Urban History by University of Pennsylvania professor Domenic Vitiello takes this chronology to task. 

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Tibetan protesters continue their focus on China’s olympic march, UPenn students win student urban design competition, Florida HUD returns to local control, Hispanics contribute $60 billion to the telecommunications industry ... this and more in today’s headlines.

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DC’s Mayor Fente has been winning friends among low-housing advocates with pledges to fund, build and preserve 14,000 affordable housing units over a four-year period. During the past years of pumped up real estate values, over 200 low to moderate income apartment buildings were flipped into condominiums, circumventing a city law to give tenants first right of refusal. The City’s regulatory agency allowed systematic abuse of residents by landlords to force them to move. Can affordable housing rebound during leaner revenue years, when pressure to convert from affordable rentals to condominiums is reduced?

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Philadelphia Daily News reports: “Mayor (Michael) Nutter said yesterday that he wants to get presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to Philadelphia for a public discussion of urban issues before the April 22 Democratic primary ... Nutter said that issues affecting American cities haven’t gotten enough attention in the campaign. ‘Health care is very important,’ Nutter said. ‘The war is very, very important. But if you live at 56th and Master, you’re not as focused on what al Qaeda is doing.” MORE

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Headlines for March 21st 2008.

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“We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in.” –Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac.

It’s the time of year when I start fetishizing trees. As a current urbanite who’s spent years traipsing around Colorado and Maine, a three month barrage of concrete winter wreaks havoc upon my soul.  In my March imaginings, I’m standing on a wooded hilltop, caressed by a rogue leaf, warmed by the sun.  I’m awash in the kind of wonder I…

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