2. Mini-bleg: Does anyone know what “building regulations” are preventing this proposed Jackson Heights building from having windows on one side?

3. Southwest DC, before and after highways/urban renewal, in pictures.

4. Overplanning in China.

5. Palm Beach County wants to allow private developers to build along West Palm Beach’s train line and bus stops, but Mayor Lois Frankel wants a sports stadium.

6. St. Louis got money from Obama’s stimulus to hire consulting firms to upzone the city’s dense neighborhoods.

The post Midnight link list appeared first on Market Urbanism.

The blog, Agents of Urbanism recently gave praise to Market Urbanism. Thanks Matthew! Please check out Agents of Urbanism and Life Without Buildings, who followed up on Agent of Urbanism’s praise. I enjoy both blogs.

Carl Close wrote How “Urban Renewal” Destroyed San Francisco’s Fillmore District for The Independent Institute’s blog, The Beacon.

And finally, I came across some fantastic lectures at the Foundation for Economic Education, by Sandy Ikeda. I highly recommend listening to the MP3s during your free time this weekend. He discusses Jane Jacobs, urbanism, history, sprawl, economics, and most things of interest to readers of Market Urbanism:
Urban Planning
Private Cities

The post Links and Weekend Listening appeared first on Market Urbanism.

I recently came across a great blog, Hyde Park Urbanist, which focuses on urbanism in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. Hyde Park is located along Lake Michigan on the South Side and is the home of The University of Chicago as well as Frank LLoyd Wright’s famous Robie House and Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.

A recent article discusses how the area originally grew unhampered by zoning, with streets lined with businesses and shops. Then, urban renewal schemes disrupted the natural patterns of living. Presently, planners are seeing the folly of past ambitions. Unfortunately, we have to keep our eyes on the planners as they test out newfangled schemes for future generations to untangle.

Hyde Park Urbanist – Before Zoning:

this post is about what happened before zoning began to shape Hyde Park’s urban landscape.

“urban renewal”, when the commercial heart of Hyde Park was suddenly ripped out. Planning in the late 1950s was primarily about separating residential, commercial and industrial districts. A couple generations later, most planners believe that residential and commercial uses can be combined along one block. That’s a lesson in itself. Half of today’s planning notions will look terribly wrong 50 years from today; we just don’t know which half.

The commercial building patterns that Rossi describes occurred before zoning became mildly effective in the late 1920s. Those patterns can be seen as natural, in the sense that they were a response to the marketplace rather than the result of government fiat.

(emphasis mine)

I recommend checking out the Hyde Park Urbanist’s blog, especially for you Chicagoans…

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