The latest in urban planning, placemaking, and citizen action:

• A gallery of gorgeous train stations of the past, together with their less-than-gorgeous replacements. [Infrastructurist]
• Can neighborhood gardens build community in Cabrini Green? [ChicagoNow]
• Small cities in British Columbia work to transform lifeless downtowns into vibrant places. [The Tyee]
• Controversy over private festivals being held in Indianapolis’s public parks. [Indianapolis Star]
• Proposed House transportation bill includes billions for public transit and high-speed rail, but lacks specific pollution targets. [SustainableBusiness.com]
• MTA markets naming rights to NYC subway stations. [New York Times]
• Transportation Secretary LaHood says USDOT is in a “transformational” moment, advocates livable communities. [TreeHugger]
• Google tricycle captures “street views” of pedestrian-only parks and campuses. [Washington Post]

The latest in urban planning, placemaking, and citizen action:

• The newest face in traffic calming: Brad Pitt promotes safe intersections in Russia! [Huffington Post]
• The New York Times Magazine covers Parisian urban planning, Californian high-speed rail, future airports and waterfronts, and more. [New York Times Magazine]
• Seoul takes steps to make public parks more female-friendly. [Korea Times]
• In Chicago, several creative initiatives engage the public in online placemaking. [Next American City]
• Cairo residents improvise to create places amid harsh urban conditions. [New York Times]
• Slate examines the transformation of traffic patterns in Times Square. [Slate]
• EPA, HUD, and DOT create partnership to promote livable communities. [EPA.gov]
• Vote for your favorite farmers’ market and help it win $5,000! [Care2]

The latest in urban planning, placemaking, and citizen action:

• Advocates in Flint, Michigan, fight to turn abandoned lots into thriving urban gardens.  [MLive]
• 3D model reveals “unintended consequences” of Chicago city planning.  [Chicago Sun-Times]
• More fresh produce for urban dwellers: New York’s Green Carts provide access in low-income neighborhoods… [New York Times]
• … while “fruit foragers” collaborate to share garden bounties.  [New York TImes]
• In Brazil, government constructs cinderblock walls to constrain favela neighborhoods.  [Wall Street Journal]
• NYT columnist makes an ethical case against the Hummer and for new transit technologies.  [New York Times]
• “Second Life” enables innovative community engagement in spatial planning.  [Metropolis]
• Public transit and mixed-use projects invigorate city living in Texas, Denver, Los Angeles, and more.  [Planetizen, New York Times, Los Angeles Times]

The annual Museum Mile festival has been filling 5th Avenue with people since 1978.

Ask any New Yorker about Museum Mile, and odds are they’ve been to the twenty-three block stretch of Upper 5th Avenue that’s home to nine world class museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Jewish Museum and the Museum of the City of New York. But few know that Museum Mile wasn’t designated a place until the late 1970s, when museums and local activists worked with Project for Public Spaces to draw diverse New Yorkers to the arts during the city’s fiscal crisis.

Since 1978, the annual festival celebrating Museum Mile has closed 5th Avenue to car traffic and encouraged people to take over the streets with free admission at the nine famed museums, in addition to live bands, entertainment and art-in-the-street for kids.  The festival creates a lively and unique experience by allowing New York’s most popular cultural destinations to spill out onto the street.  The steady success of this event has provided the vision for NYC DOTs Summer Streets program (they even use our images of Museum Mile on their website).  The burgeoning program is finding great success in partnering with neighborhoods to take a break and celebrate their communities.  Events are already underway this summer.

The Museum Mile festival begins tomorrow at 5:45pm outside the Guggenheim Museum, on the corner of 91st St. and 5th Avenue, and runs until 9pm.  For more information, visit the Museum Mile Festival Website.

The latest in urban planning, placemaking, and citizen action:

• Farmers’ markets at hospitals send healthy messages. [CNN.com]
• Federal Transit Administration funds crowdsourced design of public bus stops. [CoolTown Studios, Next Stop Design]
• National Parks to be “fee-free” for three weekends this summer. [NPS.gov]
• Houston aims at better pedestrian linkages for light rail. [Houston Chronicle]
• Denver Living Streets initiative strives to create vibrant public places. [Denver Living Streets, Denver Daily News]
• Los Angeles proposes smoking ban in all public parks and golf courses (actors exempted!). [LA Times]
• Can you walk to your local airport? [Planetizen]

Perched near Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal, once a desolate and polluted waterway and now a burgeoning arts neighborhood, Proteus Gowanus is a multidisciplinary gallery, shop and reading room. Each week, the gallery opens its doors for the Fixers Collective, a free community event where people bring broken objects they hope to fix.

Neighbors gather to help one another fix goods.

Per their website, “The Fixers Collective is a social experiment in improvisational fixing and mending. Our goal is to increase material literacy in our community by fostering an ethic of creative caring toward the objects in our lives. The Collective grew out of this year’s exhibition at Proteus Gowanus entitled MEND, presenting art, artifacts, books and events focusing on fixing, mending and remaking.”

Attendees patch a machine vacuum bag together

One might argue that The Fixers Collective is strengthening more than damaged objects. An open event such as this can bring a growing community together, teach new skills, and create new personal connections as well.

“Every Thursday from 5-8 pm, all are invited to bring their broken things to Proteus Gowanus, explains Director Tammy Pittman.  “If you can get it through the door, we will put it on our common fixing table, put our heads together and try to fix it or, perhaps, alter it if that seems more appropriate. A $5 donation is requested unless the attendee is a Fixers Apprentice (see the website for more info on the Apprentice program.)”

Hopefully, the gallery - and this event - will become more connected with the Carroll Gardens Greenmarket, bridging the adjacent neighborhood together.

The community comes together at Proteus Gowanus in Brooklyn

The latest in urban planning, placemaking and citizen action:

• Mayor Bozeman of Bremerton, WA sparks criticism and debate with critical remarks on Seattle’s waterfront. [Seattle Times (Op Ed), Seattle Times, Crosscut]

• This past weekend, citizens in dozens of cities went on Jane’s Walks in their neighborhoods. [Calgary Herald, Janes Walk]

• In New York City, nine new public plazas are on their way through the NYC Plazas Program. [Streetsblog]

• New series of waterfront programming brings life back to Boston’s “dirty water”. [Boston Globe]

• Rethinking the process of urban planning with a case for an open-source approach. [Re:place]

• In Miami, plans are unfolding for a new Art Museum in bayfront Bicentennial Park. [Miami Herald]

• Cities across America are rediscovering the attraction of the streetcar. [Infrastructurist]

The latest in urban planning, placemaking and citizen action:

• The Environmental Defense Fund’s Reinventing Transit highlights a new generation of innovative public transit. [EDF.org]

• In the greater Toronto area, the Tower Renewal Project looks to transform post-war, high-rise, concrete towers with sustainable, suburban development. [Worldchanging]

• A bill recently passed by New York’s state Senate will provide a boost in funding for farmers markets facilities. [Watertown Daily Times, The Gouverneur Times]

• After five years in a New Urbanist community, residents of Glenwood Park reflect on visibility, neighborhood involvement, access and businesses. [The Atlanta-Journal Constitution]

• Joanne Arnay makes the case for including preservation in urban planning efforts. [The City Newspaper]

• At the Green Cities Conference and Expo, officials, planners, architects and advocacy groups discussed how to pitch a ‘green’ agenda. [NY Times Blog]

• In San Francisco, the Great Streets Program (a PPS collaboration) hits the ground running. [Streetsblog]

The latest in urban planning, placemaking and citizen action:

• President Obama reveals a vision for a high-speed rail in America. [Washington Post, TIME, Next American City]

• Delaware farmers markets bring fresh food to the table and communities closer together. [Delaware Online]

• Envisioning sustainability in the year 2025 for Greater Phoenix, AZ. [The Arizona Republic]

• In the wake of Ike, Ohio suburbs bring native plant life back to public parks. [The Columbus Dispatch]

• In Buffalo, NY, an urban farm may take root in the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood. [Buffalo News]

• In San Diego, CA,  a case for investing in local transit system improvements. [The Union Tribune]

• Lamenting resistance to change, Roger Lewis argues for smart growth development. [The Washington Post]

The latest in urban planning, placemaking and citizen action:

• A case for more flexible definitions of urban success. [New Geography]

• The search is on to locate and evaluate 10,000 play spaces with KaBOOM! [USA Today]

• Split personality development and all-or-nothing planning in downtown L.A.’s Figueroa Corridor [LA Times]

• Does living in a city cut down on greenhouse gas emissions? [Sightline Daily]

• Berkeley’s Farmers Market takes the lead in banning plastic bags as part of their zero-waste program [Berkeley Daily Planet]

• In praise of public parks and benefits to public health in a down economy [Inside Tuscon Business]

• In Iowa City, university students help rethink a neighborhood. [The Daily Iowan]