Yet another city with ambitious plans for the future (remember the Stockholm article a couple of days ago). Paris commissioned 10 design teams “to transform Paris and its surrounding suburbs into the first sustainable “post-Kyoto city,” a reference to the treaty on climate change, with an expanded Métro system and sprawling new parks.”
The plans are the result of a nine-month study commissioned by President Nicolas Sarkozy, and use transportation and parks as transformative urban design tools – an interesting similarity to Minneapolis and the Metropolitan area in general at a time when transportation in particular is expanding at a rapid rate and could transform the area, if planned and designed right.

A wonderful NY Times article featuring an area in Stockholm not too dissimilar to Minneapolis’ own transit crossroad section of the North Loop.  The article highlights design ideas for the area, and concludes with a call to “Think Big”!

If you haven’t read already, see the new Richard Florida piece that speaks to the urgency of Minneapolis’ new urban center…

This article from the NY Times describes the proposed transformation of the Manhattan Farley Post Office into the ‘Grand transit entrance to New York’ – part of the redevelopment of Penn Station, considered one of the great projects to have ‘enormous benefits for the entire region’. The article describes the government lead effort, the collaboration between city, state and Port Authority, and the selection of developers to help realize the larger project. Senator Schumer is looking for $100 million in stimulus money from the high speed rail and Amtrak stimulus budgets.

Here is a follow-up editorial.