A pair of reports provided as background documents for the Center for Transit-Oriented Development webinar "Making Joint Development Work: the Federal, Transit Agency and Business Perspective" have been added to the Resource Center Best Practices.

Have you ever gone to a city and wondered where to go to eat or drink?  You might pull out your iPhone and search for restaurants but it might be hard to get to the good ones.  Well at least in one city there is a handy go to guide to finding your way to those special spots without a car.  It happens to be in Los Angeles.

A pair of papers by reachers Ralph Buehler of Virgina Tech and John Pucher of Rutgers along a third article by Buehler have been added to the Best Practices in the Research Center.

The LISC Green Development Center, in partnership with TransForm, will hold a free webinar Sept. 28 at 2pm EDT that explores the new GreenTRIP certification program. Register here.

The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) has this new resource guide on Healthy & Livable Communities. It’s a good compendium of links, research studies, case studies, etc.

The Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities (OSHC) will host webcasts on this year's Community Challenge Grants and Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grant Program.

Norman Garrick discusses what happens when you start to change your infrastructure from being pedestrian supported to auto supported.  Case in point, the City of Hartford, which had at one point 15,000 parking spaces when it was a more walkable place.  Today, it has 45,000 parking spaces and less jobs that it did then. To see what that means in terms of city destruction, you only have to wait till the end of the discussion to see the destruction that has on a city's soul.  In plain terms, making way for automobility decreases the efficiency of cities.

People are tired of hearing about Portland.  But I asked Charlie Hales what he liked best about the region and he mentioned all of the unsung heros that work behind the scenes to make it an amazing place.  Of course Portland has its problems and its blemishes just like anyone else, but you have to give their civic infrastructure credit, they do a great job up there.