The airport property, northwest of Panama City, occupies just a fraction of the company’s 75,000-acre West Bay sector plan, which envisions 27,000 residential units, 490 hotel rooms, 2 marinas and 37 million square feet of commercial space that would bring tourists and entrepreneurs to the panhandle.

I have to admire the guts of this development, but 27,000 units in a city with only 35k in population seems overkill (to put it mildly).

Germany had a cold winter that has busted up 40 percent of its roads. One cash-strapped town, Niederzimmern, will stamp your name on the pothole patch after you pay 50 Euros to have it fixed.

This is an important issue. If we want families living in cities, the transit needs to accommodate them. I also liked this point:

Children who grow up comfortable with transit are more likely to use it as adults; those who grow up in the suburbs—and whose main exposure to “transit” is an uncomfortable yellow school bus—are more likely to continue an auto-centric lifestyle when they grow up.

This is a repeat from The Urbanophile, but he makes a great point that should be repeated:

Why have a fare in the first place? It is odd that we pay per use on transit. We don’t pay to check books out of a library. We don’t pay to visit most city parks. We don’t pay when the police or fire department come to our house for a legitimate emergency. Most non-utility municipal services are provided for free to users and funded by taxes. So why is transit different?

An inspiring profile of the former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, Enrique Peñalosa.