Urbanized, the third film in Gary Hustwit’s design trilogy, shows the greatness and failures of city planning through vivid cinematography and informed speakers. The film bounds from Bogota to Detroit and issue to issue giving viewers a background on the history of urbanism, while introducing the concept as a global issue.

Due in large part to a reduction in state aid starting in 2012, the Milwaukee County Transit System had planned for a massive reduction in service. Thanks to some last minute creative planning by those at MCTS, the vast majority of those cuts are on track to be avoided thanks to the use of CMAQ funds. The CMAQ funds, allocated out of a competitive bidding process, will provide funding to institute “express service” for two years along a number of key corridors which will replace segments of a number of routes. A public meeting, hosted by Supervisors Marina Dimitrijevic, Jason Haas, and Patricia Jursik, on the proposed Bayshore – Airport Express service was recently held to present the service to the community and answer any questions on the upcoming questions.

Waukesha has been working towards obtaining a diversion of Lake Michigan water from the City of Milwaukee purportedly, because Waukesha has an issue with radium in their water supply due to depletion of their well water levels to an unsustainable level. The question of selling Great Lakes water to communities outside of the Great Lakes Basin is one that demands numerous questions be answered prior to any diversion being allowed. The request needs extra scrutiny because it would be the first request of its kind handled under the recently past Great Lakes Compact.

A driver pulls his Ford 150 off at an exit on I-94, and proceeds to cut across the parking lot of the newest sprawling mall development in Wisconsin. He then takes two spots in the Flingers parking lot, far enough from other cars to avoid door dings, but more importantly aimed perfectly for a quick exit. At Flingers he orders extreme fajitas, throws down a few bombs, be it the car bomb, Jaeger bomb, cherry bomb, and a couple that he’s convinced the bartender just made up.

Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.

– Bill Vaughan

Although months ago UWM entered into an agreement to purchase a portion of the Milwaukee County Grounds for the purpose of expansion, the deadline for public input into UWM’s Master Plan past just this week. Regardless if this input will be considered going forward or not, it’s worth looking to see what the UWM community thinks about the expansion plans.

Mo’s Irish Pub in Wauwatosa, WI intends to demolish two homes to create 48 new parking spots for their patrons. With the expanded parking lot Mo’s Irish Pub will have 179 parking spots, and although they do serve food it is likely that many of these spots are for pub patrons. Yup. One hundred seventy nine parking spots for a pub.

The Village of West Milwaukee has a population of 4,201 people according to the 2000 census, which translates into 2,059 households. From January 2006 until September 1st, 2009 the Village of West Milwaukee exported at least 1,880 guns that were used to commit crimes in the City of Milwaukee.

To think, I was just about to put the UW-Tosa t-shirts up on the new Urban Milwaukee store, maybe I can hold off now? Apparently, UWM’s backing out of the fight to locate the School of Freshwater Sciences on the former Pieces of Eight restaurant site ruffled some feathers, and Michael Cudahy decided to return the favor by backing out of funding UWM’s proposed Wauwatosa location for the Engineering School.

The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Marquette University and Milwaukee School of Engineering announced that the universities are collaborating on seven energy technology research projects. These projects are being conducted as part of the Southeastern Wisconsin Energy Technology Research Center, which ties the universities together with local companies, such as Rockwell Automation and WE Energies, to conduct research in the area of energy technology. The initial projects involves green concepts and advanced technologies such as wind turbines, Li-Ion Batteries, CO2 recycling and sequestration via algae, and nanowire thermoelectric materials.