October 6: Why national retailers like Chestnut Street | urban-suburban hybrid in Bensalem | Free bus wifi

This River Renaissance project in Bensalem, as described by Angelly Carrion, is an interesting example of the sort of hybrid urban-suburban “town center” development that’s becoming more common in the greater Washington, DC area.

Harris Steinberg gets pretty darn close to endorsing an I-95 teardown along the central Delaware, following a synopsis of the Nutter administration’s waterfront planning record. Here’s an old PlanPhilly post by Matt Blanchard from 2007 reviewing the history of I-95.

We’ll be talking all about the Nutter administration’s planning record with Rina Cutler, Greg Pastore, and Christine Knapp at the DesignPhiladelphia panel we’re co-hosting with Drexel’s ExCITe Center and Code for Philly this Sunday afternoon.

Suzette Parmley looks at why big national retailers are so interested in Chestnut Street all of a sudden.

Up in the Lehigh Valley, Matt Assad reports that the Allentown School District thinks downtown Allentown’s new publicly-funded arena should pay school property taxes.

Paging Hannah Sassaman: More US transit agencies are beginning to offer free Wi-Fi on city buses. Currently SEPTA only outfits its regional rail stations with free Wi-Fi hotspots.

Evan Landman, guest-blogging at Human Transit, says more city transit maps need to help users visualize route frequency and usefulness.

Oscar Perry Abello reads NYU economist William Easterly’s new paper studying small-scale economic development on Greene Street on the Lower East Side, which makes the case for city governments to focus on public goods when trying to help business corridors.

Emily Washington at Market Urbanism riffs on this same topic, with some thoughts on the political incentives that bias elected officials against the type of hands-off approach to small-scale development Easterly recommends.