NewsWatch: Sustainable Communities -- My City's Smarter Than Yours, More ...

Dallas Covers Freeway With Park
Dallas is constructing a deck over the Woodall Rodgers Freeway that will support a 5.2-acre park. Upon completion in 2012, the yet-to-be-named deck park will reconnect uptown and downtown for the first time in decades, and provide a majestic green centerpiece for the city's burgeoning art district. With noisy traffic disappearing under the park's cover. Governing

Cambridge is Canada's "Smarter City"
Robots crawl through sewers and a GIS-equipped bike monitors sidewalks as part of a new management system that tracks more than 250,000 infrastructure assets. IT World Canada

Transit Debuts "Quiet Cars"
Starting Tuesday, the first and last car of select Northeast Corridor express trains are designated as "quiet." Passengers are informed by signs that voices and electronics should be kept low, and cell phones should be on vibrate. New Jersey Star-Ledger

Bike-Detecting Sensors Coming to Intersections
The Marin County, Calif., Department of Public Works will install bicycle-detecting sensors at several intersections to detect bicyclists and allow safer crossing. Marin Independent Journal

San Diego Planning Pedestrian-Only Zone
San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders and Qualcomm  co-founder Irwin Jacobs unveiled a $33 million plan Monday to remove cars from Balboa Park’s main square, but the price for creating a pedestrian-only zone might be to charge for parking in the park for the first time. Sign On San Diego

Building the Open City Stack
 Civic Commons --  which includes a pair of civic organizations and the Washington, D.C., city government -- wants to be a facilitator for knowledge sharing and coordination between cities working to develop and implement open-city initiatives and foster the creation of a “civic stack” of software and data standards that could allow cities adopt open city technology. Next American City

$8.5 Million for Solar Energy Grid Integration
DOE announced $8.5 million in four projects that have reached Stage III of the Solar Energy Grid Integration Systems (SEGIS) program. The Florida Solar Energy Center will focus on a larger shared inverter serving multiple residential or commercial PV systems. Petra Solar of South Plainfield, N.J., will partner with utilities in Florida, Delaware, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. to boost system reliability and safety with low-cost modular inverters. Also in New Jersey, Princeton Power will lead a project to complete a design for a 100-kilowatt demand response inverter and the use of new state-of-the-art components. And in Oregon, PV Powered will spearhead an effort that includes partners in South Dakota, Washington, and Oregon to further next-generation controls and advanced communications technologies that enable distributed PV systems to communicate with power utilities. DOE

Obama Proposes $50 Billion Transportation Plan
President Obama called Monday for Congress to approve major upgrades to the nation’s roads, rail lines and runways -- part of a six-year plan that would cost tens of billions of dollars and create a government-run bank to finance innovative transportation projects. The plan calls for a quick infusion of $50 billion in government spending that White House officials said could spur job growth as early as next year -- if Congress approves. New York Times