San Jose joined San Francisco and Oakland in adopting bird-friendly building guidelines, which include strategically placing landscaping to reduce reflections in glass and views of foliage through glass and reducing or eliminating up-lighting and spotlights on buildings. The guidelines will be applied citywide but at this time they are on a voluntary basis.

The city manager of Evanston, Ill., told city aldermen that he might enact "targeted enforcement" against those who use gasoline-powered, backpack-mounted or handheld leaf blowers after the legal season for their use ends, which is now in early December.

A public/private partnership between the City of Orlando, Fla. and Creative Village Development, LLC just broke ground on the 68-acre, $1 billion Creative Village project that will bring a mixed-use, transit-oriented urban infill neighborhood to downtown Orlando.

The Los Angeles City Council voted 14-1 to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020 through gradual increases that will begin July 2016.

After demands from city officials for better construction safety, the New York City Council held an oversight meeting on the issue that lasted over three and a half hours during which there were calls for the council to pass resolutions to support current state bills that would increase construction safety and require stricter licensing.

The Knoxville, Tenn., City Council unanimously approved the mayor's $289.6 million budget that included increased funding for parks, greenways, blight abatement, bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure.

The Sunnyvale, Calif., Parks and Recreation Commission recently recommended to their city council that educational resources about gas leaf blowers be provided rather than completely banning them.

Atlanta voters overwhelmingly passed a $250 million bond referendum that will go toward infrastructure repairs that the city council will choose from a $1 billion backlog.