December 31: The Mummers planner | How Montgomery Ave explains Philly | PGH rental registry challenged

Happy holidays y’all! The PlanPhilly team is taking tomorrow off for New Year’s Day. See you back here next Monday. And for those who’ve been meaning to support PlanPhilly’s year-end fundraising drive, a friendly reminder that today is the last day to make a tax-deductible gift to support our journalism! 

Maria Panaritis profiles Leo Dignam, the Mummers planner. “Dignam is the civil servant leader of a parade he never watched as a kid. As an outsider, he has helped tame the famously unwieldy folk spectacle in such a way that he’s also, somewhat incredibly, become adored by the fractious folks for whom Mummery is religion.”xx

Jessica Kourkounis looks at how Montgomery Avenue exemplifies many different strands of life in Philadelphia, as part of a series for Keystone Crossroads.

Landlord groups filed suit against Pittsburgh’s new rental registry program—a Peduto administration initiative to hold absentee landlords accountable. Landlords say Pittsburgh overstepped the powers of Home Rule cities, so there’s some statewide interest in the outcome of the challenge.

Via Philly.com, here are all the hotels each state delegation is staying at during the DNC.

Emily Badger says that despite the high-profile paens to multi-modalism, American cities still aren’t really doing much to discourage driving. Tough policies regarding parking, street rules, and vehicle charges like you see in the Netherlands and Copenhagen would be the most impactful, she argues, but American policymakers and elected officials are still too squeamish. Here’s Geoff Thompson’s post from 2014 with his top 15 ideas for policy sticks in Philly.

Jim Kenney loved Summer Streets in NYC and has some ideas for an Open Streets PHL* event.  

*Jon Geeting is a founder of Open Streets PHL.