Good morning, Houston. There's a new weapon in the battle to make Houston the most beautiful city in America: Beginning next week, commercial property owners will have to hide their Dumpsters behind a building, wall, fence, berm or shrub. Officials said they hope the rule — which City Council approved six months ago — will help increase property values and make properties safer (and, of course, prettier). Anyone who violates the ordinance can be......

Good morning, Houston. It's always nice to see our fair city get some love from outside — so we were happy to hear that Lester Holt and a crew from the Today show were in town filming yesterday for the show's "Cities They Love" segment. The point of "Cities They Love" is to showcase off-the-beaten-path attractions, so Today visited the Beer Can House, took a ride along Buffalo Bayou and checked in at the......

Local tech news in a compact, digital format. City-wide Wi-Fi Is Coming, Protect Yourself A recent story in the Chronicle states that city-wide wifi will require users to download tools to help protect themselves while online. The Tech Buzz feels that the responsibility falls on the user to protect themselves while online regardless if the wifi is free or belongs to the city. Everyone should take precautions and be careful when transmitting sensitive data......

So Mayor Bill White will ask City Council today for money to synchronize more of the city's traffic lights — a continuation of one of White's first initiatives when he took office. According to KHOU, about 70 percent of Houston's traffic lights have been synchronized; it's not clear how many more the $300,000 White will ask for would take care of, but we hope that much money would go a long way. Synchronizing traffic lights......

So there has been a continual push and pull around the new development by Randall Davis in the Village - funny advertisements, approval from the city for street abandonment, and the loss of some neat shopping places. Sonoma, however, is apparently still in the works despite growing concerns. That's right - for all of you million dollar hippies (or $30,000 millionaires), your residence in wait may be within reach (yes, Mr. Davis is taking......

Good morning, Houston. If you have an outstanding municipal warrant, it's time to start watching out: More than 150 law enforcement agencies, including HPD, are gearing up to arrest you next week. It's part of the Great Texas Warrant Roundup, which runs for a week beginning Friday; if you don't take care of your warrant, KHOU warns, you risk "being arrested and embarrassed in front of family, friends or even co-workers." No, not co-workers!......

Earlier this month, we talked about the proposal to build a youth sports complex on the site of the Wortham Park Golf Course, one of three public courses inside the Loop and an East End institution for a hundred years. The complex proposal is part of Houston's push to keep the Dynamo in town — the team is looking for a new stadium and has stipulated that a youth soccer/sports complex be part of the......

Since the Houston Dynamo moved to town last year, it's been a foregone conclusion that someone somewhere would have to build the team a stadium. But where — and who — is still up in the air, and as the Chronicle reports today, Houston is trying to put together a plan that would keep the Dynamo from rocking the suburbs. The focus of the Chron's report is a proposal to put a Dynamo stadium downtown......

Via Off the Kuff, it seems some residents along West Alabama are wondering when they're going to get their old street back — you know, the pre-Spur 527 reconstruction version, sans contraflow lane and with the old bike lanes back in place. Alabama between Spur 527 and Shepherd, you may remember, was reconfigured to better handle increased traffic expected while the spur and parts of the Southwest Freeway were under construction. Originally, the street had......

Why have one parade when you can have two? That's our philosophy, and the federal judge who ruled last week that the city must allow both competing MLK, Jr. day parades to march through downtown agrees. The city had previously only granted the necessary parade permit to Charles Stamps of the MLK Parade Foundation, much to the chagrin of Ovide Duncantell of the Black Heritage Society. Duncantell filed suit against Bill White (unheard of!) and......

In case you hadn't picked up on it, Houstonians aren't accustomed to wintry weather. Anytime the temperature drops below 60, people start pulling out their parkas; if a few snowflakes fall, we all run outside, furiously snapping photos and trying to build snowmen (turns out you can't actually make a snowman out of five snowflakes — but we sure as hell tried). All harmless, right? Sure, until it gets icy — then all bets......

If you've ever thought of the people who spend their days at the Galleria as filthy, stinking rich, well, you might not be all that far off: The mall has recently had problems with raw sewage bubbling onto the sidewalk just outside Neiman Marcus. Uh, gross. The source of the sewage was apparently a mystery for a while, but city crews went out yesterday and discovered that it was not coming from a city line.......

The shot from flickr user and houstonist photo contributor paper_by_design. Sometimes, when we're feeling creative, we think of downtown as a giant sculpture garden — and this shot of the Bank of America building and the Lanier Public Works Building shows why. If you would like to join Houston's best photographers in the houstonist photo group, click here.......

As we begin the week, a stern reminder from KHOU: Every time you run over a traffic cone, we all pay. The city's Public Works Department said each cone costs between $10 and $12, and replacing cones last year came to $100,000 — meaning we lost roughly 10,000 traffic cones in 2005. And the city apparently has pretty stringent requirements for its cones: "They have to be good quality, yet malleable so they don't crush......