Editor’s Note: In this week’s excerpt from Are We There Yet? we return to the Thriving chapter and a discussion of how healthy lifestyles are encouraged with the adoption of traditional design components found in Opportunity Areas. The introduction to the Thriving chapter, “The Push For Complete Communities,” in online here. The push for complete [...]
Orlando, Florida, is consistently the most-visited city in the United States with 48 million annual tourists. It should come as no surprise, then, that a major portion of the local economy is made up of service, hospitality, and theme-park-related jobs relying on national and international visitors. Despite the industry’s importance to the area, local infrastructure [...]
Block Party If you’re like me, you find it inspirational to see a child freely moving about their neighborhood street. It’s life affirming to see a group of children running from one side of the street to the next or riding a bike in circles or playing ping-pong in the northbound lane or rolling a hula hoop [...]
Now and then an aphorism comes to mind that seems so self evident that surely some guru must have said it by now. Perhaps someone did before 1990, but Google gives be nothing on “cynicism is consent.” So I’ll say it. Cynicism is consent. I know I’ve just offended millions of proud cynics, but it’s [...]
Because elsewhere in the building, the company will be housing its Washington, DC-based lobbying operation. They want to show that they are “urban.” Even though only 2 of the 6 DC Walmarts will be in vertical mixed use projects. Because “seeing is believing,” Walmart will have the upper hand with elected officials vis-a-vis local communities, [...]
According to the agenda for this week’s Board of Public Works meeting, B-Cycle LLC will be awarded $1.5 million for professional services related to the “Indianapolis Cultural Trail Bike Share”. $1 million of this will come from a CMAQ grant with the remaining $500k unknown at this point in time. According to prior communications, it could [...]
by Matt Johnson Last summer, the city of Greenbelt built a roundabout at the entrance to the Metro station with an innovative bike bypass. This improves access to the Metro for cyclists, motorists and transit riders alike. Before the roundabout was built on Cherrywood Lane, there wasn’t even a stop sign, so anyone leaving the [...]
Housing is a key component of any governments’ comprehensive urban plan. The cornerstone of any good housing sector is a plan to provide affordable housing options so that all citizens have a place to call their own. Traditionally, housing was considered affordable if it cost no more than 30% of an individual’s or family’s income. [...]
Palo Alto voters are reluctant to take on the cost of new parking structures via a bond measure, according to a recent poll commissioned by the City of Palo Alto. Voters feel more favorably toward investing in biking and walking. But overall, the support for a bond measure was not definitive, leaving key questions for [...]
The American dream of homeownership (that picket fence, the half-acre lot) has been embedded in our consciousness for decades, and no more so than in cities like Phoenix, Arizona. The problem with this vision is that it has caught up to us; the reality is not the fantasy that urban planners of the 1940’s and [...]
Good news this morning out of Washington, where the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) have withdrawn longstanding claims that bicycle helmets prevent head injuries. Credit goes to the Washington Area Bicycle Assocation (WABA) for petitioning these agencies to make the change. Some background from WABA’s press release: In [...]
More than 270,000 pedestrians are killed in run-ins with cars and other motor vehicles each year around the world. On Brazilian roads alone, over 10,000 pedestrian lives are lost each year. This staggeringly high number reaffirms the urgent need to think about the steps to be taken to save lives on Brazil’s roads. How do [...]
Today I was pointed to this post by Brad DeLong, in which he summarizes the Wall Street Journal’s strident (dare I say, Bachmann-esque?) war on bicycles in New York City. You really just need to read it, but here are some choice quotes from a few featured editorial writers: “The most important danger in this [...]
The bridge fund came into being in 1991, and especially in the first decade afterward, the country made enormous progress repairing deficient bridges. But that progress had slowed to a trickle when Congress took up the transportation funding bill, MAP-21, last summer. With the I-35W collapse fresh in our minds and progress on repairing deficient [...]
An innovative new law in Washington State helps cities and towns get down to business on making neighborhood streets safer without getting tangled in red tape. Previously, Washington state law stipulated that a city or town that wanted to set a 20 mile per hour speed limit on a neighborhood street would need to undergo [...]
