McKinney Ave. in Dallas is a gem. It has interesting new architecture, lively night life and high end apartments all connected by one of America’s best vintage streetcar fleets. As Dallas’ McKinney Ave. trolley service expands and eventually connects to the Oak Cliff streetcar, ridership […]
Interview with Streetfilm’s Clarence Eckerson
Clarence Eckerson has spent more than a decade documenting complete street best practices all over the world with Streetfilms. Produced by OpenPlans, a 501c3 non-profit organization, Streetfilms produces educational videos about sustainable mobility and interviews the policy makers, planners, and engineers responsible for creating these […]
Donald Appleyard’s Livable Streets
Updates on Car Free America may be a bit sporadic for the next couple of months. I’ll be working on a book tentatively titled “Human Speed” which will chronicle my time living car free and the city planning lessons I learned from the experience. It […]
On Why Dockless Bike Share Systems are the Future
Baltimore’s new bike share system was long awaited. Discussions between the city and various vendors had been ongoing for several years, and recently built downtown cycle tracks indicated political will and ridership momentum for a successful roll out. While ridership had been solid since the […]
Reconnecting Cities through Urban Highway Removals
A few years ago I attended the “Re-Imaging Urban Highways” program in Philadelphia. Organized by Drexel University and The Next American City, the event was a who’s who of visionary planners at the top of their game discussing urban highway removals. The presentations focused on […]
Reimagining a Downtown Dallas Infill Development Site as a Walkable Oasis
The key to creating great infill development projects is making them both high-density and human scaled. A 50 story tower on a superblock with a few token ground floor restaurants was considered exceptional a decade ago, but city dwellers expect a lot more now. Creating […]
How to Remake Dallas’ Fair Park
I recently spent a week in San Diego and toured their burgeoning bike network. While San Diego’s downtown is a gem within its own right, Balboa Park impressed me even more. Spatially integrated, urban and versatile, a person could spend an entire day there and […]
On Being a City Planner in a Room Full of Engineers
Great transportation projects are built through broad, inter-disciplinary cooperation. For major projects, city planners and civil engineers usually work together during project development, with planners setting the scope, vision and major design features and engineers making sure the details work and engineering standards are met. […]
What Downtown Dallas Can Learn from Downtown Oklahoma City
I recently spent a weekend in Oklahoma City. I stayed in Bricktown where I weaved around the construction of their new streetcar line and ventured out into nearby downtown neighborhoods and several residential areas. It was my first time in the city and I was […]
Improving Dallas Through Small Things
I’m a big fan of the Polis blog. I haven’t found any other collaborative blog that touches on so many interesting global planning and development issues. An article in their archive compared universal social policies with targeted programs. Should education, health care, and other human […]