City Planning, Transportation Policy, Sustainable Living
The last book Jane Jacobs completed before she died was Dark Age Ahead. It’s a rant against the evils (real and imagined) that she felt were crippling society. Meandering and pessimistic, it lacks the eureka moments of Death and Life of Great American Cities, but […]
I recently read “Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty” by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo. The book makes an interesting case for understanding the cycles of disease and poverty, and explains how small, incremental changes can have huge […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]