Urban Planning
Streetsblog Basics
Eliminate the Parking Requirement
I've long bristled at the word "subsidies" that is applied so frequently to subways, buses and trains, and so infrequently to driving, even when the latter is "subsidized" much more lavishly than the former.
November 27, 2007
Alan Durning’s “Year of Living Carlessly” and “Bicycle Neglect”
Alan Durning, executive director of the Seattle-based Sightline Institute has been doing some great writing on Livable Streets and sustainable transport issues over the last year. If you haven't run across his work, he is writing a pair of ongoing series that I think will be of particular interest to Streetsblog readers.
November 19, 2007
Jan Gehl: Gridlocked Streets Are “Not a Law of Nature”
It could have been just another gathering of urban idealists, agreeing with each other about how great it would be to have more public space for people, and less for cars.
November 7, 2007
In Platinum City Even the Munchkins Ride Bikes
With New York City recently scoring a bronze medal for urban bike-friendliness from the League of American Bicyclists, we figured it was a good time to post our 8 minute StreetFilm on Davis, California, where I visited this summer. Portland, Oregon is nipping at their heels, but Davis is still the only city in America yet to attain LAB's Platinum award.
October 11, 2007
Kunstler: Parking Plans Are Based on “Faulty Assumptions”
If you're the type of person who has been following the Yankee Stadium parking garage story, or the Hudson Yards zoning story or the story about the city block in Prospect Heights that's being leveled and turned into a gigantic surface parking lot, you may enjoy James Howard Kunstler's column this week. The author of The Geography of Nowhere and The Long Emergency, has lately noticed that many American towns "are obsessed to the point of mania with the issue of parking and more generally the management of cars, and much of their spending is directed to those ends." He writes:
October 10, 2007
Yankees’ Subsidy Deal Gets Stranger and Stranger
The Yankee Stadium subsidy package is the gift that keeps on giving. If you're the Yankees.
October 3, 2007
DOT Asks, and Gets an Earful from West Siders
Howard/Stein-Hudson consultant Chris Ryan directs UWS traffic
September 25, 2007
Upper West Side Livable Streets Advocates: Mark Your Calendar
Monday, September 246:00 to 9:30 pmJohn Jay College899 Tenth Ave. (at 58th St.)RSVP to westsidestudy @ hshassoc . com or (917) 339-0488
September 21, 2007
Making the Case for Compact Development
From the people at Smart Growth America comes word of a new book, Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change, just out from the Urban Land Institute. In the book, researchers argue that more compact development (such as Atlantic Station, a mixed-use complex in Atlanta built on reclaimed industrial land, shown at right) must play a key role if this country is to reduce emissions:
September 21, 2007
Seeing Myrtle Avenue With Fresh Eyes
The folks over at the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership have unveiled the results
of a collaboration with the Project for Public Spaces (PPS) undertaken
over the last couple of years. Two public workshops were held to get
community input on the plans, which address four different areas of
Myrtle Avenue, one of the main commercial streets for Fort Greene and Clinton Hill.
September 18, 2007