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- Today's Moment of Idealistic Naivete: Wikileaks: http://wp.me/pCprU-mB 2 years ago
- Ending the War on Drugs: http://wp.me/pCprU-mw 2 years ago
- Twilight Of The Suburbs, Now Home To One-Third Of America's Poor http://huff.to/bGZP7F 2 years ago
- U.S. Subways Harness Kinetic Power To Recycle Train Energy http://huff.to/bVsXvR 2 years ago
- America's Walk Deficit http://yhoo.it/dijIvg 2 years ago
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Recent Posts
- Today’s Moment of Idealistic Naivete: Wikileaks
- Ending the War on Drugs
- The Most Walkable Cities in the World
- It’s Where We Live
- Can Cities Feed Themselves?
- French Street Artist Wins TED Humanitarian Prize
- Dimanche Sans Voiture
- Are Brussels and Los Angeles Sister Cities?
- Masdar begs the question: What exactly is meant by “a sustainable city?”
- Is Generation Y Passing on Cars?
- Can Cities Make Us Crazy?
- Stranger Studies 101: Cities as Interaction Machines
- Does New Orleans Have an Identity Crisis?
- Three Urban Interventions in Two Hours: NYC
- Cargo Bike Spotted…
Tag Archives: seattle
Pedaling Toward a Post-Carbon Future
In 2008, according to the U.S. Census, 720,000 Americans commuted to work by bike–43 percent more than in 2000. It would be nice to say that the growth was driven by a concern for the climate, but the main reason is economics. “People bike because it’s fast, cheap, and easy to get around,” says Penalosa, “not because it’s good for the environment.” Christopher Leinberger, a land-use strategist at the Brookings Institution, notes that people who are auto-dependent spend 25 percent of their income on transportation, compared with 9 percent for those who walk, bike, or take public transit.
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Posted in Auto Independence, can bicycles save the world?, Climate Change, Culture, human scale, Livability, Placemaking, Sustainability, transit, Transportation, urban design, urban planning, walkable, What if?
Tagged 8-80 cities, bicycle, bicycle infrastructure, bicycle lands, bicycling, bikable, bike boulevards, bike boxes, bike commuting, Bogota, brookings institute, christopher leinberger, Columbia, Copenhagen, cycle tracks, denmark, europe, gil penalosa, high density, jan gehl, John Pucher, kyle boelte, New York City, Ninth Avenue Manhattan, post-carbon, Rutgers University, Salt Lake City, seattle, separated bikeways, sierra club, sprawl, St. Paul, suburbs, Syracuse, traffic calming, Transportation Alternatives, transportation infrastructure, U.S. transportation policy, vibrant communities, walkable
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Imagining a City Built for Bicycles
A lot is made, and rightfully so, of the differences between walkable cities and auto-dependent cities, but isn’t there a middle way? Truly walkable cities, like most medieval walled cities and their small town USA descendents, aren’t really cities in the modern context. They can’t accommodate the scale and diversity we now associate with a city. Auto-dependent cities handle scale and diversity just fine, but they disconnect people from the built environment and each other. But what if we built our cities for bicycles? What would that look like? What benefits and drawbacks would this model have?
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Posted in architecture, Auto Independence, can bicycles save the world?, Culture, human scale, Josh Grigsby, Livability, Placemaking, transit, Transportation, Uncategorized, urban design, urban planning, walkable, What if?
Tagged accessibility, air pollution, autodependence, beach cruiser, bicycles, bikability, brooklyn, built environment, Cambridge, classism, college town, complete ecosystems, concrete jungle, cooperation, Copenhagen, crime deterrent, denmark, Euclidean zoning, human scale, Los Angeles, low density, manhattan, Massachusetts, medieval walled cities, mixed-use, mobility, modern cities, noise pollution, norway, obesity, para-transit, permeable pavers, population density, portland, Providence, rhode island, San Francisco, seattle, social change, sunbelt, sustainable settlements, Switzerland, trampe, transit, trondheim, urban core, urban density, vancouver, walkability, working bikes, Zurich
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Portland Creatives Find New Ways to Work Together
Portland, Oregon—the misty evergreen Shangri-La for the young, the creative, and the progressive—has an interesting problem. Its miles of bike lanes, its rock-bottom rents, its deep vats of craft brews are all far too good. Yes, Portland has actually made itself too attractive. According to one study that compared May of 2009 with May of 2008, Oregon’s unemployment has grown faster than any other state in the country, 3 percent. For large metropolitan areas in the country, Portland has one of the highest unemployment rates, which topped out at about 11.8 percent—even higher than Detroit. To blame, some economists believe, are the large numbers of designers and artists who have been moving there without jobs, dubbed the dubious “young creatives.”
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Posted in Culture, Livability, Placemaking, Portland: City or Scene?, Sustainability, Uncategorized
Tagged Alissa Walker, Austin, bike lanes, Charlotte, craft beers, creative class, cultural opportunities, diversity, DIY, Good.is, handmade bikes, large metropolitan areas, local community, micro-roasters, neighborhoods, Pearl District, Portland creatives, Portland Oregon, progressive, seattle, Shangri-la, Steve McCallion, unemployment, young creatives, youth magnet cities, Ziba Design
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Seattle, Vancouver, and Portland by Rail, Bus, Streetcar, and Foot: Part Three
Portland, like its famed streetcar, is an interesting case. It boasts many of the pieces found in successful cities and some that no other American cities can match. The streetcar. Light rail. Cycle tracks. Skateboard tracks. An aerial tram. Traffic calming. No major downtown arterials. Local music. Local art. Local beer. Great food. Environmental awareness. A history of proactive and progressive decision making. Historic urban fabric. Food trucks. Park blocks. It’s walkable. It’s bikable. There is much to like in Portland, and the hype is not all smoke and mirrors.
But…
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Posted in Auto Independence, Culture, Dispatches, Josh Grigsby, Livability, Portland: City or Scene?, Rants, transit, Transportation, Uncategorized, walkable
Tagged 21st Ave, 23rd Ave, Ace Hotel, aerial tram, Alberta, ambient noise, bicycle, bikable, bus, Canada, City of Roses, city or scene, community hub, creative class, creative economy, cycle track, Disney World, Division, Downtown Portland, economic drivers, environmental awareness, fareless square, food trucks, foot power, Hawthorne, hipster, historic urban fabric, homogeneity, Hostelling International, hostels, Japanese gardens, Kennedy School, Living Room Theatre, local art, local beer, local music, lofts, Main Street USA, major employers, MAX light rail, McMenamins, Northeast Portland, Northwest Portland, Old Town, pacific northwest, Park Blocks, Pearl District, portland, Portland Northwest Hostel, Portland State University, Portlandizing, Powell's City of Books, progressive, rail, seattle, skateboard track, Southeast Portland, streetcar, Stump City, suburban neighborhoods, traffic calming, transit, two hundred foot blocks, urban condition, urban core, urban planning, vancouver, walkable, walking, Washington Park, well-educated waitstaff, Willamette River
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Seattle, Vancouver, and Portland by Rail, Bus, Streetcar, and Foot: Part One
I grew up during the grunge era, with Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder for role models, and the notion that a city could simultaneously spawn and embrace musical icons of social and political dissidence and the bourgeois haughtiness of, say, Frasier Crane, always fascinated me. Seattle was the only major coastal city in the U.S. I hadn’t yet spent time in; I was ready to fall in love. Continue reading
Posted in Dispatches, Josh Grigsby, Rants, Response Pieces, transit, Transportation, What if?
Tagged ballard, beantown, belltown, boeing, bookstore, boston, bus, capitol hill, central city, coffee, counterculture, dot com boom, downtown, drugs, eddie vedder, elevated freeway, frasier crane, fremont, instability, international district, king street station, kurt cobain, light rail, literate, local music, microsoft, pacific northwest, perception, pike place, pioneer square, portland, progressive, public transportation, queen anne, seattle, seattle art museum, sinking ship, sprawl, streetcar, tech, train, transit, transit tunnel, university district, urban decay, urban fabric, vancouver, walkable, walking, wallingford, waterfront, youth culture
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