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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: sprawl
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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Creating Car-Reduced and Car-Free Pedestrian Habitats
It will take a long time for the US to embrace pedestrians, bicycling, and electric carts as substitutes for cars in our communities. And yet an inevitable change is coming that will significantly increase environmental quality, and restore real community and economic viability. Changing legislation, master planning, and the development of car-reduced and car-free communities will move us forward, writes Greg Ramsey. Continue reading
Posted in Auto Independence, Culture, human scale, Livability, Placemaking, Shout Outs, Sustainability, transit, Transportation, walkable, What if?
Tagged auto-dependence, car-centric planning, car-free, car-reduced, cohousing, community, connectivity, Copenhagen, eco-villages, electric cart, Greg Ramsey, human scale, mixed-use, New Orleans, pedestrian, people-centric, Placemaking, planetizen, sprawl, St. Augustine
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Beauty Kills—A Self-Rebuttal: Or, Why Joel Kotkin isn’t Always Wrong
In my recent post, Universal Beauty and the Responsibility of Cities, I argued that beauty is an essential element of urbanism. Forget all of that for a moment; here’s the other side of the coin: beauty kills. It can turn cities into lifeless museums animated only by tourists, inhibiting creativity and innovation while exacerbating segregation and homogenization. Look at any interior design magazine spread; room upon room of artful still-life orchestration. These are rooms that pose, not rooms that are lived in. Look at fashion models, their faces inscrutable and eyes vacant. True, this is not the sort of beauty I was advocating, but an emphasis on beauty can quickly lead one astray if untempered. Beauty is essential, yes, but it can be as intoxicating as drugs, and potentially as destructive.
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Posted in Culture, Josh Grigsby, Livability, Placemaking, Rants, Response Pieces, Sustainability, Uncategorized, What if?
Tagged Amsterdam, ancient Athens, ancient Rome, art, Aspen, Auckland, compact cities, Copenhagen, creativity, cultural diversity, Economist Intelligence Unit, European cities, Florence, Forbes, Geneva, growth, Helsinki, homogenization, Houston, inventory of the possible, Islamic Baghdad, Joel Kotkin, Livability, London, Los Angeles, low birth rate, Melbourne, Mercer, Monocle, Mumbai, Munich, New Geography, New York, Palm Beach, Perth, pollution, poverty, quality of life, Renaissance, Rene Descartes, responsible urbanism, segregation, Shanghai, social dynamism, sprawl, Sustainability, Switzerland, technology, Toronto, universal beauty, urban tension, Vail, vancouver, Vienna, Zurich
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Deep Walkability
The true test of walkability I think is this: Can you spend a pleasant half hour walking or on transit and end up at a variety of great places? The quality of having a feast of options available when you walk out your front door is what I starting to think of as “deep walkability.” Continue reading
Posted in Auto Independence, Culture, human scale, Livability, Placemaking, Shout Outs, transit, Transportation, walkable, What if?
Tagged Alex Steffen, auto dependent, car-free, car-sharing, connectivity, deep walkability, green cities, neighborhoods, sprawl, transit, urban design, walkability, walkable communities, walkable density, WalkScore, WorldChanging
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Universal Beauty and the Responsibility of Cities
In chapter eight of Anthony M. Tung’s erudite and impressive Preserving the World’s Great Cities: The Destruction and Renewal of the Historic Metropolis, there is a passage that stopped me in my proverbial tracks and hasn’t left my thoughts since. Tung is writing about Amsterdam at the dawn of the 20th century:
As parts of the inner city became slums and were threatened with clearance, and as picturesque canals were filled in to create new roads and better circulation, elements of the historic environment began to be eliminated. Growing numbers of citizens became alarmed and called for preservation of the historic center. In addition, a new ring of speculative housing began to surround the old metropolis. Numerous Amsterdammers began to ask that the expansion of the city meet a reasonable standard of beauty. Continue reading
Posted in Culture, History, Josh Grigsby, Livability, Placemaking, Rants, Sustainability, Uncategorized, What if?
Tagged American cities, Amsterdam, Angkor Wat, Anthony Tung, Austin, Babylon, Baltimore, Beauty, Bicycle Diaries, Cambridge, Camillo Sitte, Chapel Hill, Chicago, cobblestone, Craftsman bungalows, David Byrne, Denver, farm houses, Frank Gehry, google maps, H.P. Berlage, historic preservation, Invisible Cities, Iroquois Confederacy, Italo Calvino, J.R.R. Tolkien, Key West cottages, Kyoto, Main Street, McMansions, medieval cities, modernism, modernization, Mulholland Drive, municipal, neighborhoods, New England fishing village, Pantheon, Paris, parking lots, Parthenon, Peter Jackson, Petra, Plan Zuid, portland, public way, pyramids at Giza, quality of life, Ray Kappe, Rivendell, San Francisco, Santa Monica, Santorini, Sarasota, Sausalito, screen shots, Seven Generation, Shire, shopping malls, slum clearance, sprawl, Stefan Sagmeister, stewardship, street grid, strip malls, Sustainability, Tibor Kalman, trailer parks, urbanism, Varanasi, Vienna, Wonder
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