READ THIS ARTICLE FOR #NEWYEARS:
25 simple but POWERFUL resolutions you can make to improve your life AND YOUR CITY!
Revisit my most read @fastcompany.com article—the resolutions feel even MORE relevant now! Which ones resonate with you? What would you add? #HappyNewYear #Resolutions #NewYearsEve
the "the myth of consensual sex" meme where it's a couple saying they consent but then jesus is off to the side saying he does't, but it's been changed so it says "the myth of consensual urban transit planning" And the couple is labeled "city dwellers" the man is saying "we should make it easier to not drive here" The woman is saying "like building bike lanes or adding bus routs." And Jesus has been replaced with clip art of a farmer, labeled "someone who lives 1000 miles away and has no involvement whatsoever." and is saying "Stop trying to take my car away I will kill you" text at the bottom still says "isn't there somebody you forgot to ask?"
any discussion of city transit improvement online ever
400K is not much of a reach.
The City of San Francisco is half the size and twice as populous.
I could see aiming for 400K in 15 years. An aspiration would be 2M in 50 years. Still half as dense as Paris, but that would be a legit “new city” that would change the conversation in North America.
Just listened to The Messy City Podcast with @california-forever.bsky.social …very confused how a 65K acre “new city” designed to make building easy and to have density and sustainability at its core can be envisioned when the projection is 400K population in 40-50 years.
Paris is 10x more dense.
Street cars are great, but require a different level of investment for marginal initial gain over dedicated bus lanes. This step at least makes the place more enjoyable to be in (fewer vehicles, less noise, more space for people), which should also grow ridership…hopefully for a future street car.
Shenzhen (while definitely not perfect) is exactly what Palo Alto should be and the Bay Area should rival NYC’s metro population. California would have an extra ~10M+ people, 15+ congressional seats/EC votes. The landowners would be many times more wealthy and the rents lower.
Total own goal.
I hear you - what I’m trying to suggest is that the tree-as-barrier safety value outweighs (an assumption, but for some reason I’m fairly confident about it) the tree-blocking-sightlines safety hindrance.
I imagine the game-changer is the side friction effect slowing drivers down.
Even when it comes to daylighting intersections, street trees help because they act as bollards
You might’ve thought about other aspects of cities that were functionally destroyed by Urban Renewal through practices that were intended to save those places, like high-volume roads and parking lots to buoy downtown job/shopping districts. Greenwood was definitely “purposefully destroyed”, though.
Depends on how wide you take it…this part of Tulsa is showing Greenwood, the former “Black Wall Street” that was firebombed in the 1920s and rebuilt by its community rapidly thereafter.
Urban Renewal did to Greenwood (and similar neighborhoods nationwide) what the firebombing couldn’t.
We’re not going to get abundant new housing built with a process like this.
The zoning process is more than just a map & a code. Many projects require special hearings & city council review.
In new research @urbaninstitute.bsky.social, I show that in Chicago, 58% of permitted housing units undergo that sort of discretionary review.
www.urban.org/urban-wire/c...
Remember this? Paris is getting a whole new Metro network. It’s huge. And built fast.
“The venerable #Paris Métro is about to get its most significant upgrade in decades with the arrival of the Grand Paris Express, a new 200km system with 4 new lines & 68 new stations.” www.cnn.com/travel/paris...
“Montreal’s experience is a demonstration of the power of pedestrian-only areas to revitalize cities, at a time when the rise of hybrid work and other aftershocks of the pandemic have helped to hollow out urban cores.”
@theglobeandmail.com
Pittsburgh's IZ mandate in Lawrenceville has reduced housing production by 32% since 2019. Extending IZ citywide in its current form will increase prices and harm affordability. Read our research on the topic here: prohousingpgh.org/pittsburgh-i...
Why do we need to invest more in transit, biking, and walking?
Because car dependency makes people unhappy!
A new study found that "relying on a car for more than 50 percent of the time is associated with a decrease in life satisfaction."
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Framing The Story of Parking Reform The language we use evokes emotion and mental short cuts; we like to create coherent stories. Framing the story of parking reform in a compelling way will help us succeed. Don't Say: Parking Requirements The word “requirements” indicates something is required, implicitly that it is needed. It is also value-neutral. Instead Use: Costly Parking Mandates Remind people parking costs money and land to provide. And use the term “mandates” which implies a heavier hand. Parking Reform Network - parkingreform.org This work draws on Evan Manvel’s work for the Transportation and Growth Management program at the State of Oregon
Don't say "Parking Requirements"
Instead use "Costly Parking Mandates"
The language we use evokes emotion and mental shortcuts; we like to create coherent stories. Framing the story of parking reform in a compelling way will help us succeed. 🧵/7
I have been re-radicalised by the experience of trying to navigate pavements safely with my niece in her pram. Between the parked cars and wheelie bins, it's really difficult.
Heads up - The photo is of current Governor Shapiro, but the caption says it’s former Governor Wolf.
“If your governor says they don't have money for transit…they’re either lying, or they don't know [about flex funding]. Because every state has some money to improve transit right now.”
usa.streetsblog.org/2024/11/27/p...
A brightly lit modern subway station with colorful vertical glass panels in shades of red, orange, yellow, green, and blue lining one wall. The station features platform screen doors along the track, an escalator to the right, and clean, minimalist architectural design with light-colored tiled floors and concrete walls. Ceiling lights create a spacious and welcoming atmosphere.
If the U.S. could build metros at the same cost as Rennes' metro, the country could construct 239 miles of subway and 418 stations every year for just 50% of its annual spending on new highways and roads.
Denver gave people experiencing homelessness $1k/month. A year later, nearly half had housing.
They also had fewer ER visits, nights spent in a hospital, and jail stays.
The report estimates that this reduction in public service use SAVED the city $589k.
www.businessinsider.com/denver-basic...
It would be so easy to enforce curbside parking standards. Like…I grew up being told that I had to parallel park within 6 inches of the curb or I would *definitely* get a ticket. Why did that stop?
Threads is attached to FB/Insta, which are platforms mostly for communicating with people you know.
Twitter’s format, which Bluesky effectively reproduces, is mostly about connecting with people you don’t know.
Threads can’t do that while glued to IRL relationships.
*nominating*
He can’t appoint without Congress opting to recess and the senate doesn’t seem interested in doing that, thankfully.
I’m saying there’s not a one-size-fits-all scale at which data are useful, but given the type of data there will certainly be scales at which those data are *not* useful. In this case, fatalities per capita in a state/province is not useful, nor is fatalities per capita by local municipality.
It’s impossible to accurately separate out a single portion of a given metro area and get a full picture of whether that portion is exporting its fatalities elsewhere or not, similar to how crime data or homelessness is not useful by muni within a metro.
I’m not saying it’s the *only* factor. bsky.app/profile/citi...
Another reason why it’s bad that zoning, setbacks, parking reqs, building codes, and tax codes each have the effect of limiting new building to larger developments owned by investor-landlords.
Cities are ecosystems. Our rules make them less dynamic by favoring invasive species.
I’d avoid using municipal boundaries at all, city or state/province. Those boundaries have no relationship to the economic boundaries of the people who live there.
Urban areas are more useful. Still not 1:1 when some are car-based and others are transit-enabled, which is why VMT per capita works.
