Lately I’ve been thinking about “health, safety, and general welfare” — the basis by which zoning is typically legitimized and measured — and wondering just how great a disconnect needs to form between our purported values and our land use regulations before we admit that something’s not working.
May 18, 2015 | 12:01 am
“General Welfare” for the Next Generation
April 6, 2015 | 12:01 am
Better Streets: Whatchu whatchu whatchu want?
“What a bunch of idiots. Don’t they know this will create a traffic nightmare?”
Sound familiar? It’s the most commonly voiced complaint any time the community conversation turns to traffic calming.
Taken at face value, it’s not an outrageous sentiment. After all, when you’re out and about, anything that stands between you and where you want to be looks like a problem. So why on earth would anyone choose to further complicate your commute on purpose?
January 19, 2015 | 9:13 am
Small to Go Big in 2015?
Maybe. Finally. Here’s why.
Those of us who’ve been tangling with status quo protectors in housing design and policymaking got a charge out of Justin Shubow’s Forbes blog post earlier this month. Shubow backhanded modernist starchitects for persisting in their personal artistic vision without regard to the human use of real places:
“Modernism might appear outwardly impregnable: it dominates the practitioners, the critics, the media, and the schools. But as the example of the Soviet Union shows, even the strongest-appearing edifice can suddenly come crashing down when it turns out it no longer has internal support.”
November 20, 2014 | 11:15 am
Transit Oriented Development: A few notes from Winnipeg BRT
This Monday, the Downtown Winnipeg BIZ convened a Transit Oriented Development Summit, to talk about how to make neighbourhoods around Winnipeg’s new Bus Rapid Transit system sing. Right from the start, it was great to see downtown businesses understand that the strength of the spokes adds up to a stronger wheel. Stefano Grande, the head of the BIZ made it simple, “The TOD Summit is sponsored by @DowntownWpgBIZ because it’s good business.”
June 9, 2014 | 12:06 am
Urbanists Soak Up Buffalo: PlaceMakers empty their notebooks
The 22nd annual gathering of the CNU wrapped up Saturday night, June 7, in Buffalo. We’re looking forward to the recordings at cnu.org over the next few weeks to fill the inevitable gaps, since the competing sessions and hallway conversations presented the usual embarrassment of riches.
Rather than go for a tidy narrative, let’s just share some random observations and sound bites from the four days.
February 3, 2014 | 2:18 pm
Zen & The Art of Traffic Calming
In the view of most urbanists, walkability is a measure of how healthy a city is. It essentially describes how safe and how well-planned a city is for pedestrians, which will in turn determine how often citizens interact with their city.
There are so many factors that go in to making a city walkable. The factor that I find to be the most important, in pretty much all cases, is how safe the walkways are in terms of traffic.
Traffic calming methods become incredibly important when improving an urban space.
January 20, 2014 | 9:31 am
The Road to Prosperity: Real-Time Approaches to Economic Improvement
Across America, too many people believe that “no one will get out of their cars.” The newest data based on the 2012 American Community Survey, shows “it ain’t so,” even for small cities and their surrounding areas. The national trend in the US is a drop of almost 1 percent per year in passenger vehicle-miles-traveled or VMT, driven by the high price of transportation generally and more specifically related to the need to drive, a function of the increased distance between people and what they do. People have been driving about 1% per year less for a while now.
April 29, 2013 | 12:01 am
Bryan Jones: Portrait of a Municipal Official Takin’ It to the Street
Since meeting Chuck Marohn, I’ve advocated for his rational Strong Towns approach to reforming our inefficient auto-oriented infrastructure system. Chuck’s message to focus infrastructure decisions on their long-term return on investment is radical because he is a Traffic Engineer. Honestly, the most frustrating and irrational meetings I have held are not with any citizen group or elected officials, but with local Traffic Engineers. Over the years, smarter growth traffic specialist like DeWayne Carver, Rick Hall, Rick Chellman, and Peter Swift have protected me from having too many direct encounters, but all are located east of the Rockies.
