Todd Litman wrote:

Automobiles receive the vast majority of transportation funding: about 85 percent of spending by departments of transportation is devoted to roadways—about 95 percent if we also consider expenditures by businesses on government-mandated parking facilities.

This made driving easier and other forms of travel worse. As a result, most North American communities ar...
[read more]

Diana Ionescu wrote:

"Developed in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Homekey provides local public entities with large, capital grants that can be used to purchase existing buildings and convert them into housing for people experiencing or at risk of homelessness."

According to the blog, "All told, Homekey 1.0 added 6,000 rooms and/or units t...
[read more]

Trevor Decker Cohen wrote:

The field of urbanism puts the European city on a pedestal. There’s a sense that if we could just paste the walkable streets of Paris onto our strip malls and highways, we’d create paradise in America. What’s lost in this conception is the wisdom from thousands of years of Indigenous placemakin...
[read more]

Richard Day wrote:

UCLA professor and parking expert Donald Shoup estimates that in Chicago an above-ground parking spot costs about $29,000 to build, and an underground spot comes in at a cool $36,000. And because those minimum parking rules force builders to create a large number of extra empty spots, the actual rate buildings ca...
[read more]

Daniel Herriges wrote:

The best American examples of top-notch urbanism are mostly places inhabited by well-to-do Americans, and their real-estate prices and rents are usually prohibitive for most others. This includes the majority of places that are currently walkable, bikeable, have attractive human-scale architecture, have attractive greenery, aren't pockmarked with parking lots, and are ful...
[read more]

Daniel Herriges wrote:

At the root of any ecosystem you’ll find a food chain. Start with the question of what resources are available (i.e., sunlight, water, nitrogen and other nutrients). Everything else, while not entirely determined by that, ultimately has to follow from it.

For development, finance is fertilizer. Most of the developers I spok...
[read more]

Wyatt Gordon (Op-Ed) wrote:

Public good, private payment

The bus doesn’t care if you can’t afford a car, if your disability disallows driving, or if you’ve just had one too many drinks. As long as you’re waiting at a stop, the bus will pick you up and carry you home—no questions asked. The bus epitomize...
[read more]

Melanie Curry wrote:

Automated vehicle (AV) hype has soared in recent years. While overblown promises never materialized, investment has continued and progress has been made in bringing them closer to market. Over fifty companies now have permits to test fully automated vehicles in California. A handful of AV-taxi companies even hold permits to test withou...
[read more]

Diana Ionescu wrote:

The city of Cleveland and real estate firm Bedrock, owned by Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, have "announced a partnership with the goal of revamping the Cuyahoga riverfront near Tower City Center" that aims "to connect downtown residents and visitors to the riverfront with an approach focused on sustainability, equity, and accessibility....
[read more]

James Brasuell wrote:

The Finnish government has a population register that collects data about where individuals live. The researchers got access to this data and were able to follow individuals as they moved from place to place in the Helsinki metro area. This data allowed them to trace exactly how the construction of new luxur...
[read more]