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What Transit Advocates Could Learn from SOPA
Some 4.3 million people ride the New York City subway every day. Across the U.S., a billion more rely on transportation to get where they need to go. Why haven’t we rallied to fight H.R. 7, a House bill that could stop us in our tracks?...
Digital vs. Analog Ways of Transforming Cities
Walkscore, a favorite civic tech app, notes that our Storefront has a decent walkscore but an unfortunate transit score.The other day I got a phone call from Josh McManus to talk about his work and Next American City’s Storefront for Urban...
Could Manufacturing be coming back?
We could use industry, though not necessarily the auto industry. Credit: National Buildings MuseumAmong the topics covered in last night’s State of the Union, President Obama outlined a plan to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. by cutting...
End Comes for Many California Redevelopment Agencies
How many jobs will be lost following the Alhambra agency’s dissolution? Credit: Wikipedia user Jey0hThis piece originally ran in the Alhambra Source. It concerns an example of how a recent California state law dissolving redevelopment agencies...
Why 'Protecting' Kids from New Orleans is a bad idea
New Orleans’ Royal Street, where the under-16 crowd can no longer roam late at night. Credit: Flickr user kimncrisThis piece originally appeared on The Lens. When I lived in Europe, I used to josh my British friends with a plan for Britain’s...
Defying Criticism, U.K. Government Finalizes Plans for High-Speed Rail
Rendering of the link between London and Birmingham. Credit: HS2This piece originally ran on The Transport Politic.Whatever the recession’s effects on government budgets, infrastructure development in Europe continues to advance at a steady pace....
Is Waste-to-Energy the future of energy in New York?
New York City’s tons of trash could become green energy Credit: Jarrett MurphyThis piece originally ran on City Limits. Coverage of Mayor Bloomberg’s state of the city address focused, as the speech did, on the mayor’s raft of education proposals,...
The Fringe Suburb Isn’t Dead- It’s Just Not Breathing
It seems like progressive urbanism is starting to sell papers. Two pieces on suburban sprawl, that ever creeping bogey man facing every urban planner under 50, have graced the front pages of the New York Times website over the past three days. I won...
Citizen Journalism Takes Jacksonville by Storm
The people’s news - of the people, by the people, for the people. Call it what you will - street journalism is the “new black” of information in the digital age. Also known as citizen journalism, and typically disseminated in an online...
A Highway Runs Through It
A way to rethink I-70 and the arch Credit: Vanishing STLAs the St. Louis Arch itself neared completion in 1964, before the surrounding park became anything more than a parking lot and construction site, the area was amputated from the city by what...
Whose Street, Exactly? Occupy in the Context of Complete Streets
Credit: Sarah FineChances are you heard about Occupy protestors in Oakland and Washington, D.C. being struck by cars two weeks ago—a Mercedes and a Lexus, respectively. But did you hear about the Hummer in Oakland? Or,...
How Experiencing A Vacant Site Enhances Redevelopment Design
“Every vacant lot holds cathedrals of potential,” writes John R. Stilgoe in Outside Lies Magic, his paean to exploring the ordinary world around us. If that statement is true, then the site of the Pruitt-Igoe housing projects is the seat of a giant...
