Getting Real About High-Speed Rail
Today on the Streetsblog Network, member blog Worldchanging has an interview on the future of American transportation with Nancy Kete, a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute and the managing director of EMBARQ, the WRI's Center for Transport and the Environment.
June 3, 2009
Using the Hive Mind to Make Biking Safer
Whenever anyone asks me why I like Twitter so much, I tell them it’s about the information. If you follow the right people (and who that is obviously depends entirely on you) you can tap into an amazing amount of great stuff from around the Internet (and real life too). It’s like having a custom-made … Continued
June 2, 2009
How the Autocentric Lifestyle Hurts Our Kids
Last week, several of our Streetsblog Network member blogs picked up on a recent policy statement
from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), "The Built Environment:
Designing Communities to Promote Physical Activity in Children." It
examines how sprawl harms the nation's children by reducing physical
activity, and how denser development, traffic-calming measures and more
parks could result in better health for America's young people.
June 1, 2009
Making Room for People Rather Than Cars
We talk a lot on this blog about the way that government policy can
help to create livable streets. But we don't often discuss the role
that individual property owners can play when they're inspired to
create a more pedestrian-friendly space.
May 29, 2009
We Need a Complete Solution to Climate Change
This morning, Jeff Wood at The Overhead Wire points us to a newly released measure of CO2 emissions from the Center for Neighborhood Technology (which just won a 2009 MacArthur Foundation Award for Creative and Effective Institutions, BTW). He says maps like these help to show why changing land-use patterns is vital in the fight to diminish greenhouse gases:
May 28, 2009
The Permanent Effect of Temporary Street Closures
So, we all love a good street party, yes? But at some point, the party is over... right?
May 27, 2009
Would Motorists Pay 15 Cents a Mile for No Traffic?
Congestion pricing may be dead in New York, but the discussion about its merits continues elsewhere. Today, David Alpert at Greater Greater Washington looks at how road pricing could dramatically change the traffic situation in the DC area:
May 20, 2009
Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Emphasis on Safety?
There's a lot of focus this month on getting more people out and about on their bikes. We posted last week about the effort to normalize bike commuting,
a topic that as usual sparked a lot of discussion about sweat,
appropriate clothing, secure bike parking and, of course, safety.
May 19, 2009
Van Jones and the Vision for a New Urban Environmentalism
This morning we're featuring a post from Streetsblog Network member Where,
an always thought-provoking international blog that "brings together
urbanists from all walks of life living in cities around the world to
poke, prod, and otherwise examine everything urban in an effort to
maintain a global conversation about this increasingly vital subject
matter."
May 18, 2009