cities
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Getting the Mormons on board with mixed use
As former planning director for Salt Lake City, and as an artist wanting to create live/work spaces for other artists, Stephen Goldsmith has played a key role in bringing mixed-use development to the downtown core of his city. He now teaches at the University of Utah’s College of Architecture and Planning. He also founded the […]
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The future of Rust Belt cities in the post-LeBron era
Keith AllisonContrived news hooks based on LeBron James are so last week, but Aaron Renn at New Geography has a good link between the departing free agent and a struggling Rust Belt city: In a sense though, Cleveland’s disappointment was inevitable. LeBron James was never going to turn around the city. No one […]
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Want a party? Kick cars off the street in Oakland
Shut down a street to autos and sunny revelry instantly breaks out with lots of happy Californians. OK, maybe not automatically, but a key appeal of Complete Streets is that human-scaled throughways tend to be much more social than environments designed for cars. Streetsfilms makes the case by chronicling the first-ever Ciclovía day on Oakland, […]
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Robert Cluck: Texas doctor, Republican mayor, clean-air champ
Deceptively clear skies over Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.Courtesy jacorbett70 via FlickrPhysician Robert Cluck spends his mornings working at Arlington Memorial Hospital and his afternoons as mayor of Arlington, Texas, a city of 375,000 that has one of the worst ozone problems in the country. Seeing children with asthma in the emergency room has led him […]
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Portugal’s eco-city, Amazon’s ugly HQ, and more urban notes
Progress toward a sustainable future may be stalled in the Senate, but there’s a ton of news and interesting research happening at the local level on the broad topic of improving built spaces — cities, towns, buildings, transportation systems, etc. A quick roundup from the local solutions beat: Living-PlanIT.comPlanIT Valley: Portugal’s planning to build a […]
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Is drunk biking better than drunk driving?
Courtesy blurofinsanity.comEric DePlace at the Northwest policy shop Sightline responds to my question about why we mandate parking at bars if driving in general and drunk driving in particular both harm the public good: One thing that does work as an alternative to drinking and driving — and I can vouch for this — is […]
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Hottie bikers in Miami Beach, Complete Streets in St. Louis
Ten minutes of biking a day and you too can look like this.Decobike.comSpend enough time watching the Senate dither on the climate threat/energy quest/defining challenge of our time and it’s easy to lose sight of the sanity and localized progress happening around the world. A few quick examples: Miami Beach added a bike-sharing program to […]
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Why urban businesses have better advertising
It’s no secret that there are lots of chain businesses in sprawling areas and relatively more independent businesses in urban cores. The blog Discover Urbanism has a fascinating explanation of how the built environment determines the kinds of businesses — and the types of marketing — that succeed in a given place: The urban and […]
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Tailpipe fumes are five times worse for bikers than for drivers, study finds
Well this is a bummer: A Belgian study finds that bicyclists on urban streets inhale tens of millions of toxic nanoparticles with each breath, taking in five times as much as drivers and pedestrians on the same streets. The U.K. Times reports on the new research: Because they are exerting themselves, cyclists breathe harder and […]
