Urban Design

Science Denial Group Behind Attacks On Low Traffic Neighbourhoods

May 26, 2024 Adam Barnett and Joey Grostern, DeSmog. Educate! Disinformation, Politics and Policy, Report, Science Denial, Urban Design

More than a quarter of online posts attacking low traffic schemes last year came from a science denial group which campaigns against climate policies. A new report by cross-party think tank Demos found that 27 percent of online posts attacking Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) in 2023 were posted by the right-wing Together Declaration. The group, originally set up to oppose COVID-19 policies such as lockdowns and mandatory vaccines, is backed by some of the UK’s most prominent climate science deniers, including blogger Ben Pile, Reform UK candidate Howard Cox, and UKIP leader Lois Perry.

Essential Voices For The Turn Away From Car Dependency

May 24, 2024 Bart Hawkins Kreps, Resilience. Organize! Car-Free Community, Disability Rights, Transportation, Urban Design

In forward-thinking municipalities across North America, elected officials and staff members can learn important lessons by taking on the Week Without Driving Challenge. As Anna Letitia Zivarts describes it, “participants have to try to get around for a week without driving. They can take transit, walk, roll, bike, or ask or pay for rides as they try to keep to their regular schedules ….” In most municipalities, the challenge leads to a difficult but eye-opening week. That’s because in most areas getting around without driving is inconvenient, dangerous, very time-consuming, or next to impossible. As Zivarts writes, Even for participants who might already bike, walk or take transit for some of their weekly trips, we’ve heard that the experience has helped them comprehend the difference between taking the easy trips and taking all trips without driving.

The Fight To Reclaim Texas’ Highways For People

May 16, 2024 Maylin Tu, Next City. Resist! Cars, Highways, Housing, Texas, Transportation, Urban Design

Freeways rip apart neighborhoods, displace primarily Black and Brown people and increase greenhouse gas emissions — so why do we keep building them? According to a new book from Austin-based journalist Megan Kimble, “City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways,” it doesn’t have to be this way. Right now, a new generation of freeway fighters is battling freeway expansion across the country. Kimble’s book profiles three campaigns in Texas to build places for people, not cars: Stop TxDOT I-45 in Houston, Rethink35 in Austin and the campaign to remove the I-345 highway in Dallas.

Sponge Cities Are The Future Of Urban Flood Mitigation

May 14, 2024 Franco Montalto, Next City. Create! Climate Change, climate crisis, Extreme weather, Sponge cities, Urban Design

“When it rains, it pours” once was a metaphor for bad things happening in clusters. Now it’s becoming a statement of fact about rainfall in a changing climate. Across the continental U.S., intense single-day precipitation events are growing more frequent, fueled by warming air that can hold increasing levels of moisture. Most recently, areas north of Houston received 12 to 20 inches (30 to 50 centimeters) of rain in several days in early May 2024, leading to swamped roads and evacuations. Earlier in the year, San Diego received 2.72 inches (7 centimeters) of rain on Jan. 22 that damaged nearly 600 homes and displaced about 1,200 people.

What If Non-Drivers Helped Plan Our Transportation Systems?

May 13, 2024 Anna Zivarts, Next City. Create! Disability Rights, Participatory Democracy, Roads, Transportation, Urban Design

In the fall of 2021, I was invited by Roger Millar, the head of the Washington State Department of Transportation, to speak to the board of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials at its annual meeting. Before the meeting, Secretary Millar explained that I’d be presenting to the heads of each state department of transportation, and I started to get nervous. I am not a civil engineer. I don’t have a degree in urban planning. I have never worked for a transit agency or department of transportation. What I had was my lifetime of experience as a disabled nondriver and stories from the hundreds of other nondrivers from every corner of Washington State.

St. Louis’ Turn-Of-The-Century Transit Renaissance

April 12, 2024 Aysha Khan, Next City. Create! light rail, Missouri, Transit, Transportation, Urban Design

Heartland Urbanist, Columbus-based organizer Matt Caffrey digs into the story behind St. Louis’s light metro system. In the mid-1980s, while many other transit agencies were moving toward developing trams – slow street-running light rail – St. Louis made the bold choice to build a light rail system on dedicated right of way. Opened in 1993, it’s now a 46-mile light rail system with two lines and 6.7 million riders in 2022. It’s also, he explains, a massive driver of private investment. Part of the reason why residents and visitors are able to take advantage of this system was local organizers with a St. Louis nonprofit, Citizens for Modern Transit.

A Radical Vision For The Housing Crisis In The West Of Ireland

April 10, 2024 Aysha Khan, Next City. Create! Housing, Ireland, Transportation, Urban Design

Transit-oriented development is a land use planning approach that concentrates high-density, mixed-use development – housing, groceries, retail, employment, childcare – within walking distance from rapid transit services. Centering development around transit hubs helps create vibrant, active, affordable and accessible neighbourhoods where both businesses and people – residents, workers and tourists alike – can thrive. Polysee chose a 32-hectare parcel of land by Oranmore station, just outside Galway City, to model what this could look like.

How Montreal Became A Year-Round Cycling Success Story

March 30, 2024 Ben Abramson, Next City. Create! Bicycles, Canada, Transportation, Urban Design

The average daily temperature in February is 26 degrees Fahrenheit, with overnight lows at 12 degrees. There are 12 days of precipitation (primarily snow). There’s a massive, 764-foot-high hill (locals call it a Mont) smack dab in the middle of the city. Who would go cycling in such conditions? Montrealers, and the city’s bikeshare program has the stats to prove it. Montreal’s bikeshare program, called BIXI, has grown exponentially since launching in 2009. With over 10,000 bikes, it has the largest fleet in Canada and one of the largest in North America.

Biden’s Infrastructure Plan Created A ‘Climate Time Bomb’ In Black Neighborhoods

March 20, 2024 Adam Mahoney, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Black America, Infrastructure, Joe Biden, Segregation, Urban Design

Nearly 45 years ago, the Acres Homes area north of Houston was the largest unincorporated Black community in the South, a thriving 9-square mile area where homeownership was the norm. That was until the city of Houston annexed it, and the Interstate 45 highway was built through its heart. In the aftermath, the community’s poverty rate has jumped to almost double the city’s average, and health ailments from pollution have increased. President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, one of the nation’s most significant investments in curbing climate change, was supposed to consider the history of areas like Acres Homes in an attempt to make communities whole again.

Stillmeadow Peace Park Is Baltimore’s Tale Of Urban Reinvention

March 9, 2024 Ethan McLeod, Baltimore Magazine. Create! Baltimore, Forest Restoration, Sustainability, Urban Design

In the woods next to the Stillmeadow Community Fellowship church in Southwest Baltimore, Pastor Michael Martin has another sanctuary he eagerly shares with visitors. The church leaders poses meditative questions—”What do you hear?” “What do you see?” “How does it make you feel?”—as he walks parishioners, neighbors, and other participants in Stillmeadow’s “daytime retreats” through the 10 acres of once-neglected, church-owned property overlooking busy Frederick Avenue. Here, freshly planted and fast-growing saplings, carefully carved-out walking trails, and streamside sitting areas invite each person who passes through to pause.

Individualism Is Making Public Transit Worse

February 11, 2024 Jarrett Walker, Next City. Create! Diversity, Public Transit, Transportation, Urban Design

When you complain that transit doesn’t start where you want it to start, doesn’t end where you want it to end, and doesn’t go all the time, you’re describing inadequate public transit. With adequate funding and in the context of good city planning, public transit can do all of these things for vast numbers of people, though not for everyone and possibly not for Elon Musk. But Musk’s other point is fundamental. Public transit does expose us to a bunch of random strangers, and this is its superpower. In the most effective public transit, different people with different purposes and destinations find the same vehicle useful at the same time. At its most successful, a transit system’s ridership is as diverse as the city or community it serves.

In Chinatown, A Community Envisions Alternatives To Sixers Arena

February 6, 2024 Oscar Perry Abello, Next City. Create! Chinatown, Gentrification, Participatory Democracy, Philadelphia, Urban Design

Joy. While it’s been a contentious 18 months of protests, marching, and debating about a proposed new basketball arena in Philadelphia’s Center City, for at least one Saturday morning, an urban planning and design discussion about the proposed arena location brought some joy to the conversation. At the Center for Architecture in Philly, just a few blocks from the site of the proposed arena, about a hundred people gathered on Jan. 27 to brainstorm alternative uses for the site. The public workshop was organized by the Save Chinatown Coalition, an alliance of 245 organizations from Chinatown and around the city who oppose the new arena because they fear its proximity to Chinatown will disrupt and displace the community.

Paris Plans An Urban Forest For A Busy Roundabout

December 8, 2023 Paige Bennett, EcoWatch. Create! Bikes, Environment, France, Global heating, Paris, Transportation, Urban Design

Paris will plant an “urban forest” at Place de Catalogne, a busy roundabout with close proximity to the Gare Montparnasse railway station. The city will add nearly 500 trees to the roundabout. The new urban forest project will help with cooling to combat the urban heat island effect as well as contribute to an overall plan for improving air quality and reducing emissions that contribute to global warming. “The temperatures one could feel in this little forest will be 4 degrees lower compared to what we could have outside it and so, it will be very pleasant,” Mayor Anne Hidalgo said, as reported by Reuters.

Want Safer Streets For Everyone? Narrow The Lanes

November 28, 2023 Maylin Tu, Next City. Create! Bicycles, Pedestrians, Transportation, Urban Design

Turns out, wider lanes don’t make for safer streets. In a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, a team of researchers found that the opposite is actually true: Narrowing lanes at certain speeds could save lives. The study came from a simple observation, says lead researcher Shima Hamidi, a transportation planner and Hopkins assistant professor of American health. She noticed that the traffic lanes in U.S. cities were much wider than their counterparts in other countries. Without existing data, traffic engineers assumed that wider lanes — which left more room for driver error — would be safer.

Zoning Reform Is Entering A New, Grown-Up Era

November 25, 2023 Zak Yudhishthu, Next City. Create! Housing, Minnesota, St. Paul, Urban Design, zoning

Blink, and you might’ve missed it: St. Paul, Minnesota just ended zoning that restricts neighborhoods only to single-family housing. On Wednesday, October 18, the St. Paul City Council voted to change the city’s zoning code to increase neighborhood-scale density across the city. Areas that today only allow for single-family homes will soon allow for at least four units of housing per lot. At first glance, these changes might recall those passed by Minneapolis in 2019, when the city’s 2040 Comprehensive Plan legalized triplexes city-wide. Minneapolis received extensive attention for the changes, as it was a national leader in eliminating city zoning that excluded every housing type except for single-family homes.

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