Congress for the New Urbanism

Cities have traditionally eliminated parking requirements to encourage walking, bicycling, and transit. But it can also aid the rise of on-demand car services, two top parking policy experts say.

There are excellent candidates for freeway removal in many American cities, where roads built 50 or 60 years ago are nearing the end of their useful lives. Cities that take the plunge and get rid of their urban highways don't regret it.

As a charter member of the Congress for New Urbanism, I’ve now attended twenty of the organization’s annual conferences. This month’s event may have been my favorite yet, mostly thanks to its location in downtown Buffalo, a place that reminds us so poignantly of both the successes and failures of city planning, as first lovingly practiced and later ruthlessly perpetrated across America.

Urban streets serve a much different purpose than rural ones: They're for walking, socializing, and local commerce, not just moving vehicles. Unfortunately, American engineering guides tend not to capture these nuances.

The Federal Highway Administration classifies roads as either "rural" or "urbanized." But the "urbanized" label is deceptive, because it applies suburban street design standards to any street that isn't rural. So if you live in, say, downtown St. Louis, the FHWA applies the same standards to your streets as to the streets in Orlando's most distant suburbs. This contributes to a horrendous mismatch: Many city streets where walking should take precedence are in fact designed for moving massive amounts of traffic.

We're suckers for a good contest and here's a great one: Congress for the New Urbanism is seeking video submissions to determine the most hopeless disaster of a freeway in America.

Over the last five years America has seen an historic housing downturn, but the prevailing trend hasn't sapped demand for walkable, urban development, especially in many larger metros.

Preceding the start of the Pro-Walk/Pro-Bike/Pro-Place conference this week, the Congress for the New Urbanism met at the Renaissance Hotel across from the Long Beach Convention Center to convene their annual CNU Transportation Summit. At the summit, CNU develops its transportation agenda, including new and existing projects. Having caught the new urbanist bug in Florida at CNU 20, I was eager to have another opportunity to both learn and contribute to their dialogue.

If you make your home on the Louisiana coastline, upstate New York or the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, chances are you live near a highway that really has it coming. It's big. It's ugly. It goes right through city neighborhoods. And it just might be coming down soon.