Livable Streets
Meet Streetmix, the Website Where You Can Design Your Own Street
Last fall, Lou Huang was at a community meeting for the initiative to redesign Second Street in San Francisco. Planners handed out paper cutouts, allowing participants to mix and match to create their ideal street. Huang, an urban designer himself, thought the exercise would make for a great website. Now, after months of work beginning at a January hackathon with colleagues at Code for America, it is a great website.
August 12, 2013
How Rethinking the Golf Course Could Help Seniors Age in Place
The 15,753 golf courses in the United States take up more space than half the state of New Jersey. And though they devour so much land, much of it in suburbia, the sport is foundering -- in part because of the enormous amount of time and distance it requires. Some real estate professionals and experts on aging have come together to suggest a solution both for the decline of the game and the land use problems posed by these massive courses: Build mixed-use development inside them.
January 9, 2013
Do Seniors Want the Livability Improvements AARP Wants For Them?
Oahu, Hawaii should be the ideal place to walk for transportation, but it has the nation’s highest pedestrian fatality rate for senior citizens – more than twice the next-highest state. So the state enacted a Complete Streets policy in 2009, seeking to “reasonably accommodate” everyone -- “pedestrians, bicyclists, transit users, motorists, and persons of all ages and abilities” -- on public roadways.
December 19, 2012
Transforming Tysons Corner: A High-Stakes Suburban Retrofit
“That strip mall just got rezoned for high rise buildings.” “These auto dealerships are going to disappear.”
October 27, 2011
Sen. Menendez Introduces Bill to Plan For Livable Communities
New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez has taken up where former Senator Chris Dodd left off. Last week, Menendez offered a fresh version of Dodd’s Livable Communities Act. The bill would formally authorize the HUD Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities and its Regional Planning and Community Challenge grant programs, restoring funding for those programs to 2010 levels.
September 28, 2011
House GOP’s 2012 Transportation Budget: Deep Cuts, Especially for Livability
In about an hour, Congressional appropriators will vote on how much money to allocate for transportation in the next fiscal year. It won't be pretty.
September 8, 2011
EPA Publishes Guide to Performance Measures for Livability
In the vein of several other recent reports that have highlighted significant transportation reforms that can be made now, with or without a reauthorization bill, the EPA has published guidelines for states and MPOs to make livability plans a reality [PDF]. They illustrate how using performance metrics can lead to better-designed transportation networks, especially when it comes to livability.
August 17, 2011
Rich People Love Sidewalks, And Other Livability Lessons From USDOT
When asking people what transportation options are important in their communities, why do poll-takers never ask them to choose between different options? Here comes another survey in which people say they want everything and are never asked to make the tradeoffs that come in the real world.
July 18, 2011
Lawmakers Introduce Reality-Based Plan to Achieve “Freedom From Oil”
Members of Congress of all stripes are trying to show that they’re concerned and responsive to the financial strain caused by high gas prices. Some are recommending more oil drilling. Some want to end subsidies to oil companies. Today, members of the Congressional Livable Communities Task Force suggested that providing more diverse transportation options to more people might help.
June 2, 2011
Why (Much of) Obama’s Transpo Plan Can Survive the GOP Knife
Yesterday, anti-rail curmudgeon Ken Orski of Innovation Briefs quoted me in his latest diatribe against the administration’s transportation proposal, in which he explains why the Obama plan is unrealistic. Indeed, I think it’s safe to say the dollar amount of the administration’s bill is a non-starter in today’s political and economic climate, given that it’s about double what’s expected to come from the Highway Trust Fund over the next six years.
May 6, 2011