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Could Dutch-Style Roads Save 22,000 Lives Each Year In the US? » INFRASTRUCTURIST
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Eric Dunbaugh of the Texas Transportation Institute has looked at the fatality rates on “livable streets”–broadly speaking, those that aren’t mini freeways–in the US and found that they are considerably lower (pdf). Apparently, using street design to wean drivers from highway-style driving habits really does save lives.
The rub, however, is that involves slower diving speeds. As Dunbaugh puts it: “The more basic problem appears to be that safety and livability objectives are often in direct conflict with the overarching objective of mobility, and its proxy—speed.”
Globalization Leads to Civic Leadership Culture Dominated by Real Estate Interests | Newgeography.com
Why is it that "real estate interests" dominate in a local economy like Cleveland? Because, to a great extent, they are among the only ones left. Consider the local industries that were not as subject to roll-ups. Principal among these are real estate development, construction, and law. This means the local leadership of a community is now made up of executives in those industries, and they bring a very different world view versus the previous generation.
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Where then is the source of transactions these firms can turn to in order to sustain their business? The public sector, of course.
I would hypothesize that many local transactionally oriented services companies have seen the public sector take on a greater share of billings than in the past. With the old school bankers and industrialists mostly out of the picture, the leadership in our communities consists increasingly of the political class and a business community dominated by transactional interests.
When you look at the composition of this group, it should come as no surprise that the publicly subsidized real estate development is the preferred civic strategy. Politicians get to cut ribbons. Cranes always look good on the skyline. Local architects, engineers, developers, and construction companies love it. And there is plenty of legal work to go around.
People, Planet, Prefurbia | Newgeography.com
by Rick Harrison, land use planner in Minneapolis
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In Prefurbia, the Neighborhood Planner designs the pedestrian system first. Destinations for the walks are targeted as a basis for the open space “system,” assuring convenient pedestrian connectivity through the developers land. This is called a Pedestrian Oriented Design (POD). In Prefurbia, the suburban desire for space reigns supreme. Each home, attached or detached, is designed to assure that living areas are placed along the best views, giving the illusion of low density.
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The Prefurbia Neighborhood Planner designs something very unnatural… a plan with dimensions greater than the minimums. Using entirely new geometric theory made practical by new technologies, the Neighborhood Planner separates the street pattern from the positioning of the homes, which results in lesser street length, but maintains density.
SILOs --more action needed? ~ Angry Bear
Tax advantaged "sale-leasebacks" with strapped-for-cash municipalities (SILOs, in the ever-present tax acronym set) came back to light when the Washington Metro train crashed a week ago. The cars were ones that were involved in the metro authority's SILO deals with various banks, and the authority didn't have any spare cash left to fund replacements
New Left Review - David Harvey: The Right to the City
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Formulating demands
Urbanization, we may conclude, has played a crucial role in the absorption of capital surpluses, at ever increasing geographical scales, but at the price of burgeoning processes of creative destruction that have dispossessed the masses of any right to the city whatsoever. The planet as building site collides with the ‘planet of slums’. [16] Periodically this ends in revolt, as in Paris in 1871 or the us after the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968. If, as seems likely, fiscal difficulties mount and the hitherto successful neoliberal, postmodernist and consumerist phase of capitalist surplus-absorption through urbanization is at an end and a broader crisis ensues, then the question arises: where is our 68 or, even more dramatically, our version of the Commune? As with the financial system, the answer is bound to be much more complex precisely because the urban process is now global in scope. Signs of rebellion are everywhere: the unrest in China and India is chronic, civil wars rage in Africa, Latin America is in ferment. Any of these revolts could become contagious. Unlike the fiscal system, however, the urban and peri-urban social movements of opposition, of which there are many around the world, are not tightly coupled; indeed most have no connection to each other. If they somehow did come together, what should they demand?
How the city hurts your brain - Boston.com
The reason such seemingly trivial mental tasks leave us depleted is that they exploit one of the crucial weak spots of the brain. A city is so overstuffed with stimuli that we need to constantly redirect our attention so that we aren't distracted by irrelevant things, like a flashing neon sign or the cellphone conversation of a nearby passenger on the bus. This sort of controlled perception -- we are telling the mind what to pay attention to -- takes energy and effort. The mind is like a powerful supercomputer, but the act of paying attention consumes much of its processing power.
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