flynn050

For optimists the matter is clear: Technology and culture are trending towards self driving (autonomous cars) which are dispatched by Uber or similar companies and not individually owned. As a result cities will be able to free up to 50% of their footprints devoted to all kinds of car services and parking (most cities devote decidedly less space to parking), car crashes will plummet and cities will become sanctuaries for pedestrians and bicyclists who can enjoy all the freed up space in the form of plazas and parks. Congestion will be a thing of the past because  the existing lanes will have drastically increased capacity when they are used by platoons of driverless cars instead of individual erratic drivers. Air pollution and noise will be also much lower since these new vehicles will run electric. Transit will run more cost effective because it can be freed from the inefficient last mile trips that will be covered by on demand driverless van transit. In short, the future is brigh...

The city is the site where people of all sorts and classes mingle, however reluctantly and agonistically, to produce a common if per­ petually changing and transitory life.  The Creation of the Urban Commons, by David Harvey 2012 Aside from whatever political conclusions one can draw from millions of people gathering in over 600 US cities and around the globe from Toronto to Sidney and from Warsaw to Helsinki, from Nairobi to Durban and from Madrid to Tokyo, aside from what that means for the US, the President or the international world order, it certainly proves that people still take their real bodies to real places to real encounters for real causes in real cities. Facebook, Twitter and all the rest are not substitutes but enablers of such gatherings. What spaces do cities offer for such gatherings? Boston Commons on 1/21/17 When times get tough people yearn for the comfort of company, for the support that comes from togetherness, the consolation from others who share a concern ...

There is little that that the Second Avenue subway line in New York and the new concert hall Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg have in common. Except that both projects were recently completed after decades of haggling and delay, both are more expensive than anything comparable has ever been before and in both cases it is a miracle that they got done at all. The philharmonic hall sits in Hafen City, a large scale Hamburg urban renewal area converting industrial port areas into a new mixed use district of Hamburg. The lights spell: "Fertig"- Finished  Both appear to be vestiges of a time when the thought of a really large project was still possible. So much courage, so much aspiration and so much civic pride and optimism; today it is a sacrilege.  Of course, the concert hall sits high up far above ground, perched slightly frivolously on an utilitarian blocky tobacco warehouse, and the subway is only utilitarian, stretching, well, below ground, mostly in the dark. In their completion ...

In recent decades urban transportation policies have migrated out from forgotten corners within department of public works buildings to hip and flashy places where hot-button issues like bike-sharing, car-sharing, complete streets, and transportation equity are addressed. This article tracks why transportation has become a front and center matter for mayors across the country and why transportation is seen now as a key economic development tool. Urban congestion in Manhattan (source: Best Practices for NYC) In economic terms, cities are agglomerations that provide economic benefits that make it more beneficial to locate businesses there than elsewhere. Such beneficial agglomerations also tend to produce "productive inefficiencies", —things like air pollution, parking cost, and congestion. These inefficiencies begin to limit or even reduce the agglomeration benefits. Vehicle-based mobility in a growing agglomeration initially increases as more jobs and amenities locate in an a...

There are a great many people who would like to know what's next. Maybe  right now the future is less predictable than it has been in a long time. Especially immigrants are concerned what the future will hold. This article, although written from the perspective of an immigrant, isn't about the recent election but about the "brand" USA, how the world sees the country and how it sees itself and what should happen next to align the country with expectations and master the challenges with a special eye on cities.  Each immigrant has a vision of the country of choice over the reality left behind. An idea of what the future homeland should be like that is fed from education, stories, news and folklore. America's brand has held its appeal over generations, even though the country has reinvented itself many times over. Immigrant nation: what's next? Each immigrant will find that the new found reality doesn't always conform to the imagined one. The worse the place ...