Sarah Kuck from WorldChanging interviews EMBARQ Director Nancy Kete for a feature story about the future of American transportation systems:

• What does transportation look like now in most U.S. cities? And where can we go from here?
• What do you think the future of high-speed rail should look like in the United States?
• What advice would you give the Obama administration?
• What do people commonly misunderstand about how transportation works in the United States?
• Would that knowledge of the real costs of driving make people more willing to support public transportation measures?
• Do you have a vision for what intermodal transportation will look like in the future?

To read the full interview, click here.

Steve Price won the Livable Streets Contest for his vision of a “complete street” in Portsmouth, Virginia.

Last week, GOOD announced the winners of its Livable Streets Contest.

It was a simple assignment: “Take a photo of a street or intersection you know and hate, and then use Photoshop or any other image editing techniques at your disposal to make the changes you’d like to see implemented.”

The winning submission was from Steve Price of Portsmouth, Virginia.

Contest judges Aaron Naparstek from Streetsblog and designer Carly Clark said Price’s “holistic approach is just what what’s needed in a barren urban environment like this. He’s thinking about new infill development, light rail, bike lanes, and outdoor space for pedestrians and putting it all together to create an entirely new neighborhood. Portsmouth should go and make this happen right now!”

Click here to learn more about the contest and see the other winning entries.

EMBARQ presents a slideshow about the concept of “Mobility Management (MM)” in San Sebastian, Spain.

View the entire slideshow here.

Mobility Management

At the core of Mobility Management are “soft” measures like information and communication, organising services and coordinating activities of different partners. “Soft” measures most often enhance the effectiveness of “hard” measures within urban transport (e.g., new tram lines, new roads and new bike lanes). Mobility Management measures (in comparison to “hard” measures) do not necessarily require large financial investments and may have a high benefit-cost ratio.

-From the European Platform on Mobility Management

Seattle’s streetcar, a.k.a. the South Lake Union Trolley (affectionately abbreviated as S.L.U.T.), not only moves people but also moves ideas. Photo by WintrHawk.

Fast Company named Seattle the “City of the Year” in its annual “Fast City” issue, which handpicks cities around the world that exhibit “smarts, foresight, social consciousness [and] creative ferment.”

San Francisco was chosen for its innovative public-private partnership that gives citizens access to bank accounts and financial education. Taipei was noted for its “zero land fill, total recycling” by 2010 plan. And New York got praise for its high-tech counterterrorism efforts.

But we at The City Fix were drawn to some other initiatives — greener, smarter, “faster” ideas about sustainable transportation and urban planning. We read the whole issue — so you don’t have to — and here are some highlights:
Read the rest of this entry »

Suburban sprawls California style. Photo by pbo31.

In September, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law a piece of ground breaking legislation promoting transit oriented development in the state. The Bil, SB 375, focuses on reducing green house gas emissions by changing land use patterns. While cities like San Francisco offer dense, walkable communities to their residents, many Californians live in sprawling suburbs where cars are essential for accomplishing the most basic task outside the home.
Read the rest of this entry »

Here Pedestrians hold back traffic after painting a sidewalk on the street. Photo from Friendlyghost.

Krishnaraj Rao lives in Borivli, a suburb of Mumbai known for its famous Sanjay Gandhi National Park, and, more recently, its residents who have taken to the streets demanding that pedestrians be treated with respect. Along with Mr. Santosh Jangam, a bookseller turned activist, Mr. Rao is the head of a movement called Sahasi Padayatri which is leading a grassroots campaign on behalf of pedestrian rights in Mumbai. Through this movement he has been engaged in a variety of initiatives and non-violent agitations to improve conditions for pedestrians; he has demarcated lanes for pedestrians on streets where pedestrians compete with buses, cars and motorcycles due to the lack of walkable footpaths and he has dumped rubbish blocking pedestrian areas at the steps of local government office buildings to raise awareness of the obstacles facing pedestrians. This weekend I had the chance to correspond with him by email. Below is the interview.

How have cars and motorbikes changed Mumbai’s streets?

Cars and motorbikes – especially the former – represent the prevalence of speed, brute force and money power in our society. They represent a constant threat to those who don’t have these vehicles, and subtly divide people into haves and have-nots. By virtue of being seated in an automobile, one feels one has a divine right to make hundreds of other people scurry out of his way as he approaches. I feel this mentality needs to be curbed for the good of society.

At what point did you realize that pedestrians were being forced off the roads? Has it been a long process, or has it happened rapidly?

Personally, realization of this fact dawned only in the past year, when, because of my concern about climate change, I began increasingly to leave my car parked and go out walking or using public transport.

But I do realize that this erosion of the pedestrians’ right to walk safely has been gradual over the past two decades. I recognize now that the motorist’s ability to honk a blaring horn and to subtly threaten to run down someone who obstructs him has skewed the balance. The pedestrian, by contrast, endlessly adjusts and modifies his path, peacefully yields the centre of the road to moving vehicles and the roadside to parked vehicles etc. The pedestrian rarely protests – and this has been his undoing. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by Lush.i.ous.

Joe Foti, a colleague of mine at WRI, just alerted me to a sprawling Wikipedia page on freeway revolts, a term referring to citizen efforts to stop freeway construction in their neighborhoods. In some cases the entry simply lists freeway projects that we’re “canceled, truncated or stalled” in a particular region. In other cases, it’s more thorough, providing detailed analysis of why residents opposed freeway construction and some of their efforts to stop it.

Click here to view the entry.

Via Dot Earth.

A McMansion under construction in Texas. Photo by Dean Terry.

In the last few months major magazines and papers have written provocative pieces about the housing bubble in the United States and what it means for the future of the American City. Below, you can find the most interesting pieces:

• The Next Slum? Christopher Leinberger argues that a profound transformation is taking place: dense urban areas are seeing a renaissance while suburbs and exurbs are showing signs of decay. Why? “Sprawling, large-lot suburbs become less attractive as they become more densely built, but urban areas—especially those well served by public transit—become more appealing as they are filled in and built up.”
• There Goes the Neighborhood Matthew Yglesias looks at neighborhoods effected most by the housing bubble and finds that exurbs and fringe cities - where mass transit is non-existent - are taking the biggest hit.
• Slowdown Hits Towns at Outskirts of Texas Boom Reporting for the New York Times, Leslie Eaton talks about how one bedroom community on the fringe of Dallas is struggling to stay afoot as housing values plummet.

Here’s a neat picture from Adrien Rovero, that nicely compares the amount of urban space needed for a bike compared with that needed for a car. Photo from INOUT DESIGNERS.