Recent Posts by Ben
According to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global status report on road safety 2013, only 7% of the world’s population is governed by comprehensive road safety laws. In a world that already sees 1.24 million deaths from traffic crashes each ...
Trees often fade into the background of what people understand as the city, yet they bring immense value – including environmental benefits like filtering water run-off and cleaning the air as well as increasing health and quality of life – ...
Today, the highest levels of air pollutants are concentrated in developing cities, particularly in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Motor vehicles contribute between 25 and 75% of this air pollution. In March 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) released ...
As cities in the developing world continue to grow, so do their traffic safety concerns. Latin America, for instance, now sees three times as many deaths from traffic crashes as Europe, the vast majority of which occur in cities. Vulnerable ...
Worldwide, people are moving less – taking their car, abandoning walking and bicycling, or perhaps unable to visit a neighborhood park or play space because it may not exist. In real numbers, as outlined by the Designed to Move campaign, physical activity ...
Each Sunday streets across cities in the Americas are blocked off to all motorized vehicles. In the absence of cars from their normal ecosystems, new patterns of public interaction emerge in these public spaces. Instead of automobiles, people appear: runners, ...
Three weeks ago I had the pleasure of representing EMBARQ at the International Women’s Forum (IWF) in Vancouver, Canada. The event focused on modern movements shaping the world, including trends influencing our lives, communities, and future. Since urban transport is ...
Many cities around the globe are home to dangerous roads, social stigmas that bicycling is “for the poor,” and urban designs that neglect walking and bicycling. Photo by Slightly-less-random. Cities around the globe are seeing a creeping problem of ...
The famed U.S. intellectual Lewis Mumford once said, “Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends.” The recently released report on freeway removal from by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy and EMBARQ (the ...
Do pedestrians “feel the squeeze” in Copenhagen because of too many bikers? Are there too many bikers in Copenhagen? These questions form the essence of two recent articles in the global press, the first in The New York Times, and ...
This week marked the grand opening in Minneapolis, Minn. of the third segment of the Cedar Lake Trail, a now 4.3-mile stretch from the suburb of St. Louis Park all the way to the the Mississippi River downtown. The opening ...