Recent Posts by Noah
Two videos to start off your week. Each is an idea for adapting “pedal power” to high speeds. Here’s the first, the E-Rockit. It’s an electric bike that can go up to 80 kmph (around 50 mph). The pedals control ...
Sporcle! The website where you guess at long lists of trivia. I promise, it’s more fun than it sounds. I got 28/40 on the list of Popular Science’s greenest cities and 33/40 on the most populous US cities in 1800, ...
I wrote a couple of days ago about the need for smart growth advocates and urbanists to get smarter about playing the inside game. We’re winning the messaging but then losing behind closed doors, I argued. So I was particularly ...
D.C., like Manhattan, is a place that’s remarkably easy to navigate. The streets are straight. They are numbered, or in alphabetical order. There are a few avenues and circles and what not but it’s easy to find your way around ...
One of the most pervasive critiques of urban life is that suburbia is the only good place to raise a family. It’s a powerful argument—parents will do anything for their children—and it’s a deeply rooted one. So it was very ...
There’s an interesting argument going on between Yonah Freemark and Ryan Avent about road tolls. Freemark makes the usual argument, though with unusual eloquence, that implementing tolls is regressive and that the benefits of congestion pricing come at the expense ...
The news is a few days old, but I think it’s really fascinating that New York is considering selling partial naming rights to the Atlantic/Pacific station, the second busiest station in Brooklyn. The Times article on the sale gives some ...
A few highlights from our TheCityFix DC site-if you’re not reading it regularly, you’re missing out: LEED Neighborhood Development Wants You to Build More More More: Why doesn’t LEED-ND certify already existing neighborhoods? It’s one more example of green consumerism, ...
For the real nerds among you, go read Kaid Benfield’s 3-part series about the changes in the LEED Neighborhood Development criteria from their pilot program here, here, and here. It’s deep in the weeds—how do you define buildable land for ...
What more can be said about I-270? David Alpert is calling it Gaithersbungle: the Montgomery County Planning Department has decided to spend $3.8 billion widening the highway to a truly massive 12 lanes. Then they’re spending $450 million on a ...
I keep thinking about this story. It’s not a particularly important one: DDOT used the July 4th fireworks to test their Fast Forward program, which allows for very quick movement out of the city by leaving outbound green lights up ...
Treehugger has a post up by Alex Pasternack asking “What makes a fare fair?” It’s quite a good question, though I think that it’s one that Treehugger does a poor job of actually asking. Pasternack essentially argues that a price ...
Some things I’ve been reading but don’t have much to say about. I think they speak for themselves, but have quite a lot to say. A quote and a link for each:
If you haven’t seen it yet, let me be the first to recommend NRDC’s new Smarter Cities site. It’s quite good. I’ve been a big fan of their writers, particularly Kaid Benfield, for a while, and so I’m really happy ...
It’s very easy to forget just how lucky D.C. is with regards to its ability to create a sustainable, urbanist region. In fact, the region has a nearly ideal political structure to make real progress.
