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The Greening of the Suburbs
A post on Planetizen today offers a link to a Newsday article discussing the future of suburbs in America. Triggered by recent efforts in Nassau County, New York, Scott Carlin, an associate professor of geography at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University, offers suggestions for reversing the trends of individualism and consumerism and…
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Easier To Love A Streetcar Than A Light Rail
What’s in a name? Well, maybe not much in Shakespeare’s time, but in our present-day society of perception-beats-reality, word association means quite a bit. This article, relayed via Planetizen, discusses this concept with respect to rail-based transportation: Streetcar vs. Light Rail “It bugs me that such an awkward, engineering-specific term – light rail – has…
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Surplus helps bicyclists, addicts, more
The city of Portland is expecting a budget surplus this year, and in stark contrast to the recent Interstate Avenue debacle, the city council unanimously approved how the additional funds would be divided. Some of the money has even been earmarked for certain improvements to the transportation infrastructure: Another big winner was Portland’s cycling community.…
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Ciclovía: A Moving Experience in Bogotá, Colombia
Via Planetizen: Every Sunday from 7am to 2pm, up to 2 million residents of Bogotá, Colombia enjoy over 70 miles of car-free streets. The event is called Ciclovía. StreetFilms brings you along for the ride. In September, StreetFilms videographer Clarence Eckerson traveled to Bogotá, Colombia to document that city’s remarkable Livable Streets movement. Accompanied by…
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Fixing Traffic Without Help From Uncle Sam
An article on Planetizen discusses efforts by governments across the country to address congestion and transportation funding problems without federal assistance. In addition to the usual suspects (HOT lanes, queue-jumper lanes, privately-owned toll roads), one idea caught my eye more than the rest: Finally, in a gambit straight out of the Jetsons, the Swedish government…