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Editor's Note: This week's Are We There Yet? excerpt discusses the success of urban freeway teardowns, something unthinkable not long ago, and the need for today's transportation investments to be made in the context of multiple considerations that were previously thought to be unrelated, ranging from the impact on public health to the impact on real estate development and investment to the impact on the prosperity of all people.
Visit the Are We There Yet? home [C]hanges in the value of walkable real estate have prompted many cities to consider something that they never would have considered a decade ago — tearing down their innercity freeways. Developers and investors are keenly interested in building in downtowns, but there’s typically very little land that hasn’t already been developed. Freeway teardowns, however, can open up vast swaths of prime downtown real estate for development. To date, four cities have…

"Public Markets: Anchors for Neighborhood Economic Development," the 2010 report from Reconnecting America's CTOD partner, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, has been added to the Research Center's best practices database. The report notes that sustainable employment growth comes from business creation, and public markets play a critical role as local business incubators. Attractive markets anchor a business district, the authors explain, and bring in a greater number of customers. The report includes case studies from the Ann Arbor Farmers Market, Eastern Market Detroit, Easter Market DC and Pike Place Market.

The Ontario Growth Secretariat has completed two new case studies of completed projects that illustrate key policies in the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe. The case studies are King Street Reconstruction in Kitchener and Artscape Wychwood Barns in Toronto. These projects were selected because they:

Editor's Note: Metropolitan Areas across the United States are competing against each other to attract new business investment and an educated workforce – coined the "creative class" by Richard Florida. Many believe these are key ingredients to help regions remain economically resilient and strong in the 21st century. Yet, at a time when there is a rising demand for an educated workforce that meets the definition of the "creative class", we face the fact that one in four children under the age six are living in poverty which statistically leads to poor quality of life outcomes as they grow older. This excerpt from Are We There Yet discusses these disparate realities, raising the point that they are intimately intertwined, and that building complete communities is a way to address both.
Visit the Are We There Yet? home Much has been made in this country of the changing preferences of the younger generation of workers…

Visit the Are We There Yet? home The previous chapters on living, working and moving do not, of course, sum up all the things Americans need in order to thrive. We also need exercise and clean air, safe neighborhoods, good schools and quality childcare, healthy and affordable food, parks, shops, arts and culture — and a “built environment” in which all of this is available to people regardless of age or income or whether they can drive. but if indeed the “quality of human capital” is a key indicator of whether regions and the U.S. as a whole will be able to compete in the global economy — as discussed in the economist Intelligence Unit report at the beginning of the Working chapter — then we also need to invest in human development, an essential element of thriving. This point was persuasively made by the Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF), a national community development finance institution that serves as…

Visit the Are We There Yet? home Trends underway in the housing and jobs market portend a need for more transportation choices to help people get where they need to go as well as to enhance this country’s economic competitiveness. Market trends confirm the shift in demand away from single-use, single-family neighborhoods, corporate campuses and shopping centers connected by highways, and toward compact mixed-use neighborhoods where streets are not the sole province of fast-moving cars but are shared with pedestrians, bicyclists and transit users. Providing more transportation choices is critical to supporting this 21st century lifestyle and it seems to be what both younger and older generations want. For the younger generation, traffic congestion, $5 a gallon gas prices, and the popularity of smartphones and social media have made driving far less appealing than it was to their parents. According to the U.S. department…

Visit the Are We There Yet? home Just as Americans are changing their ideas about what makes a house a home, there’s a new “9 to 5” with the emergence of “knowledge-­based economies” and an “information society” that capitalizes on the generation and distribution of new ideas, technology and other creative content to provide a competitive advantage. The main players in this new economic order are the “creative class” and a growing service sector that works at all hours. As the industrial age has drawn to a close the global economy has come to rely less on proximity to natural resources such as timber, coal and oil, and cities and their suburbs are assuming a heightened role as a result. “For more than 30 years, the American economy has been in the midst of a sea change, shifting from industry to services and information, and integrating itself far more tightly into a single, global market for goods,…