Blogosphere: Could High Speed Rail Cause Sprawl?
Wired Autopia
It's fast, it's efficient and it is the future of transportation, but will high-speed rail cause sprawl? Yes, it could, warn some urban planners. Despite the promise of creating more densely populated urban centers, high-speed rail could do quite the opposite by making it easier for people to live far from urban centers....
(March 17, 2010)
Blogosphere: Density Raises Productivity
The Bellows
We construct a dynamic general equilibrium model of cities and use it to estimate the effect of local agglomeration on per capita consumption growth. Agglomeration affects growth through the density of economic activity: higher production per unit of land raises local productivity.....
(March 11, 2010)
Research: Why We Fail to Reduce Traffic Volumes
Science Direct
If the objective of reducing urban road traffic volumes and GHG emissions from traffic is to be achieved, the way in which land use and transport systems in cities are planned and developed needs to change. Despite apparent agreement that this should be done and how it could be done, cities continue to be planned and developed in ways that cause and allow growth in urban road traffic volumes. In this paper we ask how planners frame the 'transport problem', and how their framing of the problem affects urban planning, the resulting plans and developments and the urban road traffic volumes...
(March 11, 2010)
Blogosphere: A Fresh Look at American Sprawl
Streetsblog NYC
American advocates for livable streets know that our addiction to the automobile is almost without peer. We know that we've given our land to driving lanes and parking lots and our air to exhaust fumes....
(March 9, 2010)
National: Dodd Promises Support for Smart Growth
Hartford Courant
Acknowledging that he's running short on time, U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd on Monday promised that he'll step up his work for a law to promote networks of affordable housing and mass transit....
(March 9, 2010)
Blogosphere: Smaller Cities Benefit from New Media
Next American City
As government increasingly embraces new media as a tool, many believe cities should take the lead role in developing and deploying new strategies for putting internet technology to use, paving the way for bigger state and federal initiatives...
(March 4, 2010)
Blogosphere: 10 Percent Solution for Urban Growth
New Geography
What if we achieved the urbanist dream, with people deciding en masse to move back to the city? Well, that would create a big problem, since there would be no place to put them...
(February 26, 2010)
Blogosphere: High Quality Transit Saves Money
Planetizen
Most North American cities offer only basic public transit service, with limited coverage and frequency, modest speeds, unattractive waiting areas, poor land use integration, and few amenities. Such service is used primarily by people who lack alternatives. In such communities, riders tend to abandon public transit as soon as feasible. ..
(February 25, 2010)
Blogosphere: Does Lowering Speed Save Lives?
Streetsblog
Megan McArdle at the Atlantic, writing on today's Toyota hearing in the House oversight committee, hears Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood claim that "lowering the speed limit to 30 mph would not save any lives, which is why we have minimum speeds on highways."...
(February 25, 2010)
FTA Livable Communities Website
Federal site links to many Reconnecting America resources for the development of sustainable communities, affordable housing and transit-oriented development
The Federal Transit Administration has launched a new Livable and Sustainable Communities Website to advance the Department of Transportation’s Livability Initiative and the Interagency Sustainable Communities Partnership.
(February 25, 2010)
