"...Charles Marohn and his colleagues at the Minnesota-based nonprofit Strong Towns have made a very compelling case that suburban sprawl is basically a Ponzi scheme, in which municipalities expand infrastructure hoping to attract new taxpayers that can pay off the mounting costs associated with the last infrastructure expansion, over and over."
Building resilient cities and towns with fiscal conservatism.
[more inside]
posted by invitapriore
on May 8, 2012 -
46 comments
New York City is the greenest city in America. Eighty-two per cent of Manhattan residents travel to work by public transit, by bicycle, or on foot. That's ten times the rate for Americans in general, and eight times the rate for residents of Los Angeles County. New York City is more populous than all but eleven states; if it were granted statehood, it would rank 51st in per-capita energy use....
But this is not necessarily something people want to hear:
In a conversation with a Sierra Club representative involved in Challenge to Sprawl, I said that the organization's anti-sprawl suggestions and the modified streetscapes in the slide show shared many significant features with Manhattan-whose most salient characteristics include wide sidewalks, narrow streets, mixed uses, densely packed buildings, and an extensive network of subways and buses. The representative hesitated, then said that I was essentially correct, although he would prefer that the program not be described in such terms, since emulating New York City would not be considered an appealing goal by most of the people whom the Sierra Club is trying to persuade
posted by storybored
on Apr 6, 2008 -
61 comments
Why we are all Venetians now Witold Rybczynski talks about the changing functions of cities, urban planning and reuse, and the tourism industry where "the urban experience has become a new product of cities."
posted by kliuless
on Jan 26, 2003 -
12 comments
DC Suburbs slowly getting denser I've been a participant for the past 5 years in what is easily the 2nd-3rd most insane housing market in the US: Washington DC. Apartment occupancy is 99% in the desirable areas, and "affordable starter homes" (in finger quotes) are priced at $250-$350k. People with good jobs can barely afford this. So what happens to folks who are just getting their feet on the ground in the country? More the merrier. How do you strike a balance between providing affordable housing that is accessible to living-wage jobs without running out the existing neighbors?
posted by cpfeifer
on Dec 27, 2002 -
50 comments
ULTRa set for take off in Cardiff! Urban Light Transport is finally here, and trials are under way in Cardiff, Wales for these four passenger driverless cars. It is estimated that the cost of implementation ($60m) will be 1/3 to 1/2 of that of a comparable light rail system.
posted by Why
on Feb 24, 2002 -
10 comments
The Microflat is a new housing design concept in London. It's a small living space intended for young urban types; as a gimmicky promotion, two people will live in Microflats within a department store. Flash required.
posted by acornface
on Jan 31, 2002 -
23 comments
A developer is pushing new luxury rental apartments in
this building in Lower Manhattan with ads on
nytimes.com. Rentals are probably slow because the building is
five blocks from a disaster zone. But let's all just pretend it's not. Potential renters, take note:
"actual view south" may not be the actual view south.
posted by davidfg
on Nov 18, 2001 -
22 comments
urban coffee opportunities according to this map, there are 38 starbucks within my area code alone. and right down the block, there are 2 out of 4 storefronts, of which this map only notes one: meaning there are more coffee opportunities available.
this is the full link, since i think the first one got cut off.
idea from adbusters, but i did the work myself!
posted by whoshotwho
on Nov 16, 2001 -
40 comments
In the late 1940s, a builder named William Levitt started a revolution in a Long Island potato field. Levitt built 2,000 simple, identical houses for returning GIs in the midst of a nationwide housing crisis. Levittown, as the development became known, was the first emblem of a new American lifestyle --
suburbanism.
"I think the reality of the situation is that the suburbs are going to become the slums of tomorrow ... Some of them will be the ruins of tomorrow."
link via
thewebtoday.
posted by lagado
on Dec 7, 2000 -
8 comments
Car-free Cities Would you like to live in a city where everything you need is within a five-minute walk? Where you can get from one side of a city of a million people to the other in less than thirty minutes? Where the air is clean, people are healthy, children and the elderly aren't dependent on others to get where they want to go, and life is beautiful? You can have it all--just ban cars.
posted by daveadams
on May 29, 2000 -
50 comments
