Contributor Blog

How could a new chamber of commerce algorithm drive decisions about employer locations, improve mobility of workers, while reducing pollution accruing from longer daily work trips?  The answer is simple, says the chief economist of the Greater Dallas Chamber, Lyssa Jenkens, “You change the data system to deliver information people never got before.”

At the opening dinner of an international workshop on building a better national transportation policy, I found myself seated between Charlotte, North Carolina mayor Pat McCrory and Shirley DeLibero, a consultant who headed transit authorities in New Jersey and Houston, and was a deputy in both Dallas and Washington D.C.

McCrory's a Republican, Charlotte's first six-term mayor, first elected mayor in 1995. While his city has grown 20 percent, McCrory's presided over a shift from an all-roads strategy to a hybrid model adding rail transit to heavily congested corridors radiated from the region's center. The first line, a south corridor, is scheduled to open this fall, supported by the half-cent sales tax passed in 1998 to build and operate a better transit system. Now in 2007, the mayor finds himself in a serious cross-fire as he ponders re-election prospects.

BELLAGIO – No, not that Vegas hotel, but the ancient village of Bellagio, Italy – on the gorgeous rocky shores of Lake Como, a deep water lake that winds around the Dolomites in northern Italy. Here to cover a month-long summit about 21st century urban futures, I rented an apartment and rather quickly woke up to realize that, after many years writing about the virtues of mixed-use urban centers, I had never actually known a single residential night in one. Lots of nights in big hotels of course, but that’s not really the same thing as living in a residential unit of a small building over retail shops and restaurants.

The Project for Public Spaces has been sending around the e-mail circuit a mock-up of a Time magazine cover dated April 1 (no fooling) 2017, with a “Placemaking” headline acclaiming the triumph of smart growth principles. 2017? They’re being way too modest.