America's so-called “love affair” with the automobile, although cliché, provides a vivid description of how attached we really are to driving. Public policy, and the historically overwhelming effect of auto industry lobbying, is only partly to blame for the endemic traffic jams and smog of the twentieth century. Bruce Schaller, a transportation consultant hired by New York City advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, recently demonstrated that urbanites with multiple transportation options still choose to commute by car for rational reasons of privacy, convenience, and speed. A chart of his, shown below, demonstrates how perplexing this choice is. Overcoming these reasons is a ser
New York City
Free Bus Rides Coming to New York?
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced an idea to speed up buses in Manhattan by eliminating crosstown bus fares.
The New York Times
The Effects of the Background Noise of City Life
Urban sounds can have an effect on people -- both physically and mentally. This sonic tour through New York City examines how sounds affect urbanites.
Discover
Subway Train Under Full Surveillance
In an effort to deter crime, the New York MTA is planning to fully equip one subway train with security cameras that record every inch of the interior.
The New York Times
Exporting the Impoverished
The City of New York has been spending thousands of dollars to send people out of the city -- opting to pay for one-way plane tickets instead of providing social services.
The New York Times
Jane Jacobs vs. Robert Moses
A review by John King of Anthony Flint's new book, Wrestling With Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took On New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City.
The San Francisco Chronicle
From Trash to Splash
Dumpster diving takes on new meaning as a New York-based design firm reinvents vacant lots as mini-resorts by converting old trash bins into swimming pools.
ABC News
Stream Surfacing in the Bronx
Community activists in the South Bronx are working to "daylight" a long-buried stream and re-integrate some natural water treatment processes into the dense urban atmosphere.
The New York Moon
Crime Dropping in Major Cities
Crime is down in big cities across America, leaving experts wondering why.
The Washington Post
London Transit Guru Moves to New York's MTA
An American-born transit planner who help usher in congestion pricing and smart transit card technology in London has been nominated to chair New York's transit system.
The New York Times
The Planetizen News Brief - 7/16/09
4:30 minutes (4.13 MB)
L.A. uses park lights to fight crime, New Orleans debates tearing down a freeway, and New York turns abandoned homes to affordable housing -- all on this week's Planetizen News Brief, airing weekly on the nationally-syndicated radio show "Smart City". Read, listen or download.
The Bust of Williamsburg
Sales in Brooklyn are down, and that's made a ghost town out of the recently booming but now busted Williamsburg neighborhood.
New York Magazine
New York Begins Converting Stalled Projects to Affordable Housing
The City of New York has unveiled its Housing Asset Renewal Program, a plan to revive stalled projects as affordable housing.
The Architect's Newspaper
The City That Killed Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson's life would have been incredibly different (read: more normal) and lasted longer if he lived in New York instead of L.A., argues Gigi Levangie Grazer. She says the isolating qualities of L.A. enabled the downfall of the King of Pop.
The Huffington Post
Private Ads in Public Spaces
The new public plazas in New York City have gained much popularity among locals -- and earned much money for the city. Officials have been renting out the spaces to advertisers, blurring the lines between public and private.
The New York Times
A Different Kind of New York Street Conversion 100 Years Ago
While New York City is currently taking space away from automobiles and giving it to pedestrians and cyclists, the New York City of 100 years ago was doing exactly the opposite. And it was a popular idea.
The New York Times
New York's Coney Island Makeover Moves Forward
New York City's planning commission recently approved a plan to revitalize Coney Island.
Crain's New York Business
Treetops in the Rooftops
A NY-based landscape architect, Thomas Balsley, FASLA, has created a new type of green roof using Austrian pines.
THE DIRT
Small Park Brings Big Wave to New York City
A segment of New York City's High Line elevated park is set to open this week. New York Magazine looks at the real estate and architecture booms that's accompanying it.
New York
Will Developing Nations Drive/Follow in our Faulted Footsteps?
Tue, 06/09/2009 - 06:48
The growth in hybrid car sales is a welcome sign that a major change in the automobile industry is afoot. The shift to transport infrastructure that is not based on the archaic complexity of an internal combustion engine, with its hundreds of moving parts and compressed fuel explosions, has been long put off by an automobile industry, happy with status quo, partnered with oil cartels with the power to price their product as if it were in endless supply. But with smack-in-the-face-reality fuel prices last summer, the collapse of the so-called “Big Three” over the winter, and the simultaneous heralding assertion of alternative energy technologies (Daimler AG bought a 10% stake in Tesla Motors last month!), the fallout of western economic near-collapse has changed everything we’ve known to be sacrosanct; Leonard Lopate even waxed nostalgic about the “Death of the Car Song” yesterday on National Public Radio’s local station, WNYC.
