Often, participants in public debates use words to mean things very different from their common-sense meanings, in order to manipulate the public’s emotions. Two examples in the field of urban planning come to mind.
Mobility
Countering the High Costs of Paratransit
A huge but largely under-noticed portion of public transit money goes to paratransit -- equipment and services to transport disabled people. Now, cheaper alternatives are emerging.
Governing
Americans Moving Less Amid Recession
Fewer Americans moved over the past year than any other year since 1962, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The New York Times
Travel and Cars – Fun with Numbers for 2008
Mon, 01/05/2009 - 14:23
Transportation and its relationship to the economy have been headline media topics for most of 2008 as we have seen unprecedented swings in fuel prices and travelers responding with declines in vehicle miles of travel (VMT) and unprecedented slowing in new vehicle sales. Transit and Amtrak have seen noticeable ridership growth and there have been cutbacks in demand for and supply of airline capacity. What is increasingly looking like an historic recession combined with a plummeting of gas prices late in 2008 has confounded the diagnosis of energy price impacts on travel.
Mobility Infrastructure: A Better Stimulus Package
Stimulus packages are nothing more than an "economic sugar rush", according to columnist David Brooks. He argues that the country needs to create a larger-scale transportation-based infrastructure project to really bail out the economy.
International Herald Tribune
The Possibilities of 'Spime'
Noah Radford of Space Syntax gave an interesting presentation on the possible future of "spimes", objects like bricks that are given self-awareness in space and time (hence, spime) and what such objects might mean for future planning and design.
Resources for Urban Design Information
Is L.A. Ready to Rethink Mobility?
Plans to convert major arteries to one-way streets in L.A. are meeting tough criticism. Many say the city needs to rethink what mobility should mean, but others say L.A. isn't ready for such a paradigm shift.
The Los Angeles Times
Hybrid Nation?
Wed, 09/05/2007 - 07:27
My Toyota Prius just turned 100,000. That’s quite a milestone for a car and it may be a harbinger of things to come. Many planners are betting so-called “peak oil” will undermine our car culture because we won’t have the fuel to feed them. The history of my Prius suggests otherwise.
Mass Transit Unsustainability
Thu, 06/07/2007 - 06:57
The solution to so-called "automobile dependence" within the contemporary planning community is almost alway more mass transit: more trains and buses. But is this realistic, particualarly given current strategies and approaches to providing mass transit? Most investments in mass transit are patently unsustainable, requiring huge investments in capital and dramatic reductions in mobility (measured by travel time) to achieve ridership goals.
Proof of mass transit's unsustainability is obvious to anyone willing to look at it objectively:
