For the Entrepreneurial Urban Planner
Finally, the wait is over for my Top 5 favorite large US cities. I had no idea the list would garner as much attention as it has. I need to reiterate the point that this is NOT a list of the most walkable cities (although I plan on doing one of those down the road [...]
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My apologies on the long delay for this posting. I have accepted a new job and things have become a little crazy as you might imagine. More on that to come. For now, hope you enjoy the series: 10. Boston, MA – Boston is one of those cities I really like, but when I’ve gone [...]
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I want to follow up on the article that Jim Robbins wrote for this site yesterday on Walkable Church. I now realize that many of you reading our feeds externally or via e-mail probably cannot tell who the authors of articles are (this one is Eric). So, incorporating author names within the feed is something I will have to work on. I want to make sure authors get credit for their work in all formats!
The other thing I wanted to mention is that some of you may have concerns about the religious nature of the article yesterday, a topic we have previously shied away from. I do want to make it clear that we do not place any religious beliefs or non-beliefs above any others on this site. When Jim raised the idea with me about posting an article on the topic, I was very hesitant. I did not want to offend any of our readers. However, I think there are many lessons to learn from what Jim wrote yesterday, and he has a very interesting perspective on how walkability relates to his life with the church.
I agree whole-heartedly with Jim that peak oil is perhaps going to be the most serious cultural challenge that we face in the upcoming future—even more so than global warming and the obesity epidemic. I believe this because peak oil will affect everyone in the pocketbook—whether or not you drive a car. If what the oil industry experts are saying is true, we could face a massive crisis on any given day. The cost of oil could easily skyrocket overnight due to a major war, political struggle, catastrophic event, or problems with major suppliers (Enron anyone?). This is not likely to happen with global warming or obesity: the results are just not tangible to many people, so they do not care about them enough to dramatically shift their daily habits.
The church scenario Jim shared with us yesterday can really be applied to most every life aspect—offices, schools, rec centers, shopping malls—you name it.
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The number 3 top photo of this series is a true shocker: Las Vegas. Why is Las Vegas a shocker, you ask? Well, because I really don’t consider Las Vegas to be walkable at all. In fact, I think it’s one of the least walkable cities in the US. The region is plagued by sprawl [...]
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Chicago is right up there with San Francisco as my two favorite cities in the US. And it’s not just because I grew up in Illinois and am a die-hard Chicago sports fan. Chicago is a major, world-class city right in the heart of the Midwest. There is almost nothing Midwest about the city, except [...]
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Downtown La Jolla, just north of San Diego, has many great shops and restaurants. It is situated along the Pacific Ocean, and has a long coastal trail with lots of parkland. This was another one of those places where it was hard to choose a photo. This image probably would not have ranked this high [...]
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Consider this for a second: how different would the US and the world be if Al Gore was appointed President by the Supreme Court? He has done so much for this country and for bringing attention to global warming – and he dropped out of politics. Imagine the influence he would have because, like it or not, when the American President speaks, the world listens.
However terrible this administration has been on these types of policies, I wanted to watch the State of the State Tuesday night to see just what President Bush was going to say with a new Congress in place and in the wake of the post- An Inconvenient Truth world. I have to admit, I was astonished. He spent a lot of the speech talking about investing in alternative energy, reducing foreign oil dependence, raising fuel efficiency standards, using ethanol, and so on (see a transcript of his speech here). He even mentioned that climate change is a serious issue! I was really impressed that he went as far as he did in mentioning these facts. I would have really been blown away if he mentioned walkable neighborhoods, pedestrians, bicyclists, or even transit. Of course, he didn’t, but at least we are starting to make significant progress on the global warming front. I think it took a lot for President Bush to say what he did – we know everyone in his administration has strong oil ties and many in his party disagree with the science of global warming. Of course, it’s going to be hard to argue with scientists after this smoking gun report.
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LivinginUrbanSac is one of my favorite sites on the web. Of course, that’s probably because I live in “UrbanSac” and have a large fascination with what’s going on in the walkable parts of Sacramento. Even if you’re not from Sacramento, it is a great site to scope out because it is a highlight reel of [...]
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May is National Bike Month and there are events occurring all over the US. The official Bike-to-Work Week is the week of May 15-19 and Bike-to-Work Day on Friday, May 19. Please get out on your bike and do all you can to show drivers that bikers belong on the roads too (without endangering yourself, [...]
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We can have car-free development in the US… almost. With the exception of developments in Manhattan, almost every single development in the US would require some sort of parking arrangement to be successful, even when designing the best places for pedestrians. Whether that parking is in the form of street parking or garage parking with ground-level commercial/office uses it does not necessarily matter, as long as there is enough for the residents, tourists, or shoppers. For pedestrian-friendly developments, surface parking lots between the streets and the buildings or main features of the development are not an option.
One of my favorite weblogs, CoolTown Studios, had an interesting article today about a development in China that appears to be car-free and very cool. While I cannot verify by the picture in the article that there is no parking near the development, I do believe that this type of development can be done in the US by satisfying this main criteria (in a simplistic state):
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