The link between transport and happiness
A really interesting article the other day on The Guardian explains the link between how we get design our city around transport and our happiness. It starts out talking about Enrique Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogotá who in a few short years massive changed the nature of the city including putting a really strong focus on cycling and public transport.…
47 Comments Motorway closed due to crash
A truck has crashed on the southern motorway southbound and is already causing a lot of congestion on the motorway. If at all possible I’d recommend catching the train home
Crash closes Southern Motorway southbound
All three southbound lanes of Auckland’s Southern Motorway (State Highway 1) at Greenlane have been closed after a concrete truck crashed just south of the Greenlane interchange.…
Improving your local bus route
The follow is an email I received from a reader about his PT experience and what could be done to make it better. At the end of the post I have put some additional thoughts
Much of the debate about public transport is strategic; it talks about big projects and big numbers, and often forgets the implications for the little people out there.…
Airport looks to have strong future growth
Last week Auckland Airport held an investor day which among other things provided some very useful information about what we can expect from the airport in the future. The presentation gives quite a lot of details around where some of the future growth will come from but for me the most interesting slide in the whole presentation is the image below which is in the section talking about the airports 30 year vision.…
Photo of the day – Symonds St Artwork
Artwork on Symonds St where it crosses Wellesley St Photos are copyright to Sydney and Craig.…
Brent Toderian on “Density Done Well”
Former City of Vancouver Chief Planner Brent Toderian was in Auckland last week and spoke at a very well attended Auckland Conversations event on a range of planning issues that Auckland has much to learn from. We will elaborate on some of the key messages for Auckland coming out of this event during the next week, but for now here’s a different presentation given by Brent back in 2012 which touches on many of the same issues: While the Unitary Plan does enable some level of increased intensification and certainly places a far greater emphasis on requiring good urban design, the jury is probably still out on whether it truly enables the future that Auckland desperately requires.…
Photo of the Day – Love your city campaign
Some of the results of Heart of the City’s “Love your city” campaign and a neat way to activate the otherwise blank wall of the St James Theatre on Lorne St. Photos are copyright to Sydney.…
Creating Urban Parks
Open space is incredibly important in the city and something needed more and more as the city intensifies. Here is a little video from the US talking about it and how we can get more of it. There are a couple of things that really stand out to me
It’s not how big the open space is but how well it is designed.…
Photo of the day – Freyberg Square
Is this one of the most disappointing squares in Auckland?…
Greatest intensification …. pfft
Most regular readers will probably know that I haven’t been all that impressed with the stupid berm debate that cropped up a month or so ago. I said at the time of my post on the subject that it would be the one and only post on the matter and that is still the case however I do want to pick up on a comment made in the article today about the issue as it relates to the Unitary Plan rather than the berms as such.…
Processing...