Sunday reading 13 September 2015
Jonah Lehrer, “A physicist solves the city“, NY Times. This article is a few years old but still thought-provoking. It discusses a physicist’s analysis of the data on cities. The key finding is that resource consumption increases more slowly than city size, while economic activity and human interaction increases more rapidly.…
14 Comments Sunday reading 6 September 2015
Sam Schwartz, “Why a car-centric transportation plan is folly for L.A.” The Los Angeles Times.
After more than 40 years as a transportation engineer, I’m very aware that most of the traditional measures of transportation efficiency focus on mobility, often expressed as “delay per capita” or “dollars wasted while waiting in traffic.”…
Sunday reading 30 August 2015
Lily Kuo, “African cities are starting to look eerily like Chinese ones“, Citylab. A good feature on Africa’s growing and changing cities, which are getting a lot in the way of investment and technical advice from Chinese firms. African cities are (in my view) going to become increasingly important over the next century – my main hope is that their population growth is matched with economic and social dynamism:
Do you see similarities between the pace and kind of urbanization in Africa that you do in China?…
Sunday reading 23 August 2015
A neat street design resource that collects the before-and-afters (good ones anyway) of streets from StreetView.
Here is a highly recommended interview with Mark Todd of Ockham Residential properties where he discusses his business model of providing high quality, high density residential projects across Auckland.…
Sunday reading 16 August 2015
David Killick, “Christchurch needs an eco-neighbourhood like Vauban“, The Press:
PERSPECTIVE: Vauban, in Freiburg, south-west Germany, is one of the world’s most celebrated residential eco-neighbourhoods.
With its solar power, “plus-energy” buildings, and accessible streets, Vauban offers a bold sustainable vision for the future of urban or suburban living.…
Sunday reading 9 August 2015
John Greenfield, “Burke: Don’t Bend Over Backwards to Facilitate Driving at the Lincoln Hub“, Streetsblog Chicago.
Sandy Smith, “Tracing the urban transport revolution“, Next City.
Over the last 30 to 40 years, a tectonic shift has occurred in the way Americans think about urban transportation networks, especially the streets and roads that are their backbone.…
Sunday reading 3 August 2015
Scott Lazenby, “Why We Should Pay for the Highway Miles We Use“, Governing. We expect to pay for services like phones and electricity and water that are reliable. Shouldn’t we treat roads the same way?
When you live or travel in a third-world country, you can’t take basic infrastructure for granted.…
Sunday reading 26 July 2015
Jarrett Walker, “Explainer: The Transit Ridership Recipe“, Human Transit. An epic post by Jarrett where he outlines the fundamentals to delivering high ridership public transit.
The most successful transit, in terms of ridership achieved for a fixed operating budget, is called mass transit for a reason. …
Sunday reading 19 July 2015
Yonah Freemark, “For rail services, downtown sometimes isn’t the right place for a terminus“, The Transport Politic:
There’s a romantic notion of the downtown rail terminal in the American popular culture, often expressed in movies and books. It’s a scene that is easy to conjure up in one’s mind: The steaming locomotive comes slowly to a halt at the end of a track, passengers stream out into a giant waiting room, and from there they exit into the bustling metropolis.…
Sunday reading 12 July 2015
Matt Yglesias, “Here’s what the world would look like if every country had the same population“, Vox:
Maps are a great way to illustrate the world, but I’ve always been fascinated by maps that illustrate worlds that might have been. To me, redditor frayuk’s new map of the world divided into 200 countries with equal populations hits both of those bugs.…
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