urban planning
kkrisberg | December 18, 2015Researcher Douglas Wiebe first started studying gun violence as a doctoral student, investigating how having a firearm in one’s home affected the risk of injury. The work only heightened his interest in exploring gun violence from a public health perspective. Eventually, he decided to officially take on a question he’d been mulling over for almost a decade: Among people who’ve experienced a violent assault, are there any commonalities in their experiences just prior to the incident, and can we map those experiences in a way that reveals optimal intervention opportunities?
“I wanted to do a…
lborkowski | October 18, 2011by Kim Krisberg
Mark Martin isn't inclined to sit down and shut up -- well, unless it's on the seat of a bicycle."More people need joy in their lives and there's a real simple way to get it: ride a bicycle," Martin told me. "It's a joyous thing to ride a bike."
The Baton Rouge, La., bicyclist hasn't owned a car in 20 years -- "I just love my bike," he said. In fact, he loves biking so much that he said he was driving people crazy talking about the need for better biking and pedestrian infrastructure in his community. Somebody ought to do something about it, he thought, and so he did.…
mikethemadbiologist | August 20, 2011So there's been a bit of discussion about libertarians who want to establish a bunch of off-shore countries on floating oil-rig type platforms that would be lil' loonitarian paradises:
Thiel has been a big backer of the Seasteading Institute, which seeks to build sovereign nations on oil rig-like platforms to occupy waters beyond the reach of law-of-the-sea treaties. The idea is for these countries to start from scratch--free from the laws, regulations, and moral codes of any existing place. Details says the experiment would be "a kind of floating petri dish for implementing policies that…
mikethemadbiologist | April 17, 2011Over the past couple of months, there has been a spate of articles celebrating cities that are getting rid of their urban highways. The Christian Science Monitor had an article discussing New Haven's urban reclamation efforts. NPR reported the following:
How did this happen? After all, this is the country that always saw roads as a sign of progress.
Now, taking down freeways has gone mainstream. Cities as diverse as New Haven, New Orleans and Seattle are either doing it or talking about it. The chief motivation seems to be money...
This is the city planner's dream: Take out an underused…
mikethemadbiologist | March 22, 2011By way of Digby, we come across this proposal of how to reach 95% percent renewable energy by 2050. Before I get to some of the issue I have with the study (which is actually pretty good), I want to lay out my general views on energy use.
First, I'm not a 'fan' of nuclear power. While thorium-powered reactors would be a vast improvement over traditional reactors (and newer designs regardless of energy source would fail much more safely compared to older ones), even thorium isn't perfect. But what's really stupid are all of the calls for immediately stopping the use of nuclear power. (…
mikethemadbiologist | June 24, 2010We come across this very depressing article about how Detroit is becoming 'unsettled', in that it is suffering from a massive population decrease, leading to some unprecedented solutions:
But a new momentum has taken hold here that embraces just that: shrinking the city in order to save it.
"There's nothing you can do with a lot of the buildings now but do away with them," said Mae Reeder, a homeowner of 35 years on the southeast side, where her bungalow is surrounded by blocks that are being reclaimed by nature, complete with pheasants nesting in vacant spaces where people once lived.
The…
mikethemadbiologist | May 24, 2010(Click to embiggen)
Don't worry, I'm not describing Boston Mayor Menino's latest harebrained scheme. Esplanade Magazine, which is some great architecture/real estate porn (and it's free!), describes an effort in 1907, during the heyday of the City Beautiful Movement, to build an island in the Charles River. It didn't happen due to opposition from Beacon Hill residents (naturally...) who opposed what would have been called St. Botolph's* island. But imagine if the island had been built (from Esplanade Magazine):
It's May, almost time for Commencement, and you are sunning yourself at the BU…
mikethemadbiologist | March 30, 2010The Washington Post covered an interesting study by the Chicago-based nonprofit Center for Neighborhood Technology. Basically, to determine the cost of housing, the authors included the costs of transportation along with the cost of housing. Some findings:
...the combined cost of a home that requires a longer commute by car might exceed that of a more expensive home within walking distance of transit.
"The farther you get out, the cost of transportation can double," said Scott Bernstein, president of CNT. "Somewhere between eight and 12 miles out from the center . . . housing costs dropped…
mikethemadbiologist | February 10, 2010I guess this is what a libertarian paradise looks like:
COLORADO SPRINGS -- This tax-averse city is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric.
More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops -- dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.
The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack…
mikethemadbiologist | February 5, 2010There's been some discussion about Joel Kotkin's argument "The War Against Suburbia", kicked off by The NY Times making it their Idea of the Day. Leaving aside whether there should be a 'war against suburbia', it's just not true. First, there has been a decades-long policy of federal subsidization of housing prices through the mortgage interest tax deduction. Since there are far more homeowners in suburbs than in cities, this is a massive wealth transfer to suburbs. Also, Obama's non-cramdown policies which have the effect of (temporarily) keeping housing prices higher than they should be…
mikethemadbiologist | October 18, 2009...drug stores, hardware stores, and supermarkets.. By way of ScienceBlogling Dr. Isis, we learn of The Great Brooklyn Tampon Shortage:
You see, in Brooklyn, we have to deal with the problem of tampon scarcity. How, you may be wondering, can a product be scarce when it is a necessity of approximately half the population in any given area? Why wouldn't a commodity always be readily available when it is something that this large consumer base will never NOT need -- barring a Village-of-the-Damned style mass impregnation of women??
...In Brooklyn, there are no Walmart Superstores. No Targets,…
mikethemadbiologist | October 6, 2009Last week, I was visiting family in the D.C. area, and I was reminded how much the population density has increased in the surrounding suburbs compared to when I was growing up. If nothing else, the traffic is becoming worse and worse (it's even become more congested over the last few years--an advantage of returning home at intervals is that I can view this change as a discrete phenomenon rather than as a gradual increase).
A problem with suburbs is that, even if one wanted to add high-density, lower car-use housing, such as putting apartment buildings in places where residents can walk…
mikethemadbiologist | July 30, 2009...for pedestrians? The Boston Globe reports that Boston is trying to implement a citywide bike sharing program:
They intend to roll out what would be the nation's first citywide bike-sharing system next spring, making hundreds of bicycles at dozens of stations across Boston available to anyone who can swipe a credit card.
If all goes as planned, Bostonians and visitors will ride these bikes to run errands, reach their workplaces, travel from tourist site to tourist site and from meeting to meeting. All of this, officials say, will make drivers and bikers more respectful of each other, and…
ddobbs | March 11, 2009
I've been harping on this for years: To live easy on the earth, live densely -- which is to say, in densely built neighborhoods. This Times Economix column describes a study showing just that. Other studies have shown living more densely creates richer social lives and stronger communities. Yet we continue to spread out willy-nilly.
I see this to my dismay here in Vermont, where I live, in Montpelier -- the country's smallest state capital, and the only one without a McDonald's -- in a neighborhood of single- and multi-family houses so densely built that today you couldn't build it here,…
mikethemadbiologist | February 18, 2009This is not the Mad Biologist
Or how the Boston Phoenix proves they missed the point of Shepard Fairey's work (Fairey made the iconic Obama poster). I'll get to that in a moment, but Sunday, I went to the ICA in Boston to see the Shepard Fairey exhibit. For me, it was a blast from the past: I was in Providence when the whole Andre the Giant thing started (I still have a sticker from that time). It was also funny to watch (discretely) a middle-aged--to be generous--docent explain to similarly aged visitors about Andre having a posse. Ironic proto-skaterpunk anarchism wasn't really…
mikethemadbiologist | December 14, 2008I recently finished Dolores Hayden's Building Suburbia, and I recommend it highly.
Hayden describes how all of the arguments we have today about land use and transportation have been with us in one form or another for over 150 years. But what struck me was this section--and keep in mind, this book was published in 2003 (italics mine):
In 2003, Americans have had almost two centuries of experience with suburban boosters and their growth machines. Living farther and farther from older city centers, Americans spend an increasing proportion of their income on home mortgages and car payments,…
mikethemadbiologist | December 7, 2008One of the things that I don't write about much on the blog, but that I do follow with great interest is urban planning and transportation (yes, I need new hobbies). Among the glitterati of blogtopia (and, yes, skippy invented that phrase), there's a lot of discussion of how to develop better transporation policy. I find these posts to be really annoying, with the exception of Atrios who writes about his attempts 'to turn your suburb into midtown Manhattan' (he, at least has a sense of humor about it).
I should be the last person to be annoyed by these posts. I live in a city, don't own a…
mikethemadbiologist | October 15, 2008Atrios describes one of the hidden, but very important costs of parking, especially in cities--parking:
I think self-driving cars are going to be here some time after flying cars, my jetpack, and Glenn Reynolds' sexbots, but this little thought experiment is useful for highlighting that while we talk about highways and roads and whatnot, the biggest problem with cars generally is parking. They take up space. Lots of it. That space reduces density most places, and reduces the benefits of density in places where it exists.
A hidden gem in the Boston area is the MIT Museum (kinda like…
mikethemadbiologist | May 22, 2008Photo: Architectural Design by Rolf Mohr; Modeling and Rendering by Machine Films; Interiors by James Nelms ÂDigital Artist @ Storyboards Online
A while back, I posted about apartment buildings that double as farms. New York magazine has a really interesting article about urban skyscrapers that would function as vertical hydroponic farms.
I have no idea if this "skyfarming" could work, but the idea that cities, with abundant supplies of grey water (unpotable water that can be used in agriculture), could be the next food basket is tantalizing. It could really revitalize the urban and…
mikethemadbiologist | April 22, 2008While I'm away on vacation, here's one from the wayback machine about how Democrats might actually want to try throwing money at people who support them, as opposed to those who hate them:
The Strangler has an thought-provoking editorial (and very, very long) "The Urban Archipelago" on why liberals should focus on state and local control. I'm not entirely sure that a city-first approach is feasible, but I think it's good that Democrats are beginning to realize that they should help themselves first and foremost (I excerpted my favorite part):
Let's see, what else are we for? How about…