Even just a little bit of snow can reveal a lot about the vulnerability of the suburban development pattern.
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If a roof is leaking in a public building, we know to fix it asap. So why don’t our public officials move with the same urgency when dealing with a much more serious problem: the death of a person on our streets?
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Streets are some of the most hostile and dangerous places in our built environment, causing the deaths of over 40,000 people every year. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
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ODOT wants to widen a highway in Toledo, OH. But continuing to make the highway bigger and bigger to solve traffic problems is about as effective as the story of the little old lady who swallowed a spider to eat a fly.
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Change everything. This is the program that will help revitalize your city.
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Urban planning involves a lot of jargon that can be obscure or confusing. Here’s one term you might not have heard, but that can make a big difference in the design of your city.
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The best time to influence a development proposal so that it fits well into its urban context is early, not late, in the process.
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According to the United States Census, prior to the pandemic, half of all businesses in the U.S. were home based and nearly eight million people worked primarily from home…but according to urban planners, this is illegal!?
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Drivers tend to unconsciously regulate their speed based on visual cues. By taking some simple steps to narrow a street visually, we can make it less dangerous.
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Roundabouts are great, but completely replacing an intersection with a roundabout is an enormous project—and not the first one cities should jump to when taking the next smallest step to address traffic safety concerns.
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The police department in Oakboro, North Carolina, has been asked to address drivers misusing a left-turn lane—but this is not a policing issue, and no level of enforcement can correct it. Instead, let’s look at the street’s design.
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Google Maps: “Let me tell you where the next freeway will be without telling you where the next freeway will be.”
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Too often, people who offer seemingly simple solutions for problems in their community just get dismissed by municipal staff. Here’s how to persist.
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A university campus in Norman, OK, presents a good case study in why transportation engineers must take care when designing streets adjacent to important civic institutions.
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In Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, children are invited to share their input on how public spaces should be designed, using a popular video game.
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Conventional wisdom holds that the U.S. doesn’t know how to do rail—but Union Station shows that we do, in fact, have a history and the knowledge to build grand public transportation systems.
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This story about a revitalized church’s parking requirements might sound absurd, but it’s reflective of the very real and very absurd regulations most communities face when it comes to parking.
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The process of getting a new development approved often yields results that make no one happy. However, there is an opportunity here to be more assertive about your community’s vision.
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When someone loses their life on your community’s streets, everyone needs to be prepared to take immediate action to prevent future deaths.
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Richmond, VA, architect Erik Bootsma shows through some simple (but effective) illustrations how a dangerous intersection can be made safer.
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