Seattle's Invisible 28-Lane Freeway
Through their various services, Sound Transit and Metro together carry about 500,000 riders a day; that’s almost as much as I-5, I-405, and the viaduct combined. Or to visualize it another way, the average capacity of a single freeway lane is about 18,000 vehicles a day—making ST/Metro’s half-million rides a day roughly equivalent to building a 28-lane freeway through downtown Seattle.
UW study finds walkable areas don’t necessarily lead to more walking
A good walking environment may not be enough to encourage more walking, according to a recent study led by UW Associate Professor Cynthia Perry.
How the Decline of the Traditional Workplace Is Changing Our Cities
The rise of smart phones and WiFi mean we can now work from anywhere. Should that turn the entire built environment into an office?
The Big Squeeze: Can Cities Save The Earth? : NPR
What if you put all 7 billion humans into one city, a city as dense as New York, with its towers and skyscrapers? How big would that 7 billion-sized city be? As big as New Jersey? Texas? Bigger? Are cities protecting wild spaces on the planet? We try a little experiment to find out.
How Seattle can Learn from Taipei
Street food, density, signage, and unconventional retail spaces
The Most And Least Popular Cities In America
Seattle is #1!
One Small Solution for Food Deserts: The Bus-Mounted Grocery Bin
Connecting underserved people to grocery stores may be easier than building new ones. But what’s a shopper to do with groceries on a crowded bus?
The Golden Age of Gondolas Might Be Just Around the Corner
”It’s a very reasonable means of transit – you don’t need a lot of infrastructure. They need very little space. They’re very environmentally friendly.”
It’s Not a Fairytale: Seattle to Build Nation’s First Food Forest
Seattle’s vision of an urban food oasis is going forward. A seven-acre plot of land in the city’s Beacon Hill neighborhood will be planted with hundreds of different kinds of edibles: walnut and chestnut trees; blueberry and raspberry bushes; fruit trees, including apples and pears; exotics like pineapple, yuzu citrus, guava, persimmons, honeyberries, and lingonberries; herbs; and more. All will be available for public plucking to anyone who wanders into the city’s first food forest.
China Expert: China Is Fast Approaching Urban Disaster
It’s the biggest migration in human history: China’s population is moving to cities so fast that by 2030, roughly one in eight people on this earth will be a resident of a Chinese city.
That great influx is helping create the world’s largest number of slum-dwellers. Right now, China has 220 million migrant workers. These workers live without “hukou,” the permit that allows Chinese people to buy an apartment or send their children to public school. Without hukou, these workers have become second-class citizens in their own home, living in squalid rooms on the outskirts of cities, places with no heat in the winter and no cool air in the summer. They are crowded into communities with only public toilets, where rubbish piles up in heaps.
Full article here
Give Rural Types the Government They Vote For
First of all, there is nothing wrong with a government organization running at a loss—the government is not a business. Secondly, if cuts are to be made, they should begin and end with services in the rural areas. Give those people the government they are always voting for.
Read the full article at Slog.TheStranger.com
New index ranks 137 U.S. cities on LGBT inclusion
Eleven of 137 U.S. cities evaluated scored a perfect 100 on the first-ever Municipal Equality Index released today by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, in partnership with the Equality Federation and the Gay & Lesbian Victory Institute.
Read more at GayPolitics.com
