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What does it mean when a city has good bones?
You may have heard people talking about New York City, DC, Boston or Chicago as cities that have good bones. But what does that actually mean? And does it even matter? You might think a city with good bones must have a relatively old history. After all, many of these cities are centuries old (ancient…
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Electric vehicles aren’t enough to save us from climate change.
I will preface this by saying that I, in fact, do believe that reducing our reliance on fossil fuels is a good thing, and that the increasing market of electric vehicles is also a good thing overall for the planet. But make no mistake, electric vehicles, which so many think are a miracle pill for…
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How Bike Plans are secretly City Revitalization Plans.
The unassuming bicycle. Who would have thought that any city that’s actively building their bike infrastructure is instead actually building the foundations for a city revitalization like that of which they’ve never seen. What you have to know is that a bike plan is not simply a bike plan. A bike plan is a climate…
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Are you suffering from Advanced Car Brain?
Have you ever seen people get into a huff about losing parking spaces for a bike lane? Have you ever seen people loudly complain when the speed limit is lowered on their commute? Have you ever been around when people go on and on about how terrible traffic is while they hop into their vehicle…
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Is the Hyperloop just….Hype?
When it comes to high speed trains in America, the past few years have had some good news, and a whole lot of bad news as well. Acela, the name for Amtrak’s northeastern train line (the only train line in America that can even pretend to be high speed), connecting Boston to DC, recently announced a express…
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Detroit: At Street Level
At Street Level is a series of posts talking about individual cities unique and often bizarre built environment and what that actually means for the people who live there. Detroit has undergone a huge amount of change in the last few decades, (and even in the last few years), and that has left it with…
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What Is Suburban Sprawl?
This is a reposting of an article I’ve made years ago. Enjoy! What’s the most annoying thing about living in the suburbs? If you took a survey, I would bet that most people would point to traffic as the worst result of suburban life. It’s not hard to see why. Americans spend on average 38 hours a…
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Berlin is better than your city at transit (probably.)
When looking at public transportation in the United States, a few choice words come to mind: “inadequate”, “useless”, perhaps “underfunded” too. It is true, that save for a few cities in the US (I’m looking at you New York, Chicago, Washington D.C., San Francisco etc.), America’s public transit options are extremely limited and unfortunately not…
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Does Japan have the answer to solve the housing crisis?
Has Japan unlocked the secret to dense urbanism? How is it that major cities in japan, such as Tokyo, can be so very dense, even while retaining a landscape that isn’t full of 50 story skyscrapers as far as the eye can see. Take for instance the suburb of Kodaira, 12 or so miles from downtown…
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Cape Coral: At Street Level
At Street Level is a series of posts talking about individual cities unique and often bizarre built environment and what that actually means for the people who live there. If you’ve ever heard anyone casually bringing up Cape Coral in conversation, you might not find it all that interesting. It’s a smallish city (for Florida),…
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