Day: November 23, 2010

Perhaps the Obama administration's greatest contribution to building more livable, less traffic-choked communities has been the new partnership between three agencies -- DOT, EPA, and HUD -- which are helping towns and cities grow more sustainably, using strategies from brownfield redevelopment to the provision of affordable housing along transit corridors. The agencies have collaborated to issue a series of grants to communities doing this work, but as the lower chamber of Congress shifts to Republican control, the funding for some of those programs is in question.

For decades, policymakers have touted enforcement and public awareness as the answer to the staggering cost of road fatalities in the U.S. But despite decades of stricter enforcement and well-intentioned public awareness campaigns, a new report from the National Academy of Sciences says the U.S. is falling behind other industrialized nations in traffic safety.

Before bikes were even invented, the popular Wiggle bike route was a foot trail to avoid these same hills. The very latest research on Mission Dolores suggest it was founded in the Wiggle. Later, the city expanded to fill the valley with houses, but why? And what was there first?