Month: July 2013
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While Officials Ignore Street Safety, “Cone Fairy” Calms Miami Traffic
If only the Florida Department of Transportation was as concerned about traffic safety as one mysterious resident in Miami's Belle Meade neighborhood. A traffic safety vigilante known only as "the cone fairy" has been making nightly visits to a dangerous street in this neighborhood and applying a simple, temporary solution to reckless speeding: orange cones in the center of the street.
July 25, 2013
SF Still Waiting for DA Gascón to “Send a Message” to Deadly Drivers
At the press conference yesterday to announce the plea deal between prosecutors and Chris Bucchere in the death of Sutchi Hui, SF District Attorney George Gascón said that his "goal is to send a message" to cyclists.
July 24, 2013
Study: Living in a City Makes You Safer
Everyone knows that big American cities are risky, dangerous places -- right? Not so fast. A new study published in the Journal of Injury Prevention [PDF] says the conventional wisdom on the safety of cities is backwards.
July 24, 2013
Feeling Lonely in a Midwestern Downtown
Young people are moving back to the downtown areas of many Midwestern and Southern cities. Sometimes they call these folks pioneers, though that's a fraught term. But a lot of them do have to rough it, so to speak -- living without grocery stores or other basic amenities that you'd have in New York or Boston.
July 24, 2013
Adaptive Metropolis: User Generated Urbanism Symposium
Adaptive Metropolis is a 3-day symposium hosted at Wurster Hall, home to the Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning at UC Berkeley. From September 27-29, 2013, a global community of thinkers and doers will convene to discuss the future of collaborative city-making. Days 1 and 2 of the symposium will feature exciting keynote speeches from featured speakers, as well as debates, plenary sessions and breakout sessions led by groundbreaking practitioners and thinkers. The symposium concludes with San Francisco Urban Exploration, a user generated urban derive led by Rebar.
July 23, 2013
How Will SF Fund the Sustainable Transport System a Growing City Needs?
Within a few decades, San Francisco's streets will be even more clogged with cars, more dangerous for walking and biking, and Muni will burst at the seams as more people try to get around. That's the future city officials warned about at a hearing yesterday, painting a grim picture of traffic-choked streets if nothing is done to change the status quo of paltry funding for walking, biking, and transit.
July 23, 2013
No, Amsterdam Is Not “Swamped” By Bikes
In June, the New York Times published a story headlined "The Dutch Prize Their Pedal Power, But a Sea of Bikes Swamps Their Capital" that instigated much debate (over 365 reader comments in one day) and a torrent of emails to the editor. The Times followed up by seeking a "dialogue" with its readers about the supposed "swamping" of Amsterdam by bicycles. Then came all the echoes of the Times narrative inothermedia.
July 23, 2013