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Outdoor “Living Rooms” in Central Los Angeles

By mkodransky@pps.org on May 8, 2008 | Add Comment

Photo Source: Monica Almeida/The New York Times

The New York Times reports on new colorful outdoor benches being used in several Los Angeles neighborhoods to improve the street environment. These neighborhoods, comprised of low-income immigrant residents, have lacked basic street amenities for too long, especially at bus stops.

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Taking Back the Streets in NYC

By mkodransky@pps.org on Apr 7, 2008 | Add Comment

Photo: Woonerf in Copenhagen, Denmark

The New York Times reports on ten progressive street designs that are challenging the traditional “street-curb-sidewalk motif,” which has defined so many streets in NYC and around the world by giving priority to automobiles. The ten designs are:

Woonerfs Play Streets  Bicycle [...]
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Montreal’s New Public Spaces

By mkodransky@pps.org on Apr 3, 2008 | Add Comment

 


Montreal is a city with an interesting mix of old colonial squares and new corporate plazas. A new approach to creating vibrant public places seems to be brewing. The focus is on simple and flexible designs that facilitate human activity rather than merely display great architectural achievements.

[...]
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U.S. Presidential Candidates Ignoring Urban Issues

By mkodransky@pps.org on Apr 3, 2008 | 1 Comment



Despite the large number of Americans now living in cities, urban issues have been astonishingly absent from the U.S. presidential debates. PPS did a spoof article for Faking Places, the annual April Fool’s Newsletter, in which Hillary, McCain and Obama make promises for more livable [...]

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Paris on Two Wheels

By mkodransky@pps.org on Apr 2, 2008 | Add Comment

 


The ambitious bicycle sharing program in Paris is a model for smart transportation policy. It is revolutionizing the city’s street culture while also tackling rising energy costs and global climate change.

Renting stations are quickly becoming places to meet friends and strangers. Jay Walljasper, PPS  Senior Fellow [...]

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Park to Reconnect City Center with One of the World’s Greatest Waterfronts?

By mkodransky@pps.org on Apr 1, 2008 | 1 Comment

 

The Western Distributor in Sydney wouldn’t be the first urban freeway to be dismantled so a community could access the waterfront. The Embarcadero Freeway in SF was demolished after an earthquake in 1989. The Miller Freeway in NYC has become a successful waterfront park and recreation area. And, tearing down the [...]

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Removing Traffic Lanes to Lounge Around in Wodonga, Australia

By mkodransky@pps.org on Mar 31, 2008 | Add Comment

David Engwicht is a livable streets philosopher and author. Creator of the Walking School Bus, Mental Speed Bumps and many other innovative ways of taming traffic and increasing pedestrian safety, he has taken on “the challenge of a lifetime” to revitalize the downtown district of Wodonga, a small city in Australia [...]

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Street Vending in Jamaica

By mkodransky@pps.org on Mar 21, 2008 | Add Comment

“Urban planner and lecturer at the University of Technology, Earl Bailey, says the chaos being created by vendors on the streets could be lessened if market areas were designed with pedestrian traffic more in mind, rather than motor vehicular.

‘The reason why street vending is such a bad thing is because we are planning [...]

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Top 10 Global Trends Affecting Downtowns

By mkodransky@pps.org on Mar 21, 2008 | Add Comment

Progressive Urban Management Associates (P.U.M.A.), along with several Denver-based collaborators, determines the top 10 global trends changing downtowns across the U.S. 

“The first decade of the new millennium is ushering in an era of unprecedented economic, social and political change. Changing demographics, lifestyles and global competition portend to have profound affects on our daily [...]

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Parks and Squares Are An Essential Feature of Urban Infrastructure

By mkodransky@pps.org on Mar 19, 2008 | 1 Comment

“Public space is central to the political and social life of a city. Streets and squares are marketplaces for trade, places for discussion and demonstrations, for formal and informal meetings. Public spaces are democratic in essence: in them citizens have rights, defined only by national laws. They are places in which cities define their character, [...]

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Completing NYC Streets For The Next Century

By keenan on Mar 18, 2008 | Add Comment

“For four decades, activists for greener, safer NYC streets have scrounged at the margins of this automobilized streetscape. A few feet of traffic lanes converted to bike lanes, the occasional sidewalk extended to relieve a dangerous intersection — all important changes, but all within the context of streets that serve cars, first and foremost. But [...]

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Are you ready, feet? Start walking

By keenan on Mar 6, 2008 | Add Comment

Orange County’s oldest and arguably most urban cities – Anaheim and Santa Ana – outpace every other town in the O.C. when it comes to being a good place to take a walk, according to a new study published in Prevention magazine.

Anaheim and Santa Ana made it among the Top 10 walkable cities in [...]

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