Last year I reported here, based on a conversation at a STAR Team meeting, that the city was uninterested in painting more bicycle lanes. With the creation of new lanes on Division and Benton and the discussion at night’s STAR Team meeting, it has became clear to me that painting more bicycle lanes is in [...]
Park Central Square is finished. Here are the results. You’ll see that it has become a more pedestrian-friendly place. Technorati Tags: Springfield Missouri, Urban and Regional Planning, urban design, urban development, Urban Planning
A poll by the National Association of Realtors earlier this spring showed that Americans’ attitudes about where to live may be changing. A few (cherry-picked) highlights: Americans are three times more likely to say that the quality of life in their communities has gotten worse (35%) rather than better (12%) in the last three years. [...]
OK, actually a reason that’s not talked about enough… So, what can bicycling do for us and our towns and cities? The usual reasons to ride a bicycle include: health, wealth, relieve traffic congestion, and (add two or three things you think of most). Kasey Klimes, wrting for This Big City, says the following is [...]
Joel Kotkin, writing on the NewGeography site, says that America’s biggest brain magnets are not the big coastal cities: “Indeed, college graduates, for the most part, are heading not to the big cities on the coasts, but to smaller, less dense and quite often Sun Belt cities.” His conclusion might seem written with Springfield in [...]
The web publication that I run for my multimedia journalism class begins its second semester. Last semester’s students got the ball rolling. This semester’s students will put Ozarks News Journal on the local news radar. I mention this because the first round of story assignments will include two that may be of interest to Carbon [...]
The following is a Q&A with Tim Rosenbury, of Butler Rosenbury & Partners, about the continued renovation 0f Park Central Square. I conducted this interview by e-mail last week. The .pdf files linked in the text were supplied by BR&P. CT: When does the final phase of renovation begin, and when will it be finished? Rosenbury: Construction [...]
File this under “well, duh”! It appears that urban sprawl has made us fatter (abstract): In this paper, we examine the effect of changes in population density—urban sprawl—between 1970 and 2000 on BMI and obesity of residents in metropolitan areas in the U.S. We address the possible endogeneity of population density by using a two-step [...]
I’ve made no attempt to hide my admiration for the Dutch bicycle system as I have been able to understand it from afar (with special thanks to Amsterdamize and A View From the Cycle Path). I simply think it cannot be translated into an American context. Perhaps I should refine that last thought. It could be translated; [...]
Springfieldians have great access to higher education. Take your pick: OTC, MSU, Drury, Evangel. Springfield is large enough, however, not to have the feel of college town similar to Columbia, Missouri. There’s nothing wrong with that. But there’s something terribly wrong with our ranking in College Destination Index published by the American Institute of Economic [...]
This morning I covered a lot of ground riding around the urban core of Springfield and taking pictures for a class project. Not a class I’m teaching. A class I’m taking (PLN271). I’m an “inputter” (i.e. my primary strength is collecting information), and I have always enjoyed being a college student. The project is about [...]
Want to see a sneer of disgust cross the face of your average, suburban Springfieldian? Just mention anything European. I’ve been accused — in public meetings even — of wanting to force Americans to live like Europeans. And “like Europeans” is always spoken in derision by the folks who accuse me. Well, their accusations are [...]
On my way to the STAR Team meeting yesterday afternoon I noticed a distinctive car in my mirror as I was riding downtown — a Miles Electric Car owned by fellow team member Rick Scarlet. Unlike the hybrids, this is an electric-only vehicle. And it is quiet. He and I have discussed before the possibility [...]
See if you can spot the problem (from montrealgazette.com): A 2003 study published in the Injury Prevention Journal by Peter Lyndon Jacobsen concluded: “A motorist is less likely to collide with a person walking or bicycling if more people walk or bicycle. Policies that increase the numbers of people walking and bicycling appear to be [...]
A “sharrow” is a shared lane marker painted on the street. Sharrows should not create de facto bicycle lanes, i.e. be painted on the road in such a way that it shunts bicyclists to side of the road in the manner of a bicycle lane. Dan Gutierrez has posted some interesting photos on Facebook that show what’s [...]
