Let’s Reconnect With Our Streets

Get ready to connect with the streets! Stay tuned for Asbury Park’s Open Streets Event!

“As Jane Jacobs observed in “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”: “The trust of a city street is formed over time from many, many little public sidewalk contacts. Most of it is ostensibly trivial but the sum is not trivial at all.”

By Allison Arief July 3, 2018

Not too many years ago, I was having dinner with my in-laws in Orange County, Calif. My mother-in-law was complaining about her new neighbors, an all-too-common pastime for any resident of a gated community with an HOA. The neighbors’ crime? “They let their children play in our cul-de-sac,” she lamented. “Everyone knows streets are for cars.”

July 25, 2018July 21, 2018

Design A City For Families

Cities are looking at ways to ensure growth and vitality. It’s FAMILIES. Schools, housing, daycare, family spaces.

Young families typically leave cities for the suburbs. Here’s how to keep them downtown.

By David Roberts June 11, 2018

Read about it:

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2017/6/21/15815524/toderian-families-cities?__twitter_impression=true

July 24, 2018July 21, 2018

Designing Cities For People The Book: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality

Public spaces need to be designed so that people don’t die.

“Humans make errors and willingly or unwillingly break rules. This is a given that cannot be changed. So roads and streets should be designed in such a way that this natural human behavior does not lead to crashes and injuries.” — The Dutch Institute for Road Safety Research

Sustainable Safety

Sustainable Safety (“Duurzaam veilig” in Dutch) is the name of the Dutch approach to achieve a better road safety.

Read about it:

https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/sustainable-safety/

The Book:

Building the Cycling City: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality http://www.modacitylife.com/building-the-cycling-city/

July 23, 2018July 20, 2018

Valuable Real Estate: The Curb

Donald Shoup @DonaldShoup: The American city is squandering some of its most valuable real estate: the curb.

The American city is wasting valuable real estate on parked cars.

By HENRY GRABAR JULY 19, 2018

Give the Curb Your Enthusiasm

July 20, 2018July 17, 2018

American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

Parking is real estate and drivers seem to think they deserve more of it–at incredibly low prices.

American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

By Angie Schmitt July 12, 2018

Groundbreaking research presents credible estimates of the total parking supply in several American cities, and it’s not pretty.

“Parking spaces are everywhere, but for some reason the perception persists that there’s “not enough parking.” And so cities require parking in new buildings and lavishly subsidize parking garages, without ever measuring how much parking exists or how much it’s used.”

Satellite images with surface parking highlighted in Philadelphia (left) and Seattle (right), via the Research Institute for Housing America.

July 19, 2018July 16, 2018

Can We Create Good Alternatives To Driving?

Two-wheel takeover: bikes outnumber cars for the first time in Copenhagen

“People see that the fastest way to get around town is on a bicycle…”

Denmark’s capital has reached a milestone in its journey to become a cycling city – there are now more bikes than cars on the streets. Can other cities follow?

“The next step… is to create good alternatives to the car. ”

“You can’t just prohibit cars and then deal with it … That’s why we’re expanding the metro and investing in bike infrastructure. Give people options and then slowly take away space from cars and give it to bikes.”

July 18, 2018July 16, 2018

Stop Subsidizing Driving

RATHER THAN DEMONIZING DRIVING—LET’S JUST STOP SUBSIDIZING IT

JULY 13, 2018 BY JOE CORTRIGHT

WE’VE BEEN ASKING THE WRONG QUESTION.

Our research tells us that lots of problems stem from the way we use cars. We price roads wrong, so people overuse them. Cars are a major source of air pollution, including carbon emissions. Car crashes kill tens of thousands of Americans every year, injure many more, and cost us billions in medical costs and property damage. And building our cities to accommodate cars leads to a suburban development pattern that pushes us further apart from one another, creating infrastructure costs that drown our cities in massive maintenance expenses.

July 17, 2018July 16, 2018

Helsinki Figured Out How To Compete With Car Ownership

By Kati Pohjanpalo July 15, 2018

How Helsinki Arrived at the Future of Urban Travel First

A homegrown app called Whim turns the act of getting around a city—by bus, train, bike, taxi or borrowed car—into a monthly subscription.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-15/how-helsinki-arrived-at-the-future-of-urban-travel-first?cmpId=google

July 16, 2018July 15, 2018

Shared Responsibility?

Sharing Isn’t Caring: Shifting Gears on Shared Responsibility

Robin Mazumder, Urban Scientist. Community Builder. Keynote Speaker.

June 14, 2018

We need to change the conversation on shared responsibility.

“Cyclists have nothing to “share”. By virtue of their ability to injure and kill, drivers own the power, and, ultimately, the road. Cycling infrastructure is infinitely more effective at ensuring cyclist safety than a “share the road” campaign is.”

Tip 3 in the new safety video states that “…cyclists “should ride as far to the right shoulder on the road as possible”…while the police officer narrating the video is hugging the curb on a sharrowed road in Downtown Kitchener:

This advice is not only wrong, but it adds confusion to how sharrows should be used, and ultimately could put cyclists in harm’s way. The City of Kitchener’s website clearly states: “sharrows in the middle of the traffic lanes indicate that cyclists may take the full lane and reminds drivers to share the road with cyclists.”

July 12, 2018July 12, 2018

Jaywalking Was Invented To Make Way For Cars

Streets were once considered public spaces, places for people, but have become dominated by cars, and streets designed for speedy traffic flow. Now people are marginalized, called “pedestrians” and those walking outside of painted lines are demonized as “jaywalkers”, and blamed if they are injured or killed.

THE WEAPONIZATION OF JAYWALKING

by John Bennett July 11, 2018

“Before the advent of the automobile, users of city streets were diverse and included children at play and pedestrians at large. By 1930, most streets were primarily motor thoroughfares where children did not belong and where pedestrians were condemned as ‘jaywalkers’.”