Cities and Countries

"If we want to give meaning to multi-modal transportation ... and if we want a vibrant city, then we must encourage safety for people who walk and bicycle."

City sustainability chief David Bragdon offered some more hints about what to expect from April's update of PlaNYC this morning. Speaking at a livability conference hosted by NYU's Rudin Center, Bragdon said that the update would eschew large capital projects and feature a larger role for neighborhoods and individuals. In terms of transportation, Bragdon seemed to suggest that a call for a new Hudson River crossing of some kind would be a part of PlaNYC 2.0.

GOOD Magazine recently examined the role that the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition's City of Lights program has taken in giving voice to the overlooked and under-represented bicyclists. A program that started by handing out lights to immigrant cyclists and has become a national model for bicycle advocacy by focusing its efforts on safety to those underserved by government.

Flashback to Europe, sixty years ago. Just emerging from the ruin of total war, the continent was in the midst of a nearly unprecedented reconstruction. Over the next decade, industry finally was able to turn toward consumer products, from stockings to refrigerators and, of course, the automobile. Italians owned only 342,000 cars in 1950, but ten years later that number had increased to two million, according to historian Tony Judt. In France, the number of cars tripled over the decade.

One of the encouraging trends for American transit riders, in an otherwise bleak landscape of service cuts and fare hikes, is the growing number of agencies experimenting with ways to bring better information to their customers. Last summer Streetfilms explored how open transit data is helping to make riding the bus or the train more convenient in several cities.

The first time Adolfo Hernandez went to the National Bike Summit, he got a sense of just how monochromatic the livability movement can be.

Here comes Wal-Mart.

The Twin Cities region is reassessing the role of highways in its transportation system.