Tag: smart growth
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The Cost of Automobile Crashes
by James A. Bacon Virginia transportation policy is driven overwhelmingly by a desire to mitigate transportation congestion and, to a lesser degree, to promote economic development. Rarely does traffic safety enter into the discussion of which transportation improvements we finance. As evidence that congestion is one of the state’s foremost pressing concerns, elected officials can point to…
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Urbanizing the Burbs: Fairfax Circle Plaza
by James A. Bacon Route 50 through the City of Fairfax is a classic stroad, a street-road hybrid, that originated as a state highway and degenerated into a local access road for commercial development, with the result that it serves neither function — moving cars or providing local access — especially well. In a lengthy…
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Will Google Cars Boost City Productivity?
The spread of Self-Driving Cars (SDCs) will lead to tremendous increases in the productivity of cites, argues Brian Wang in The Next Big Future blog. Wang builds his argument on claims by Google that the ability of SDCs to drive faster and closer with greater safety than human-driven cars will effectively double the capacity of roadways.…
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The Evolution of the Burbs
Leigh Gallagher, assistant managing editor of Fortune magazine, made a big splash last year with her book, “The End of the Suburbs.” While she added little new to the urbanism vs. suburbanism debate, she did a superb job of articulating and popularizing the urbanism side of the argument. The title is misleading — probably dictated…
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Save Lives: Treat City Streets Like City Streets
by James A. Bacon In the decade between 2003 and 2012, more than 42,000 pedestrians died on American streets and roads. That’s more than 16 times the number that died in earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and tornadoes. While natural disasters attract national attention, pedestrian fatalities are buried in the back pages, if they’re noted at all, even…
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Mo’ Money for a Broken System?
by James A. Bacon The nation’s roads and bridges have a feevah and Josh Voorhees has a cure: mo’ money for the federal Highway Trust Fund. Writing in Slate, Voorhees highlights Congress’ inability to find new revenue sources to replenish the fund, which faces an $18-billion-a-year shortfall every year over the next decade. “Current tax rates—18.4 cents per gallon…
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Putting the “Garden” in Rain Garden
Soon Virginians will start spending billions to meet tough storm-water regs. Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden wants to show how we can save the bay – and look really good doing it.
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Map of the Day: Cycling to Work
The number of U.S. workers who traveled to work by bicycle increased from about 488,000 in 2000 to about 786,000 in 2008-2012, the largest percentage increase of any transportation mode, according to a new report issued by the U.S. Census Bureau based upon its annual American Community Survey. Fully one percent of the population in…
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Map of the Day: Where the Cyclists Are
Strava Labs maintains a database of where runners and cyclists using its smart-phone fitness app are running and riding. The data set includes nearly 77 million rides and 20 million runs. The heat map above shows where cycling activity is the most intense across the state. (Sorry about cutting off Southwest Virginia and the Virginia…
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A Timely Reminder of the Anti-Agenda 21 Distraction
by James A. Bacon Here in Virginia, the anti-Agenda 21 zealots have managed to stay out of the headlines for quite a while. I don’t know if that’s because they are quietly re-energizing themselves or if the movement is falling apart. But it never hurts to be reminded of the bizarre nature of this populist splinter group, which has done…
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Rise of the Post-College Town
Every community covets the Millennials, especially those with education, skills and tech savvy who do so much to stimulate entrepreneurial economic growth. USA Today has surveyed the coutry to see which “cities” (urban core jurisdictions, not metro regions) do the best job of luring Millennials. And it turns out that Virginia cities do pretty well. Arlington…
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The Simple Ingredients of a Good Public Space
What makes a good urban public space? It takes more than a plaza, which can be barren, inhospitable and desolate. The fountains, as shown here on Park Ave. in New York, are a definite bonus. But the critical ingredient is having somewhere to sit, even if it’s as simple as a set of shallow steps. I offer this…
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Planners Say Yes to Shockoe Bottom Condo
by James A. Bacon Libbie Hill Park sits on the crest of a hill overlooking the James River. On that spot in 1737 William Byrd II famously looked upon the turn in the river, was struck by its resemblance to Richmond-upon-Thames outside London, and decided to give the new city founded nearby the name of…
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Smart Growth for Custom-Minded Conservatives
by James A. Bacon As I have endeavored to develop a conservative vision for Smart Growth, I have relied primarily upon conservative principles with a libertarian slant — limited government, fiscal conservatism, free markets and the like. But there is a vast realm of conservative thinking that I have neglected, which William S. Lind, director…
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Re-imagining Sunnyvale
by James A. Bacon Silicon Valley appears to be moving in fits and starts toward more rational land use, creating denser, more mixed-use, better-connected communities appropriate to a region with extraordinarily high land values. As a casual visitor to the region, I don’t pretend to speak with any authority on the trend but I can…