Tag: Walkability
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Suburbs Regain Their Appeal! But the Definition of “Suburb” Is Changing
by James A. Bacon “Suburbs regain their appeal!” shouts a headline for an article in the Wall Street Journal today accompanied by a quarter-page aerial photograph (shown above) of a cul-de-sac subdivision in Chicago. The editor’s treatment of the story, which is based upon research findings by Brookings Institution scholar William H. Frey, is highly…
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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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Silicon Valley Knows Technology, Not Land Use
by James A. Bacon Apple, Google and other collosi of Silicon Valley are re-shaping the world with their technology but you could never imagine them as masters of innovation by viewing their corporate campuses. While the office interiors may be arrayed with java bars and collaborative workplaces to stimulate creativity, the building exteriors are for…
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Why San Franciscans Are Thinner than Other Americans
No, it’s not the bean sprouts and tofu. It’s not even the great year-round climate that encourages people to do stuff outdoors. It’s the hills. The Bacon family has hiked and biked a lot of hills over the past three days and we’ve eaten a lot of food, but the hills won. I swear I…
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The Walkability Premium
The scholars over at New Geography just won’t give up trying to make the case that most Americans prefer to live in single-family detached houses in the suburbs. Citing data from the 2010 American Community Survey, Wendell Cox wrote that 79.2% of the new households in 51 major metro areas moved into precisely such housing…
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How to Squeeze 40,000 More People into Richmond
by James A. Bacon According to growth projections cited by the Urban Land Institute, the population of the Richmond region is expected to grow by roughly 200,000 households (430,000 people) by 2035. Where will that growth go? How much of it can be absorbed by existing urban areas, and how much will end up, by…
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Finding the Right Formula for Libbie & Grove
by James A. Bacon When last we visited the re-development of the Libbie & Grove neighborhood of Richmond (“The Densification of Richmond“), public opposition had stymied the conversion of a BP gas station into a four-story luxury apartment complex. The proposed facility was just too big — it would have been out of place in…
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Walkable Urbanism Takes Root in Virginia Beach
by James A. Bacon Back in the pre-PowerPoint days when people used slide projectors, New Urbanist evangelist Andres Duany traveled around the country with a carousel of slides to illustrate the horrors that poor planning had inflicted upon the urban landscape. One of those slides, I recall, was an aerial shot of the intersection of…
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PARC Tackles Parking
by James A. Bacon A couple of years ago, the creative geniuses at Xerox’s renowned Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) labs were brainstorming ways to shake up one of the stodgiest sectors of the American economy: parking. A new wave of technologies made it possible to do things never thought possible before, such as adjusting…
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Time to Consider New Downtown Parking Models in VA
In May Richmond City Council voted to increase the hourly rate for street parking downtown from $.50 to $.75 per hour with the goals of netting an additional $250,000 yearly in revenue and helping downtown businesses by increasing the turnover in parking spaces. By way of market research, according to the Times-Dispatch, city officials had…
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Parking Drove Richmond’s Gateway Plaza Participation
There’s a bit more to the Gateway Plaza than I blogged about yesterday. I caught up with Larry Chapman, a partner in Clayco, the company developing the $110 million office tower in downtown Richmond, and asked him why the City of Richmond needed to chip in $11.25 million to make the project happen. It’s all…
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Richmond’s $11.25 Million Investment in Gateway Plaza Seems Justified
by James A. Bacon Richmond City Council has approved $11.25 million in general obligation bonds to build a public parking garage for the proposed Gateway Plaza, a $110 million office tower in downtown Richmond. I’m often skeptical of municipal “incentives” to stimulate “economic development” projects, but I think this undertaking will withstand scrutiny. Chicago-based Clayco…
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A Conservative Case for Mass Transit
by James A. Bacon A new paper published by the conservative Free Congress Foundation makes the connection between mass transit and the economic vitality of American regions. Author Michael S. Bronzini, with George Mason University, argues that mass transit is needed to support a population shift back to walkable urban communities, which is being driven…
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City of Richmond Leads Regional Population Growth
It’s only one year’s worth of data, so I don’t want to make too much of it, but new U.S. Census numbers confirm my argument that the center of gravity of population growth and development is shifting back toward the urban core — at least in the Richmond region. Between July 2011 and July 2012,…
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What’s Your Walk Score?
If you haven’t checked your home’s walk score, you should. Walkability contributes to higher property values, a more livable neighborhood and a healthier community. by James A. Bacon Walk Score, a web-based service that measures walkability, is taking the urban planning profession by storm. Using an algorithm that awards points based on the distance to…