Tag: Walkability
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Living the High-Line Life
Converting an eyesore into a celebrated park, New York City’s High Line showed how smart urbanism can create wealth.
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Fixing Broken Streams and Broken Dreams
The Bellemeade Walkable Watershed project aims to reclaim a damaged creek, create a route for kids to walk to school, and boost community spirit in a gritty, inner-city Richmond neighborhood.
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Chart of the Day: Planning Regulation
Stephen Oliner, a UCLA professor doing research for the Federal Reserve Board, has made the first-ever estimate of planning times for commercial construction across the United States. Drawing upon 82,000 projects nationwide, he found that the average planning time nationally is about 17 months. But it’s a long longer in some places and shorter in…
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Suburban Redevelopment in Merrifield Wins NYTimes Nod
Taking notice of redevelopment in the Merrifield area of Fairfax County, The New York Times has suggested that this “suburban wasteland in Virginia” is at last getting an urban feel. The centerpiece of the suburban makeover is the 31-acre Mosaic district, a project of Columbia, S.C.-based Edens, a private retail developer. When fully built out,…
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IG of the Day: Walking Communities
Governing magazine has just published an interactive map showing which United States metros have the highest percentage of workers who walk to work. No surprise, the leaders in Virginia are small metros with large student populations — Charlottesville, Blacksburg and Harrisonburg. The graphics are somewhat deceptive, however. The size of the dot appears to bear…
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Talking the Talk, Walking the WalkUp
Momentum is shifting decisively from the traditional model of auto-centric development associated with “suburban sprawl” to WalkUps, the term that urbanist Christopher B. Leinberger has coined for Walkable Urban Places. Not only that, contends Leinberger in a new paper, “D.C.: The WalkUP Wake-Up Call,” but the Washington region stands at the vanguard of the national…
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Eating the World’s Most Delicious Philly Cheesesteak at the Reading Terminal Market
by James A. Bacon When the Bacon family visited Philadelphia this weekend to watch the Eagles play the Baltimore Ravens, there was only one thing I wanted out of the trip. I had to chow down on an authentic Philadelphia cheesesteak sandwich. I’d tasted ersatz cheesesteak hoagies in Virginia but that was like ordering grits……
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The Densification of Richmond
Pressure is intensifying to redevelop Richmond’s retail enclaves at greater densities. But locals love the Libbie & Grove shopping district just the way it is. Is there a way to satisfy both?
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Life and Work on Carrer de Girona
by James A. Bacon If you live on Carrer de Girona in Barcelona, as my family and I have for the past few days, and you have a sudden craving for a green pepper, a bottled water, a Filipinos chocolate treat or a Red Bull at 11:00 at night, you just roll out of the…
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Now, That’s a Street!
by James A. Bacon The city planners of Barcelona, as I pointed out in my previous post, pay great attention to the details of street design. In contrast to the United States, where planners and traffic engineers design streets to optimize the movement of automobiles, Barcelonians endeavor to strike a balance between all users of…
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World-Class Walkability in Barcelona
by James A. Bacon I have spent barely one day in the city of Barcelona and I can tell you three things that I dislike: the ubiquitous graffiti, the giant, ungainly recycling bins at many street corners, and the faint but unmistakable odor of sewage emanating from the city’s subterranean labyrinth. But if I tried…
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Gulp. Wal-Marts Increase Nearby Property Values
by James A. Bacon Intellectuals love to hate Wal-Mart. A vast cottage industry exists for the sole purpose of criticizing and thwarting the the opening of new stores. I suppose you could call me a fellow traveler. While I respect the retail giant for pioneering a logistical revolution that has squeezed tremendous costs out the…