The new Kansas City streetcar.
Every day at The Direct Transfer we collect news about cities and send the links to our email list. At the end of the week we take some of the most popular stories and post them to Greater Greater Washington, a group blog similar to streets.mn that focuses on urban issues in the DC region. They are national links, sometimes entertaining and sometimes absurd, but hopefully useful.
Bicycles. They’re a mystery: Even though bicycles have been around over 100 years, we still aren’t sure about the physics of why they work. Two competing theories, the gyroscopic and caster, are still being debated. A new research lab could solve the mystery once and for all. (Fast Company Design)
A successful streetcar: Given the poor ridership numbers for a lot of new streetcar projects around the country, it might surprise you to hear that Kansas City’s new streetcar line has exceeded expectations. It’s averaging over 6,600 riders a day even though it’s a relatively short line, it’s free to ride and goes through an up and coming district, and there are extensions on the way. (Slate)
Moving downtown… kind of: Many US corporations have long preferred suburban headquarters, but a number of CEOs are moving their offices downtown in hopes of attracting high-skill workers. At the same time, some are keeping lower wage jobs in suburbs and smaller cities, leading to questions of equity. (New York Times)
Where are all the great urban spaces?: In the last fifty years, the US has slowed down on building small streets with human scale buildings, and there’s been an explosion of sprawl. If city administrators want great urban places, they need to focus on non-auto transportation and streets that put stores, schools, homes, and churches within walkable distances. (Governing Magazine)
A home to grow old in: Universal design is a way of designing places for people of all ages and abilities. Having a gradual slope instead of steps so that wheelchairs can access a room is one example of the practice. Designers don’t always apply the practice to housing, especially those building in bulk, but with so many people aging, it’s becoming more necessary to create dwellings that accommodate people through all stages of life. A Seattle company that makes prefabricated housing is focusing on universal design. (Fast Company Design)
Redevelopment in London: For a long time, the area around King’s Cross rail station in London was a mixture of banged up and dangerous. But over the last few decades, redevelopment around the district’s old rail lines and canals have formed the centerpiece of a great urban place. (Travel and Leisure)
Quote of the Week
“Hoover’s zoning program, however, was created specifically to facilitate master-planned suburbs on virgin land. It was never designed to work in existing, built-out areas. So it should come as no surprise that today’s city planners struggle to shoehorn urban diversity into suburban zoning schemes that assume car-dominated mobility and a neat separation of uses.”
Mott Smith and Mark Vallianatos in the Los Angeles Times, discussing why we need to stop zoning and planning in cities as if they were suburbs.
Cross Posted at Greater Greater Washington