Every day, The Overhead Wire collects news about cities and sends the links to their email list. At the end of the week they 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 D.C. region. They are national and international links, sometimes entertaining or absurd but often useful.
Missoula housing park goes co-op: In Missoula, Montana, residents of a manufactured housing park were able to purchase their living units and establish a resident-owned cooperative. NeighborWorks Montana, which boosts homeownership through education and financing, negotiated prices and reviewed the new bylaws. Now people’s rent money will go to community maintenance and upgrades instead of to a landlord. (Katie Fairbanks | Missoula Free Press)
High-speed rail for Canada: In the coming weeks, the Canadian government will announce plans for a high-speed rail line between Toronto and Quebec City. The 300-kilometer/hour train would take travelers between Montreal and Toronto in three hours, a trip that takes five and a half hours in a car today. The price tag is currently unknown (and no one’s even speculating). Design before construction will take four to five years. (Thomas Gerbet, Louis Blouin and Mathieu Prost | CBC News)
A car-free Congress Avenue: A proposal to make sections of Congress Avenue in Austin, Texas, car-free has been released to the public. The first segment of the $130 million project sourced from a 2020 transportation bond measure would take a section between 9th and 11th streets and open it up to walking, biking and dining. Construction on the first phase could start in 2025. (Mason Rouser | KUT)
Greening concrete: To create cement for concrete, limestone is mined, ground up and baked at 1,500 degrees Celsius, usually using fossil fuels. When mixed with a specific kind of sand along with gravel and water, cement is the binder that creates the concrete we use for buildings, roads and infrastructure. But as climate change bears down, companies are looking for ways to make the endeavor greener either through the heating process or by capturing emissions when cement is created and storing them underground. (Christian Schwägerl | Yale e360)
Radical contract protecting Hamburg’s green spaces: Nature reserves make up 10% of Hamburg’s land, more than any other state in Germany. And the preservation of green space will continue given that city officials and a citizens’ initiative signed a contract in 2019 that would protect 30% of the land area. This contract has provisions for offsetting damages from development, making sure that existing areas are developed more intensely and improving natural impacts of the preserved areas. (Ajit Niranjan | The Guardian)
This week on the Talking Headways podcast, we’re joined by Cameron Mays, lead singer of the public transit-themed band The Frans. We chat about transit in Cleveland, the songwriting process for transit music and the parking lot in Erie, Pennsylvania, that inspired him.
Quote of the Week
“I love the optimism of competition. But sometimes it’s so much energy that design practices don’t really materialize. We were drawn to this one because of its call to be built and to make a difference at the city scale; the city was making the call, rather than a private institution, which is a bit different.”
— Chana Haouzi, founder of Architecture for Public Benefit, discussing in Dwell Magazine how architecture competitions don’t always result in buildings
Photo at top by Stephanie Davison on Unsplash