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.
Use the subway for transit: Every few decades comes a new push to make something out of Cincinnati’s abandoned subway tunnels. Those were only partially finished due to the inflationary pressures of World War I, and then the Great Depression killed the project entirely. Given that the tunnels’ water main is coming to the end of its useful life, perhaps it’s time to revive the idea of a subway for transit again. (Joshua Lawrence Junker | Cincinnati Enquirer)
Oregon voters reject a state basic-income rebate: Oregon voters were asked whether the state’s minimum tax on large companies should be increased to give every resident of the state a $750 tax rebate; for some residents with low incomes, it could have been a direct cash payment. Corporations came out in force against the proposal, known as Measure 118 (the Oregon Rebate), and it failed by a wide margin. A number of elected officials, including Governor Tina Kotek, also opposed it. Other states have even written laws banning the practice. (Erika Bolstad | Pew Stateline)
Creating Dreamtroit: Two artists have taken an old car factory in Detroit and transformed it into a haven for artists, including studio space and affordable housing. Half the units in the space, called Dreamtroit, are reserved for artists making less than $40,000 per year, and some of the spaces rent for just $365 a month. As major institutional investors redevelop the area around the factory, Dreamtroit will stand out as “a point of resistance.” (Patricia Leigh Brown | New York Times)
Day Zero never came, but reforms needed: Mexico City was perilously close to running out of water, headlines said, but timely rainfall and better water management have relieved the pressure. For now. The near-miss started larger discussions about how the city could better manage its water systems, especially given the recent election of a new president. (Maya Averbuch | Bloomberg CityLab)
Traffic models and highway spending: Billions of dollars have been wasted on highway expansions sold to the public through black-box traffic models trained to get results that point toward a need for bigger highways. Journalists Ben Ross and Joe Cortright use two examples of projects they have been following — the Interstate 5 Columbia River Crossing plan in Portland, Oregon, and Maryland’s toll-lane expansion — to show how the process has been perverted, pushing aside actual solutions to congestion. (Ben Ross and Joe Cortright in Dissent Magazine)
This week on the Talking Headways podcast we’re joined by Cassidy Boulan and Thom Stead of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC).
Quote of the Week
“Those who don’t see themselves in those images or who live in built-up areas may feel as if cycling is not for them because they are not also white, slim, or able-bodied and do not have widespread access to green spaces and calmer roads on which to cycle.”
— A report by the UK climate-action charity Possible, shared in Forbes, on the lack of diversity in cycling imagery