Every day, The Overhead Wire collects national and international news about cities and sends the links to their email list. At the end of the week they post some of the most popular stories to Greater Greater Washington, a group blog similar to Streets.mn that focuses on urban issues in the D.C. region.
Airplanes as neighbors: The Santa Monica Airport in California is set to close for good in 2028. But some residents are fighting to extend airport operation into 2029 to avoid building more housing on part of the site originally designated as park space. The site represents an opportunity to redevelop 200 acres in a city known for high housing costs and homelessness; however, opponents to affordable housing do not want any of that land to be available for allocation before the next California Housing Element Law is due for review in 2029. (Jack Ross | Fast Company)
What is a third place, really?: Coming out of the pandemic, when bars and restaurants either shuttered or disappeared, lamentations on the dearth of third places are commonplace. This discussion has inspired a question of what, exactly, a third place is: Is it a place where people can socialize for an affordable cost, or must it necessarily be free? Is it somewhere people engage in a common activity or a place people can just be? Perhaps everyone just needs a place to hang out, be social and feel safe. (Jaya Saxena | Eater)
Regional rail could benefit urban riders: Cities in the United States build commuter rail lines for the benefit of suburban commuters. In other cities around the world where commuter and local rail are integrated, trips within the urban center represent an outsized fraction of ridership. On Berlin’s S-Bahn, only a quarter of the ridership comes from suburban locations, suggesting the suburban mobility is supported by heavy network use within the urban center. (Alon Levy | Pedestrian Observations)
Supreme Court starts a permitting revolution: An 8-0 U.S. Supreme Court decision (with Justice Neil Gorsuch sitting out) reduces the required depth of Environmental Impact Studies (EIS) for compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Second-order effects downstream of a project no longer need to be considered, the court said. In this case specifically, construction of a new railroad to export crude oil need only be examined for its local construction impacts, not the exportation of crude oil and the related acceleratory effect on global climate change. (Robinson Meyer | Heatmap)
The dark-roof lobby winning: Roofs made of lighter colored, reflective material — known as “cool roofs” — have been shown to reduce roof surface temperatures by up to 50 degrees Fahrenheit, increasing energy efficiency and reducing annual energy cost; however, roofing manufacturers, to maintain market share, have successfully lobbied rollbacks on rules and laws across the country that require such roofing materials. (Ames Alexander | The Guardian)
This week on the Talking Headways podcast, we’re joined by Kevin Krizek and Tila Duhaime to chat about an idea called “emergency streets,” which focuses on the proper response from cities after a fatal crash.
Quote of the Week
“The basic premise of the paper is, ‘Can rising rents help explain why you’re losing transit ridership?’ And it seems to be that they can, because they reduce the likelihood that very high transit riders will live near transit stops.”
— Michael Manville, professor and chair of urban planning at UCLA, in CalMatters discussing a recent paper on the connections between rising rents and lower transit ridership.