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.
Creating a city to fight crypto noise: A community in Hood County Texas could vote soon to create a new city in order to regulate nuisances including noise from a nearby crypto mining operation. Fans from over 60,000 computers used to mine bitcoin are creating a sound that residents find unpleasant. (Colleen DeGuzman | The Texas Tribune)
Caltrain makes money generating power: Caltrain’s electric trains are now making money for the agency by returning power to the electric grid through regenerative braking. They are expected to make $1m a year from this process. Caltrain currently runs on 100% renewable energy created by solar and wind power generators. (Metro Magazine)
Paris sets bike ridership record: Paris has logged a record number of bike trips along a single route that opened just two years ago with over 21,000 riders. Government officials believe the continued increase in cycling is additional vindication for their program of creating a safer bike infrastructure for riders. In addition to more riders, the city has seen reduced pollution, less noise, and less traffic injuries. (Ron Johnson | Momentum Magazine)
Chinese lower tier cities and retail: Mid-tier cities in China differ from thier larger global counterparts in how retail emerges. After visiting 30 mid-tier cities in 60 days, Olivia Plotnick notes that international brands trying to gain a foothold in mid-tier cities have a hard time competing with Chinese brands and many younger people are opting for a different kind of retail experience that connects to an online one. The sale of EVs is also a major part of upscale mall experiences. (Olivia Plotnick | Campaign Asia)
Everything you need to know about SB379: M. Nolan Gray marvels in the passage of SB379 which would allow developers in California to build up to 9 stories in areas proximate to transit. The bill is being hailed as transformative, especially in YIMBY circles, but what does the bill actually allow. Observers may be interested to find a lot of nuance such as proximity alone may not qualify but actual access to the station area. (Nolan Gray | Arbitrary Lines)
This week on the Talking Headways podcast, we’re joined by Adele Houghton of the Harvard School of Public Health and Carlos Castillo-Salgado of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to discuss their new book Architectural Epidemiology: Architecture as a Mechanism for Designing a Healthier, More Sustainable, and Resilient World.
Quote of the Week
“Mokyr’s case for the primacy of knowledge and ideas was not an easy one to make to economists. They are naturally drawn to data that can be counted, and not to narrative, often no matter how well evidenced. But it appears that Mokyr’s persistence, elevated by his infectious, irrepressible sprightliness, has paid off.”
— Anton Howes in Works Progress discussing how Joel Mokyr won the Nobel Prize for Economics by focusing on qualitative data instead of more popular quantitative methods.