Category: Cars

The Rite and Wrong of Driving

Contributor and transportation leader Mary Morse Marti responds to Ross Douthat’s recent column in the New York Times about driving, asking: Is it really a rite of passage?

A dense city street.

National Links: Rethinking City Sounds

What if we rethought sound in busy cities? In Rotterdam, city officials believe that train bells and other noises are just background noise, but to many, it’s an unbearable hum. Still, some are looking for ways to extract and enhance new sounds to create new and valuable urban experiences.

A restaurant sits vacant.

National Links: Dark Stores and Geographic Gas Taxes

Around the country more dark stores and ghost kitchens are popping up in empty retail spaces. These stores, which promise 15-minute deliveries of food and goods, don’t have a front door and can’t be patronized on foot. Along with e-commerce, they are also wreaking havoc on local businesses and impacting the soul of cities in a way that will be hard to recover.

Excavators at the site of a demolished building.

National Links: No More Demolition

For half a century cities like St. Louis felt that demolition was the best way to solve urban ills tied to out-migration and decay. But according to Tony Nipert, this can result in another type of displacement through neglect. And solutions that include rehabilitation only result in more demolition 10 years later if actions aren’t taken to get people into those homes. Other solutions are needed to revitalize neighborhoods in cities.

Summer 2022 Highway News Roundup

Google Maps Silliness Minnesota has about a hundred legally named highways and bridges, written into law in Minnesota Statute § 161.14. Some of the early ones like the Viking Trail and the Sioux Trail were possibly intended to mark motoring touring routes. But overwhelmingly the highways are named in memory of local politicians, veterans or […]