Neighborhoods are designed, slowly and constantly, by the people who live in them. We make decisions about what gets built and who gets to use it or live in it through a network of community meetings, zoning boards, and city and state governments. In the process we create something we call “housing policy”. I have […]
Here’s an interesting map from a blogpost by the terrific Chicago-based writer, Aaron Renn. The map comes from a Pew Charitable Trust report that offers some population projections. This one shows the “workforce” data, the number of people in the peak working demographic of 25-54. Here you go: It’s interesting to me because Minneapolis / […]
If you ever attend pub quizzes you will be familiar with the question format where three things are listed and participants must say how they are related. Quick – welfare queens, performance incentives, and public transportation. How are they related? Stumped? Read on to find out. Myth of the Welfare Queen The myth of the […]
The erstwhile Scott Shaffer breaks down four ways of looking at vehicle miles travelled (VMT) data on his Tumblr — total, per capita, per vehicle, and per driver. Compare the results: For some reason he starts talking about Monica and Russ: VMT per capita in Minnesota has been steady or dropping since about 2004. Quick […]
This week, Walker wrote an excellent post comparing crash statistics and the structural responses to incidents by mode in the wake of the Amtrak derailment. It’s a great read with great questions, and we are reminded once again how safe we’ve made rail and air travel relative to other modes. But one thing sticks out to me […]
The wave of new “Complete Streets” laws require cities to develop “Complete Streets Plans” and new street design manuals. Street design manuals are like smart phone contracts or software download agreements. They tend to be so mind-numbingly boring and full of technical jargon that, rather than read them, we just click “agree.” Later on, we […]