Harry Hull, in a letter to the Star-Tribune regarding this woefully misleading article (via thedependentclause)

It will probably save the city money in the long run since biking means less congestion, less road damage, fewer traffic injuries, more local business, etc etc so the argument that we can’t hire a biking and walking coordinator during a budget crisis is ridiculous. PLUS we just got national attention for being named #1 bike city in the US

(via practicalobscurity)

Malcolm Cowley (via theparisreview)

Because everybody knows that people who cannot walk - for one reason or another - simply have no creative bones in their bodies. Nope. No sir. /sarcasm

(via jemimaaslana)

Are you accusing the quote of saying that you have to be a walker to be creative?

The author was asked if he has any mnemonic devices that help his creative process. He said that a lot of people use walking and then said the quoted sentence. It doesn’t at all imply that people who can’t or don’t walk can’t be creative too. It’s just that walking contributes to overall creativity, and if one of those contributing factors declines then the sum total declines as well.

Like some people prefer eating apples and some don’t. If apples were to go extinct it would make sense that the overall fruit consumption would decline, if only for a little while, even though eating apples is not the only way to eat fruit. Some people will still eat fruit even if apples declined, just like some people would still be creative if walking declined.

(via jemimaaslana)

(via scottdshaffer)

tehsunshine:

The Science Guy is always right.

Charles Siegel, author of Unplanning: Livable Cities and Political Choices, points out the flaws of modern city planning and proposes new models on how we can return (if there ever was) to the golden age of American urban living. One of my favorite plans attempts to regulate automobile traffic…

newleft:

Streetfilms takes a bike ride around the city with the NY Times Magazine’s “Ethicist,” Randy Cohen.

newleft:

Earlier this month, both Harvard economist Edward Glaeser and Next American City’s very own Yonah Freemark wrote about the anti-urban bias embedded in the way that the federal government dispenses transportation money.Glaeser brings up one particularly horrifying statistic: that a federally-funded “highway passing through a central city reduces its population by about 18 percent,” and explains how federally-funded roads, subsidized homeownership and the peculiarities of our school system have made urban America less attractive over the decades, and how the government could help right that wrong.

Yonah, on the other hand, points out how state DOTs have far too much power in allocating funds, and a tendency to do so in short-sighted ways. Also, he points out, our leaders in Washington kow-tow to the powerful AASHTO (American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials) lobby when working on reauthorizing the transportation spending bill, and that has the obvious result of maintaining the status quo.

Since then, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood announced a “sea change” in the US DOT’s transportation spending. As he put it on his blog: “This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized. We are integrating the needs of bicyclists in federally-funded road projects. We are discouraging transportation investments that negatively affect cyclists and pedestrians.”

What, exactly, this means has been the subject of a bit of debate.

“This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized.

We are integrating the needs of bicyclists in federally-funded road projects. We are discouraging transportation investments that negatively affect cyclists and pedestrians. And we are encouraging investments that go beyond the minimum requirements and provide facilities for bicyclists and pedestrians of all ages and abilities.”

newleft:

When it comes to transportation in America, it’s all about the states. State departments of transportation determine how federal highway dollars are distributed. State legislatures choose whether to allow cities and counties to tax themselves for the purposes of improved transportation. And state approval is necessary when regions want to create transit districts. The result: Cities and their suburbs are stuck when they want to plan and finance alternative transportation.

Today’s Washington is not doing enough to stem that state power. Our national leaders are beholden to the interests of state departments of transportation, and that’s a terrible thing.

Indeed, the strength of state governments in making transportation decisions is one of the primary culprits for the highway-dependent state of the American landscape, in addition to the federal urban renewal policies and Interstate Highway legislation that are more typically singled out for blame. This fact comes to the serious detriment of metropolitan areas, which lack the fiscal ability and legal right to make full decisions about their transportation futures.

The most obvious example of the negative consequences of state control over transportation spending is the fact that even though most highway transportation appropriations (called “flex dollars”) can be used for any type of transportation, including transit, virtually all of it is spent on roads construction.

That’s because the politics of almost every state are dominated by rural and suburban constituents, or, in other words: car drivers. The urban transit users, pedestrians, and bike riders are typically at the back of the pack when it comes to representation.

Relevant to my daily life and activist work.