Greater City Providence

News & Notes

avoiding car-centered language: a directive [Human Transit]

Yes, crash sounds emotive while accident sounds cool, so it’s easy to assume that accident is more objective or factual. But sometimes the facts are emotive, and only an emotive word will accurately describe them. The directive even notices that avoiding the emotive word can constitute an emotional bias in the other direction: “Sheila was in a car accident!” “Oh no, I hope she’s OK!” “Well, she killed three cyclists, so she’s pretty upset!” “How terrible! I’ll send her some flowers.”

Human landscapes in SW Florida [The Big Picture]

Save-A-Lot (grocery store) Grows by Targeting Low-Income Neighborhoods [Retail Traffic]

Reclaim Your Streets: How to Create Safe and Social Pedestrian Plazas [Yes!]

Ten tips for planners to convert a shopping center into a village center [New Urban Network]

Driven Apart: How Sprawl Is Lengthening Our Commutes and Why Misleading Mobility Measures Are Making Things Worse [CEO for Cities]

Driven Apart ranks how long residents in the nation’s largest 51 metropolitan areas spend in peak hour traffic, and in some cases the rankings are almost the opposite of those listed in the 2009 Urban Mobility Report.

For instance, the UMR depicts Chicago as having some of the worst travel delays, when it actually has the shortest time spent in peak hour traffic of any major US metro area. In contrast, Nashville jumped from 31st to first on the list of those with the longest peak travel times.

Greater City Providence

Promoting the smart urban growth of the Greater Providence region.

1 comment

  • As a Floridian stuck in SW Florida suburbs those pictures pretty much sum this place up. It takes about 15 minutes to walk to the closest store, eatery or library from where I am. It’s really depressing. When we tell people we try to walk as much as possible they are always shocked and stupefied. “Everything is too far away! Its way too hot!” … well yeah, it is, and it sucks. Also notice the lack of sidewalks. Not only is it hot and humid most of the year, there is barely any trees to hide from the shade when you do walk anywhere, it can be scary with no place to walk but the streets its no surprise most people here are flabbergasted to hear of people actually trying to commute on foot. There’s hardly ever anything to break up the monotony of house after house either, the only public green space we have are medians.

    Another common thing to hear down here is people in Golden Gate Estates complaining about the wildlife. Yeah no wonder you have panthers roaming around your backyard, you and thousands more just had to go live on your own private 2 and half acres in the middle of the everglades. -sigh=

    /End rant. I can’t wait to get up to Providence.

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