Do we have an innordinate amount of surface parking around our State House. Let’s see what our neighbors and peers look like.
Archives For Other Cities
CiclovÃÂas are an event where a major street(s) in a city is closed to automobiles and turned over to bikes (and pedestrians, and dancers, and performers, and a whole bunch of non-auto activity). The events started in Columbia, South America and have been spreading across the world, with Los Angeles getting into the action on 10/10/10 as seen in the video above.
Wikipedia describes CiclovÃÂa:
Each Sunday and holiday the main streets of Bogotá, Cali, MedellÃÂn, and other municipalities, are blocked off for the event to become Carfree. From 7 am to 2 pm, runners, skaters and bicyclists take over the streets. At the same time, stages are set up in city parks. Aerobics instructors, yoga teachers and musicians lead people through various performances. Bogotá’s weekly ciclovÃÂas are used by approximately 2 million people (30% of citizens) on over 120 km of carfree streets.
In Bogota, permanently designated bicycle lanes are also known as ciclo-rutas, while streets temporarily closed for that purpose are called ciclovÃÂas.
CiclovÃÂas happen in many cities but the inspiration is credited to Bogotá.[1] The events have taken place since 1976 when they started through the efforts of organizer Jaime Ortiz and others. Some credit Bogotá Mayor Hernando Duran Dusan with starting CiclovÃÂas in the early 1980s. Mayor Enrique Peñalosa deserves some credit for turning Bogotá into a safe cycling city by taking on the dominance of automobiles in the late 1990s.
So now the question is, if (when) we start a CiclovÃÂa in Providence, where and when should it be? How often should it be? What type of events should surround the CiclovÃÂa? Should it run all year..? Sound off in the comments.
→ Café Life, PDX Style: Recreating the Euro Bar
Nothing symbolizes the singular nature of European public life more than the ubiquitous neighborhood bar – a place where people of all ages gather for a variety of food and libations, including coffee, alcohol, ice cream and maybe a local delicacy or two such as anchovies or squid.
Such establishments, also known as snack bars or café-bars depending on the country, are more than community hangouts. Featuring ample outdoor seating, the Euro style bar is also an anchor for the lively street culture that is the envy of many an American urban planner.
→ ‘Piano Building’ tunes up
On the intersection’s northeast corner, Rhode Island-based CVS wanted to tear down existing businesses and homes to build a new store that neighbors criticized as not fitting with Dundee’s character.
That’s our CVS, destroying neighborhoods and soiling our state’s good name coast-to-coast. Good on ya. Oh, and in Norwich, CT they’re tearing down a building and 2 houses, and regrading a hill to build a 12,900 square foot store on a 1.78 acre site.
→ What Is It About 20-Somethings and Cars?
American young adults are driving less, says a recent piece in AdvertisingAge. Only 77 percent of 19-year-olds today have their license, compared to 92 percent in 1978. And the proportion of automobile miles driven by people aged 21 to 30 fell five percent in 2009, compared to 2001.
→ NYS Gov. David Paterson signs monumental smart growth bill into law
[Smart Growth America]
→The Childish Folly of Dubai
[UrbanPhoto]
→ Wind farm challenged in R.I. Supreme Court
Three entities have asked the Rhode Island Supreme Court to overturn the approval of the Block Island wind farm contract.
Attorney General Patrick Lynch, the Conservation Law Foundation and large industrial concerns Toray Plastics and Polytop Corp. argue that the state Public Utilities Commission approval of the Power Purchase Agreement reached between Deepwater Wind and National Grid was legally flawed on several levels.
→ America’s Ten Dead Cities: From Detroit To New Orleans
What this list does not take into account is the suburbanization of America and the fact that many of the sunbelt cities that have taken top spots in population are largely suburban in nature. Never-the-less it is interesting to look at where cities were, what contributed to their downfall, and consider how they should re-invent themselves for the 21st century.
→ Relocating Route 195: Cost more than double
“The people here hadn’t done these big projects before,” said Robert A Shawver, the DOT’s assistant director for financial planning. “We learned a lot and we’re improving. I think you can see from our managing our other projects that we’re doing well.”
Emphasis added. I mean… really.
→ How the Stimulus Is Changing America
[Time]
→ The State of the Interstate
Now, officials are contemplating taking I-10 down, as part of a national trend in which dismantling freeways is favored as a cheaper option than rehabilitation. But resistance to change runs deep in New Orleans. A proud sense of tradition, racial polarity, corruption and a history of inequitable large-scale redevelopment projects such as the construction of I-10 make many residents distrustful of any big changes  including, paradoxically, the dismantling of I-10.
According to the city’s master plan, dismantling the interstate would add only eight minutes to commute times. The existing I-610 acts as a bypass and Claiborne Avenue, still operational beneath I-10, is four lanes wide. Dense street grids, experts say, handle heavy traffic better than highways by providing routes off of main roadways at more frequent intervals  at blocks rather than at half-mile exits.
Think of the traffic queuing to get on Route 10 at Cranston Street, then think if there were a more permeable grid for that traffic to flow through.
→ Portland streetcar success has fueled interest elsewhere
[USA Today]
Yesterday we posted a great time lapse video of Japan. Today we find one focused on London:
Via: Urbanolphile
Check out this neat project at CitID. Designers around the world are using typography to showcase their cities. Check out the Providence entry by AJ Paglia:
Also, I’m in love with the Chicago design. No Pawtucket yet, what’s up with that!?
Via idsgn
Christopher T. McCahill and Norman Garrick look at how land use devoted to parking may turn our downtowns into a sort of office park in the city. Case in point, Hartford.
At the Travelers Companies, Inc. – an insurance company in the downtown where employees are charged between 70 and 125 dollars per month for parking – only 71 percent of employees choose to drive alone to work. In contrast, at enterprises where employee parking is free and ample (including the both the city and the state government offices in Downtown), between 83 and 95 percent drive alone to work.
Read more at Planetizen.
What Made a “Better Block”? Oh, Just the Fact You Could Walk, Shop, Drink and Hang Out and Not Get Run Over.
- Dallas Observer
Protected bike lane, road diet, parklet, pop-up retail, and it only took a day to put together.
