I would like to follow-up on my Planning for People in Jefferson Park post and expand a bit on what it means to “plan for people”. For at least the past 60 years, the architecture, planning and engineering professions have fundamentally changed the way they designed cities. Cities, a creation of the human race for…
I have been an enthusiastic adopter of the term “suburban experiment” after having following the magnificent work that Strong Towns does up in Minnesota. But it came to my attention that I have not fully explained it and applied it here in Chicago. So, I’d like to take a step back. Of course, since I did…
There is nothing wrong with friendly competition. I laughed when I saw this image and read this article on Streetsblog. But the truth of the matter is that this makes a lot of sense. I’m talking about transportation investment in cities. It’s been clear for some time now that the suburban experiment is coming to…
In my hometown, Chicago, the CTA raised fares today. Lots of people are upset, and for good reason. In many cases it’s easy to blame the low hanging fruit – mismanagement, corruption, government waste, high salaries and benefits, etc. Often, the 800 pound gorilla in the room is none of these things. Raising fares is…
Building off of my previous post on suburban poverty, I briefly touched on the aspect of infrastructure. I mentioned that municipalities and transit agencies (really all government agencies) will be hard pressed to keep up their existing infrastructure, let alone create new infrastructure in a financially sustainable way. Much has been written on this topic,…