Des' City Links of the Week
This week's planning, transport, and urban development links of interest
Hi everyone,
Here are a few interesting reads on cities, development, and transport that I’ve come across recently. Please share!
Planning/Development
Here’s how Denver put together a program for 500 projects over ten years, financed by $937M of property tax-backed bonds:
https://www.denvergov.org/Neighborhood/Elevate-Denver
How does Houston plan without zoning?
https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/04/25/sunday-video-how-does-houston-plan-without-zoning/ [video]
Mercatus webinar May 18: https://www.mercatus.org/events/land-use-without-zoning-putting-ideas-practice
Let’s browse the City of Toronto guidelines for mall redevelopment:
https://www.toronto.ca/city-government/planning-development/official-plan-guidelines/design-guidelines/mall-redevelopment-guide/
“It’s not just the above sort of transactional rulemaking that is the problem, where the goal is to grant exemptions from the rule in exchange for some concession. The whole history of urban planning and zoning is rife with the use of pretext to achieve unstated goals that have a questionable public purpose at best, a totally appalling one at worst.”
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/4/29/pretextual-planning-is-absolutely-everywhere
Interesting take on the reasons to do more to enable small lot urbanism:
https://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20210412.php
Office to residential conversions are in the news all over the place these days.
https://slate.com/business/2021/04/residential-conversions-housing-offices-manhattan-boston.html
Mobility/Transport
Ten great quotes from a compelling book on normalizing cycling in France:
https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/transports/2021/04/29/le-livre-pourquoi-pas-le-velo-de-stein-van-oosteren-en-10-citations/ [FR]
Good read on the merits and drawbacks of open versus closed bus rapid transit designs:
https://humantransit.org/2021/04/basics-should-bus-rapid-transit-be-open-or-closed.html
Good read on the concept of continuous sidewalks across side street intersections:
https://beyondtheautomobile.com/2021/04/28/side-street-crossings-where-the-sidewalk-ends-but-doesnt-have-to/
“But despite the terrible toll of motor vehicle deaths on our nation, I never launched to the scene of a traffic crash. Why? Perhaps because the NTSB only has the capacity to investigate a handful of vehicle crashes each year. Perhaps because there weren’t any crashes classified as major disasters when I was on duty. But in 2019, more than 36,000 deaths were recorded on U.S. roads, so an average of nearly 700 traffic deaths occurred every week I was on duty.”
https://www.governing.com/community/we-know-how-to-prevent-traffic-deaths-our-goal-should-be-zero