Category Archives: Urban

The New York area famously accounts for something like 40% of all U.S. transit trips.1 New York may do even better when it comes to pedestrian trips, but these are a great deal harder to measure. New York’s walkscore (89.2) ranks first, but … Continue reading →

Costa Rica is in many ways one of the world’s most admirable countries. It gave up its army in 1949 and has been a democracy ever since, holding freely contested elections every four years. No other Latin American country has … Continue reading →

I visited the parklands created by the Madrid Río project1 a couple of weeks ago. The area had still been under construction in 2010 when I was last in Madrid. The Madrid Río project is of course one of the world’s most famous … Continue reading →

Most of the new, short, slow, and infrequently-running streetcar lines built in the United States in the last few years appear to have been constructed at least to some extent for reasons having little to do with any possible role as transportation facilities. Many seem … Continue reading →

Among all of what today are the largest cities of the United States, Phoenix was very nearly the smallest in the middle of the 20th century.1 In 1950 it had only 106,818 people—it was smaller than New Bedford!—and its metropolitan … Continue reading →

When I was in Los Angeles three weeks ago, I naturally rode the new Expo Line between Santa Monica and downtown a couple of times. I can confirm that the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority has a hit on its … Continue reading →

I spent a few days in Kuala Lumpur last week. While travelling I was reading a terrific book, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya : negotiating urban space in Malaysia,1 by Ross King, a professorial fellow at Melbourne University. I had been in KL … Continue reading →

An important article by Mark R. Stevens in the January 2017 issue of the Journal of the American Planning Association1 suggests that an increase in population density leads only to a modest decrease in automobile use. The article is based … Continue reading →

Building urban rail lines has always been expensive, and one of the consequences of this is that many more lines have been proposed than built. The shelves of Northwestern University’s excellent Transportation Library, for example, contain approximately 75 books or reports … Continue reading →