Left Urbanism
- www.tampabay.com Florida shows how to make passenger rail work
The money is in routes too long to drive, too short to fly.
If you hit a paywall: https://archive.ph/xeJIi
- www.fox13news.com Brightline to offer sing-along train rides to Taylor Swift concerts in Florida
Taylor Swift will play a couple of shows in the Sunshine State this fall, and Brightline is offering special rides for Swifties to get there in style.
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SPARK! Organizing for Revolution: Summer School @ TPF 2024
a six-week hybrid course for organizers, visionaries, and all who are committed to struggle to build a new world. Through bi-weekly classroom sessions, discussion, and developing a practice of revolutionary study, participants will strengthen their methodology to analyze the past and present, build capacity for organized struggle by studying examples of revolutionary processes around the world, and clarify a collective vision for the future. It’s a chance to meet new friends and comrades, exchange, study, discuss, and put theory into practice!
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Strategic planning for degrowth: what, who, how. A teaser by Federico Savini
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- skillissue.bearblog.dev Finding an apartment is needlessly difficult
Finding an apartment is an unforgiving journey unto its own, actually I'd say it's a full-time job in certain areas of the world. So if you already work, stu...
- www.nytimes.com Colorado’s Bold New Approach to Highways — Not Building Them
The state has made it harder to widen highways, and transportation officials are turning their eyes to transit.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/16321714
> Alternative link: https://archive.ph/BxMKZ
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The NYTimes is once again trashing the most promising mobility innovation of the 21st century
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/16133154
> Link to original Tweet: https://x.com/DavidZipper/status/1795048724021862898
- darrellowens.substack.com How Urban Renewal Ruined Everything
The destructive nature of urban renewal left the U.S. too scared to build anything at scale ever again.
- bikeportland.org Survey reveals depth of abuse women experience while biking
Only three out of every 10 bicycle riders are women.
- source.wustl.edu 'Modern-day redlining': Research investigates Wall Street-backed rental market - The Source - Washington University in St. Louis
Corporate investors “buy low and rent high” to populations who can least afford it. A two-year national study, led by Carol Camp Yeakey in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, will examine the impact that corporate investors have on renters, especially marginalized communities of c...
- usa.streetsblog.org Is Automated Enforcement Making U.S. Cities Safer or Just Raising Revenue? — Streetsblog USA
Cities should treat automated enforcement as a temporary tool as they build out holistically safe places. We can't punish our way to safe streets.
- www.cnu.org Guerilla Urbanism asks forgiveness, not permission
From toilet plungers for bike lanes to community gardens on vacant lots to locally sourced incremental development, citizens are finding creative ways to make urban space while bypassing traditional bureaucratic systems.
- usa.streetsblog.org What Urbanists' Doug Burgum Lovefest Reveals About the 'Why' Behind Our Advocacy — Streetsblog USA
I am far less interested in talking about Gov. Doug Burgum's politics than talking about his values, and how those values shape his urbanism, and thus the actual lives of the people he governs.
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How are the Dutch using trains to create a megacity? | Navigating Urban Transit with George Liu
YouTube Video
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New 2024 EU Night train map
High quality: https://back-on-track.eu/night-train-map/
Tweeted here: https://twitter.com/BackOnTrackEU/status/1733895843487326293
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Could this be a Solution to Gentrification?
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spoiler
Community land trusts!
- www.thelabofthought.co Why is efficiency more important to us than justice? — The Lab of Thought
In the not so very distant past, streets were seen differently than nowadays. Motorized transportation changed our streets, our language and created different type of jobs. All for the benefit to move people and goods fast from A to B, while in the meantime forgetting what we used the streets for in...
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The Power of Land: Georgism 101 - a video about Land Value Tax
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- www.nytimes.com This Is Public Housing. Just Don’t Call It That.
Montgomery County, Md., like many places, has an affordable housing crisis. So it started acting like a benevolent real estate investor.
- www.theverge.com People are using Google Maps to cut down tailpipe pollution
Google Maps shows users more fuel-efficient driving routes.
- www.vice.com Lyft, the Largest Bikeshare Operator in North America, Wants Out of the Business
Lyft’s CEO recently said the company isn’t doing a good enough job directing bikeshare riders to taxi trips.
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What I learned from taking a train across the US
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Not exactly urbanism but transport is important
- www.dezeen.com The Line architects explain Saudi mega city in documentary
Architects including Thom Mayne, Peter Cook and Reinier de Graaf have explained the thinking behind the planned megacity The Line in a recently released 45-minute documentary.
Drink once every time they say or imply "innovation"
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Why Passenger Train Manufacturing Is Booming In The U.S
YouTube Video
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- www.planetizen.com The 100 Most Influential Urbanists, Past and Present
Planetizen readers have decided the who's who of urbanism (and its discontents) in 2023.
- www.discoursemagazine.com Montreal Shows What a City Can Be
Montreal proves that—in North America, in the middle of a largely car-oriented, suburban country—a vibrant, pleasant, safe and truly urban big city can thrive. It incorporates aspects of an old European city and a modern city, reinforcing a diverse, distributed commercial and social milieu. And unli...
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Sustainable Urban Water Systems
www.coursera.org Sustainable Urban Water SystemsOffered by Politecnico di Milano. The MOOC “Sustainable Urban Water Systems” aims to provide knowledge about modern and sustainable ... Enroll for free.
- www.motherjones.com Legalize jaywalking!
Bans hurt poor people and people of color. Cities and states are catching on.
- prospect.org Getting Across Baltimore
Gov. Wes Moore’s credibility in the largest city in Maryland rides on building a light-rail line long blocked by racist fears.
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making the case for PHIMBYism not YHIMBYism
(Speaking from a USA perspective) How do we start to convince people that building and maintaining housing should be funded through public funds and the decisions should be made by the public? It's hard to educate the well-meaning general public to be skeptical of the developers that roll into town and claim to be able to build affordable housing. The programs our cities often rely on aren't meeting the reality of what our communities need in terms of long-term pricing, quality of housing, and related resources. What do we do?
- www.strongtowns.org Jersey City Achieved Zero Traffic Deaths on Its Streets. Here’s How They Did It.
Jersey City made headlines in 2022 when it accomplished what Vision Zero advocates have been championing for years: zero traffic deaths on city streets. Here are some lessons other communities can take from their efforts.
- www.architectural-review.com Cuba’s Urban Farming Revolution: How to Create Self-Sufficient Cities
When Cuba found itself abruptly cut off from trade with the Soviet bloc in 1989, the country entered...
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A critique of solarpunk
share.tube Chobani’s Solarpunk AdThis video was mostly a test to see if I could make video essays while cutting down on the time investment. Also I experimented with a bunch of different aspects in presentation. In retrospect, the results were mixed. I have a blog where I do more in-depth write-ups on political topics, I’d highly r...
Alternative youtube link if not working: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYjBaiczDkM
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Let's have a look at Guizhou! One of the poorest province in China!
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Despite being one of the poorest, this province is full of breathtaking nature wonders. In Guiyang city alone, there are lakes, waterfalls, caves, canyons, and mountains and over 500 parks. This video only shows a small corner of the city. People living here have easy access to nature more than most viewers can imagine. They have the best of two worlds!
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My interrail trip across Europe: 3 cities, 4 countries in 5 days
YouTube Video
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Thoughts on ferry based rapid or regional transit?
I live in Vancouver, and the SeaBus ferry across the bay is incredibly successful. Crosses Vancouver Harbour between Downtown Vancouver and North Vancouver in less than 15 minutes with service frequencies less than 10 minutes apart, with really low boarding and deboarding times too. There are numerous other systems like it in the world, too. And according to this Infographic:
And this one:
It seems that ferries have really low carbon emissions per passenger per unit distance, beating out busses and even most regional trains, so I assume they're really energy efficient in general.
So for costal cities or cities bisected by or bordering a river (which, most major cities fall into one or both categories) should we be investing in more ship based rapid and regional transport? I imagine it could be cheaper and faster to build from scratch than a brand new train line, since you only need to build out the docks and no track infrastructure since the water is already there. Imagine a rapid ferry zigzagging between the two coasts of a river, connecting the transit networks of either side without needing to use bridges (which are both expensive and tend to be choke points and bottlenecks for the transportation network). Or a bunch of ferries going up and down a row of coastal districts, or a star-shaped network across a bay or lake, when you would normally need to go around the perimeter?
Also, for systems like these that do exist, what are some well-running ones that could be used as examples? What about poorly running ones as examples of what not to do?