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Park Place
Maybe the inventors of Monopoly were onto something when they called their second most expensive property Park Place, because car storage is surprisingly costly. We think of it as cheap, because we so rarely pay for parking at the time when we are using it. More than 90 percent of the time, our cars end their trips in spaces for which there is no charge. But just because we’re not...Read more » -
When Your Parking Grows Up
On-street parking takes up a lot of space in North American cities: 5 to 8 percent of all urban land, according to UCLA urban planning professor Donald Shoup. If parking reforms like pricing curb spots end up reducing the need for curb parking in our cities, what will we do with all that extra space? As it turns out, Cascadian cities are already trying out some exciting new ideas. In...Read more » -
Wide Open Spaces
My younger son, almost 19, and my daughter, 20, are learning to drive this summer. (Car-less folks like us are sometimes late to the car-head rites of passage.) So I’m temporarily appreciating the wide open spaces of empty pavement at regional malls and big-box stores. Some of these parking lots are so big they generate their own mirages, and they’re vacant enough that my kids can’t do much damage. Such...Read more » -
Infographic: Living Space v. Parking Space
Your bedroom is smaller than your car’s—that and other surprising facts stand out in a new infographic we’ve assembled with architect and designer Seth Goodman of Graphing Parking. Mandatory off-street parking quotas written into local land-use laws have pernicious effects. At multifamily buildings, localities require developers to construct off-street parking spaces for each apartment or condominium. Many cities also require a side order of visitor parking. The requirements vary with...Read more » -
Weekend Reading 7/19/13
Alan There is absolutely no truth to the widespread rumors that my new e-book was actually written by J.K. Rowling. Racial stereotyping is subconscious, powerful, and pervasive. This Salon piece by Maya Wiley of the Center for Social Inclusion is one of the best I’ve read about the Trayvon Martin case. Anna Like a lot of Americans, I’ve been trying to make heads or tails of Trayvon Martin’s shooting and...Read more » -
Let’s Get Visual
People and faces win out over landscapes and objects. Photos of babies are always powerful---even in utero. And an ultrasound of a fetus is just surprising enough to grab attention. Photo Credit: Morten Liebach via Compfight cc
It’s time to get serious about getting visual. Leaving photos and video out of our communications, or dropping them in as mere afterthoughts, equates to lost opportunity. Here’s why. First, despite our better judgment, emotions drive our decisions. Neuroscientists, using highly sensitive brain scanning technology, have shown that our decisions and actions are based more on emotional reactions than rational thought. Second, humans are a visual species. Pictures and text...Read more » -
Huge Oil Train Explosion
One hopes the grim news from Quebec is not a preview for the Northwest. Early yesterday morning an oil train in the province derailed causing an explosion with deadly results:
Police spokesman Guy Lapointe said one person had died, and that toll would rise, but he declined to comment on media reports that anywhere between 40 and 80 people were missing. Four of the cars - which each carried 30,000 gallons of North Dakotan crude oil - caught fire and blew up in a fireball that mushroomed many hundreds of feet into the air.
One hopes the grim news from Quebec is not a preview for the Northwest. Early yesterday morning an oil train in the province derailed causing an explosion with deadly results: Police spokesman Guy Lapointe said one person had died, and that toll would rise, but he declined to comment on media reports that anywhere between 40 and 80 people were missing. Four of the cars – which each carried 30,000...Read more » -
Weekend Reading 6/28/13
Eric If there’s a better illustration of the short-sightedness of unsustainable economic development, I don’t know what it is. Crosscut’s Floyd McKay has an insightful look at the troubled Oregonian newspaper, which recently announced that is laying off many of the region’s best reporters. Harper’s magazine revives a 1933 piece by Robert Littell, What the Young Man Should Know. It’s a gem. Serena Clearly, the entire Ballard community knows that...Read more » -
Obama’s Climate Failure
When it comes to climate policy, I’m with country music star Toby Keith: we need a little less talk and a lot more action. So I didn’t listen to Obama’s big climate address yesterday because I already know that the President is a brilliant orator. I’m sure it was a great speech. Unfortunately, the speech didn’t say what many think it said. And it most definitely does not deserve the praise heaped upon it (here, here, here, here, and here among others) by what seems like practically every environmental group. Sweeping rhetoric isn’t going to convince me the Obama administration is serious about tackling climate change. We need to see a coherent plan, and what we got instead was... sweeping rhetoric.
When it comes to climate policy, I’m with country music star Toby Keith: we need a little less talk and a lot more action. So I didn’t listen to Obama’s big climate address yesterday because I already know that the President is a brilliant orator. I’m sure it was a great speech. Unfortunately, the speech didn’t say what many think it said. And it most definitely does not deserve the...Read more » -
Weekend Reading 6/21/13
Eric Dan Savage compares the beginning of the AIDS epidemic to the politics of climate change in a way that I found extraordinarily powerful. “We have declared war on nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution.” The good folks at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives lay out what is perhaps the crispest and most forceful argument I’ve yet seen for opposing Port Metro Vancouver’s proposal to build...Read more »
