Interesting. From David Marlor:
I’m wondering if I’m the only person that does this. When looking at a city map or any network map, I like to look at it sideways or upside down. Our eyes are designed to see things horizontally, but we’re not that good at seeing things vertically (probably why we like wide-screen TVs). So when we scan a map, we look left and right, more so than up and down. Continue Reading →
Peter Parker of Melbourne on Transit makes a link between my serene sprawl post and the “Be on the Way” principle.
To my mind the most serene are when homes are dotted along one road between two towns. In other words being on the way! Continue Reading →
The City of Sydney just released its Draft Car Sharing Policy (Item 4 here). The Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph has a respectful story here, although the print edition of the same story carried a more lurid headline, “Clover’s car wars speed up.” Continue Reading →
Advocates of dense and sustainable urban form often have trouble appreciating how serene suburban sprawl can be to some eyes. The Boston Globe has a marvellous collection of Google Earth images of Florida sprawl, including both complete developments and bankrupt, incomplete ones.
This post is sentimental and off-topic, apart from its obvious link to the triumphs of Canadian transit and of Vancouver in particular. But hey, it’s my blog.
Though I lived in Canada for only a year, I hope my fondness for the country comes through in this sentimental meditation on Canadian thanksgiving. I wrote it five years ago around this time, when I was based in Vancouver, but it all feels true enough today.
Thanksgiving Day in Canada is Monday, October 11. May it be a day of joy and gratitude for all of HT’s Canadian readers, and for anyone who’s ever admired their remarkable nation.
Yesterday I posted some data we were playing with, suggesting that Canadian cities have consistently higher transit ridership than similar US ones. Commenter Matt pointed me to his own charts on the subject, which are based on Paul Mees’s database. One of Matt’s charts makes use of citywide average density, a stat to which I’m allergic for reasons explained here and here. But here’s the other one. Continue Reading →
[T]he comforts of the [Manhattan’s] rich still depend on the abundance of its poor, the municipal wealth and well-being as unevenly distributed as in the good old days of the Gilded Age. When seen at a height or a distance, from across the Hudson River or from the roof of Rockefeller Center, Manhattan meets the definitions of the sublime. At ground level Manhattan is a stockyard, the narrow streets littered with debris and laid out in the manner of cattle chutes, the tenements and storefronts uniformly fitted to fit the framework of a factory or a warehouse.
— Lewis Lapham, “City Light”, Lapham’s Quarterly, 7 October 2010 Continue Reading →
Some colleagues and I have lately had occasion to compare public transit performance in young metro areas of 1-3 million, across North America and Australasia, and we’ve been turning up draft charts like this one (click to enlarge): Continue Reading →
Is there anything wrong with calling a group of people “transit users” or “riders”? Is there anything wrong with calling yourself such a thing? Continue Reading →
Andy Riga of the Montreal Gazette interviewed me on Frequent Network branding, in response to the roll out of such a brand by their local transit agency, the STM. Continue Reading →