Note: If you can, give a bit of support to the folks in Houston.  I would recommend the Red Cross. 

I woke up this morning to the devastating news about Hurricane Harvey and the pummeling that Houston is taking from mother nature.  As a native Houstonian (annexation counts right?) we grew up with the threat of hurricanes and floods, the closest to me personally coming in 1994 when 20-30 inches of water dropped in a few days and led to a lot of homes in my part of the city getting flooded including those of close family friends.

So this morning on twitter Pro Publica, which wrote an amazing piece with the Texas Tribune recently about the dangers of potential flooding in Texas, was writing a twitter thread on the subject but said something rather odd.  They blamed a lot of things but one of them was Houston’s lack of zoning, saying how it caused a push for more sprawl.

3/ Climate change plays a role. So does Houston’s utter lack lack of zoning, and relentless development in flood-prone areas.

— ProPublica (@ProPublica) August 27, 2017

Folks that read this blog probably know that Houston lacks “zoning” BUT it still has everything bad you need for zoning in the development code, it’s just not use based.

And all the discussion got me thinking about what does lead to sprawling land uses in Texas that gobble up precious natural riparian zones.  There are a lot of things, but lack of “zoning” is not one of them.  But I can think of two…

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I got an email from a colleague today asking me if there was “a national standard for transit frequency ranges”. Off the top of my head I wasn’t sure, though I know 15 minute headways are generally seen as “frequent” when it comes to the new mapping standard.

So I did a bit of digging and found a paper from the Transportation Research Board. I skimmed through and as I was looking at some of the charts stumbled upon the exact answer I was looking for…a short simple chart that laid out a pretty simple frequency standard for urban service.

(more…)

Each day for The Overhead Wire I put together a list of the articles I think are most interesting about transportation and urban planning in cities. It usually takes me about six hours to put these together, first searching for articles through methods I’ve developed over the last ten years, sorting them based on topics, then sending them to an intern who tags each piece in our database with topic and place tags.

This process takes a lot of time and effort and up until now readers have been able to get access through The Overhead Wire website and the RSS feed for free. But ultimately that isn’t sustainable going forward for website or me personally.

The subscription model has been great thus far for the email service but in order to build towards a longer term goal of more original deep reporting and multimedia such as videos and podcasts the subscriber base needs to grow.

It’s for these reasons that I’ll be doing two things; putting up a paywall on the site for the news collection and archive search function and changing the name of the newsletter and site to The Overhead Wire.  Original blog posts will remain available on the site.

The Blogger site where The Overhead Wire originated will be an archive of past posts and the new site will be the new place for news and analysis in addition to collected articles. Even long time readers and supporters have been confused about the difference between The Overhead Wire and The Overhead Wire so I’m consolidating to The Overhead Wire alone.

I’m making this decision to support the long term sustainability of this work. And that’s where I need your help.

In order to continue sharing the amazing things that are going on in cities around the world and create a better searchable link database while moving towards hiring writers to cover original topics, I’d love for you all who have been reading The Overhead Wire site and the RSS feed to sign up. By subscribing you’ll have access to the articles on the website, the archive of tagged items now numbering over 38,000, and the new RSS feed.

You also deserve the same 20% discount I’ve extended to all long term readers who have been with me since the start.

Thank you all for being such loyal friends and readers. Together I hope we can build something amazing and that you’ll play an integral part.

For the discount, use the code “Transition” for the annual or monthly membership.

Hey All!

Thanks for keeping up with The Overhead Wire and The Overhead Wire in your RSS feeds or by checking back in to the website.  Many of you are using the RSS instead of getting the daily email and that’s awesome.  As many of you know, for nine years I’ve put together The Overhead Wire Daily (formerly The Other Side of the Tracks) and for the last few months (and a year+ with Tanya Snyder) have been doing the Talking Headways Podcast at StreetsblogUSA.  In my previous job there was a bit of support for these projects however now that I’m working on my own as a consultant that isn’t as sustainable.  It probably wasn’t sustainable before but I love doing it and still do.

I’d like to keep collecting news and podcasting to share information with folks who love cities.  Hopefully I can also write more at The Overhead Wire and here.  My intern Kelly has been loading news and writing posts and I need to keep paying her for that great work and pay for some of my time creating these resources.

So if you’re so inclined I would really appreciate your support.  The Patreon is a monthly subscription donation that you choose.  It can range from cents to $150 a month.  That higher level will allow someone to co-host the podcast with me once a year.  $2 a month gets you a sticker with our loveable Overhead Wire logo on it.

You can support The Overhead Wire on Patreon here.

Folks have also been asking if they can give one time.  I’m more than happy to have your support that way too.  You can click on the PayPal Link Below.

So let’s keep this going.  Thanks so much for continued reading of our link collections and listening to the podcast.  We really appreciate it and I hope they help you as well.

With the tech-driven growth that many places have seen, cities all over the US are trying to become the next big tech hub. Cities are trying to woo developers, incentivize start-up development, or become the next city with Google Fiber. However, Chattanooga, with its superfast fiber-optic broadband network, knows that high speed Internet isn’t the only thing that’s needed to attract tech companies. They’ve already seen economic growth from the higher broadband speeds, but they’re also trying to increase density and strategize ways to continue growing sustainably by diversifying development.

But while other cities strive to attract large tech companies, Mountain View is growing wary of them. Recently, the city denied a Google plan to build its new headquarters there, despite Google offering $240 million in community benefits for the development rights. Instead, Mountain View awarded LinkedIn the rights to develop in North Bayshore, in order to avoid becoming dependent on one big company.

There is some reason to their fears. Silicon Valley’s rapid growth has transformed nearby cities, and it’s spilling over. Demand for housing is high, and it’s driving up rents. The existing infrastructure is nowhere near sufficient to handle the volume of users, resulting in traffic congestion and constant transit woes. Bay Area cities have grown rapidly, and there is definite backlash. Even cities in the East Bay have seen dramatic and rapid development. Many cities located near BART stations have seen an influx of housing and retail development.

One developer, Lennar, is counting on the continued spillover of tech workers into neighboring cities. They’ve bought an 11-acre chunk of land in Fremont that they intend to develop into 2200 houses, apartments and offices. This is in addition to two other large housing developments that Lennar is intending to build in San Francisco. Other developers have followed suit and bought parcels of land, albeit smaller. While these developments will take over a decade to complete, demand is high, and still growing.

Cities, for the most part, are built for the young and the mobile. For the elderly, cities can be hostile environments. Walk signals don’t last long enough for them to make it through the crosswalk, pavements are uneven, and lighting is insufficient. This is an urgent problem that will need to be addressed. By 2030, two-thirds of the world will live in cities, and in developed areas, as many as one in four people will be over the age of 60. The World Health Organization’s Age-Friendly Cities program sets out to counteract this very problem. Currently, 258 cities have signed up and vowed to become more “age-friendly.”

But as our population ages, what exactly can we do to improve the livability for seniors? For cities like Philadelphia, where one in seven people is over 65, the problem will have to be dealt with sooner rather than later. While the US tends to focus on Social Security and Medicare as big issues for the elderly, one of the biggest problems seniors face is the lack of affordable and accessible housing. Philadelphia has adopted zoning changes so that accessory dwelling units are easier to build. These units can allow the elderly to live in the accessory units while renting out their home for extra income, or letting their family live in their home as caregivers.

Another phenomenon occurring in cities where the elderly population is growing is NORCs, or naturally occurring retirement communities. In some neighborhoods, the senior population may have strong ties to the community and attachment to their homes. As a result, they tend to stay in place rather than move to a smaller home in a better climate, and the community will have a higher number of senior citizens. As communities like this occur more often, the neighborhoods will have to change to adapt to the needs of its residents: better transit, accessible buildings, and pedestrian-friendly streets.

The AARP recently created a livability index that may help measure a community’s suitability for seniors. The index scores neighborhoods in seven different categories on a scale from 1 to 100: housing, transportation, environment, health, engagement, opportunity, and neighborhood. It’s not perfect, but it may help cities improve in areas where they are lacking, and become more livable for their elderly residents.

To improve the livability of neighborhoods, cities often turn to methods like building bike and pedestrian infrastructure or adding trees. However, one of the easiest and most affordable ways to improve cities might be to simply get rid of one-way streets. One-way streets became prevalent when cars were being introduced to the American public, as they were better suited to the higher speeds. A car would be able to travel faster along a wide one-way than a similarly wide two-way. But one-way streets might have done American cities more harm than good.

A study of 190 neighborhoods in Louisville shows that the risk of collision and injury in areas with many one-ways is about double that of areas with only two-way streets. Cyclists and pedestrians are also more likely to get injured on one-way streets. Not only that, property values in neighborhoods with one-way streets tend be lower–on average, they were half of what homes were worth in neighborhoods that didn’t have one-ways.

One way streets don’t only have higher rates of collisions and injury, they also seem to come with higher rates of crime and neglect. Streets that were converted into one-ways in the 1950s and 1960s seem to have deteriorated more so than two-way streets. It’s far easier to keep an eye out for law enforcement or flee on one-way streets. And because two-way streets are less conducive to high speeds, it is more likely that people passing by would see if a crime was taking place, making one-ways more desirable for breaking the law.

Of course, similar effects could also possibly be created on one-way streets. If the main cause of two-way streets being safer and less crime-ridden is slower speeds, then perhaps one-way streets can be made just as safe using traffic-calming methods.

There’s a new private service in San Francisco offering luxury bus rides to downtown from a few select neighborhoods. For $6 each way, Leap buses have free wifi, usb ports, and sell coffee and fresh juice on board during commutes. Leap is just one of a slew of new startups that are providing luxury or private transit services in the context of San Francisco’s often overcrowded and less than stellar public transit.

Muni has been struggling to keep up with its ridership for awhile, and recently announced a plan to improve its service. Under the plan, Muni’s service hours will increase by 2.5%. The bus shelters will receive slight improvements, like better maps, solar-powered lights that will glow even when it’s foggy, and bike racks. Muni will also try to meet service standards with more regularity. These upgrades are much needed and long awaited, but whether or not they will result in meaningful improvement to Muni has yet to be seen.

In the meantime, services like Leap are trying to corner a sector of the market that public transit just isn’t satisfying. Although Leap may reek of elitism, it is also shaking up transit industry and may drive the public sector to improve. Companies like Leap are much more flexible and experimental than public transit, and as a result, are the ones driving innovation in transit. One great feature of Leap, for instance, is that riders can pay using their smartphones or even check in via bluetooth so that they don’t even have to touch their phones. Riders can also check their phones to know how far away the bus is and how many seats are left.

Yet Leap Transit doesn’t seem to have taken off so far. The bus, which currently only serves the Marina District and North Pacific Heights, runs in the morning and takes passengers downtown, and then back to the neighborhoods in the evening. While the interior is fashionable and the service feels exclusive, the bar seating doesn’t seem very practical, and ridership seems low so far. It’s questionable whether the company will make it, but there’s no doubt that the public sector can learn some valuable lessons from it.

For those who are fans of the SimCity games, there’s a new game that’s taken the city building genre by storm. Cities: Skylines, by the Finnish game development company Colossal Order, was released last month, and it’s quickly become one of the top city building games. While there’s nothing in particular that’s is completely new or innovative about the game, it is rigorous in modelling all the traditional parts of city building simulations, a welcome change as the SimCity franchise has moved its focus towards the social engineering aspect of the game instead of the actual city building simulation.

Similar to SimCity, the player acts as mayor and builds a city by zoning land, building infrastructure, and developing public spaces like parks and schools. However, one of the biggest differences between Cities: Skylines and SimCity is that Cities: Skylines is far more robust in its modelling of transit. The game’s developers also built the transit simulation game Cities In Motion, and as a result, this game’s spectrum of transit options is much fuller: you’re able to draw bus and rail lines on top of just designating bus stops, as well as set overall service levels.

On top of being an entertaining game to play, Cities: Skylines can also be a fun way to understand urban and transportation issues. One of the greatest criticisms of the SimCity games was that it was a good game for building sprawled cities, but the lack of transit options made it impossible to model denser cities that rely on public transit. This game allows for the simulation of many more city archetypes. As you develop these cities, different issues may arise: traffic congestion, pollution, and most importantly, you’re able to see how your city’s budget holds up and its cost efficiency per citizen.

St. Louis Ballot Initiative Would Break City Into 42 Municipalities, nextSTL

Code Free Zones Proposed by FEMA, Restless Urbanist

DC Mayor Muriel Bowser Announces New “Funiculator” Initiative, Greater Greater Washington

Bridge Reconstruction Just April Fools’ Joke, City Says, Streets.MN

US Government Announces Campaign to Save Historically Bad Places, Project for Public Spaces

SF Mayor Ed Lee’s Doctor Prescribes “Balanced Diet” for San Francisco Streets, Streetsblog SF

Homeowner’s Bill of Rights to Preempt State and Local Zoning Laws, Pedestrian Observations

Egypt’s housing minister Mostafa Madbouly has announced a plan to build a completely new capital city, possibly as soon as within seven years. Cairo, which has a population of 20 million residents and is expected to continue growing, is overpopulated and polluted. The new city is expected to help alleviate some of that congestion and modernize Egypt’s capital. Unsurprisingly, this plan has been met with plenty of doubt. Egypt has built several “satellite” cities for Cairo in the past in an attempt to reduce congestion, but many of these cities now lay desolate. If that’s the case, how can a new capital city hope to attract the urban population of Cairo, which has over 1000 years of history?

The plan itself is ambitious, grand, and big. The new capital city is expected to house five million residents over 270 square miles of land, with 663 health centers, 1,250 mosques and churches, and 1.1 million homes. Taking notes from more successful purpose-built cities, the new capital will consist of mixed-use development, be connected to transit, and have plenty of green space. Madbouly believes that 1.5 million jobs will be created, and generate enough economic incentive for locals to move into the city. While planned cities have a bad reputation today, there are a few success stories, such as Brasilia.

But some have a much darker view of the plan. Egypt’s government, which rules by an authoritarian military regime, does not necessarily serve its people, and this new capital city is just as likely to be a tool for control as it is a solution to Cairo’s urban issues. Cities can be designed to make it easier for the military to quell riots and keep the poor out of sight. Not only that, this new city will be a monument to president Abdel Fatah al-Sis and his new vision for the country as well as help distance himself from Tahrir Square, where his past two predecessors were overthrown.

Cities are adding bicycle lanes to streets with heavy bike traffic as a means of improving safety, but the process is constantly being hindered by strong opposition from the businesses along the streets where the lanes are proposed. Most small businesses with street parking spots are reluctant to give them up for parking lanes out of fear that decreased parking space will affect their business.

This was recently highlighted in San Francisco, when bike lanes were proposed for Polk Street. Though Polk was considered one of the most dangerous streets in the city for cyclists and pedestrians, the plan to add a bike lane faced heavy backlash from local merchants, and as a result, took over 2 years to implement. The backlash from local merchants provoked enough contention in bike advocates that some started a Yelp campaign against an optometrist who lobbied the mayor to remove his block from the Polk Street bike lane plan.

However, the fears of bike lanes damaging local business are unfounded. In fact, many studies show that rather than decreasing business, increased bike traffic actually seems to promote more spending. While people in cars tend to spend more money per shopping trip, people on bikes tend to take more trips and will ultimately spend more. This has been seen in cities throughout the US and internationally, so any opposition to bike lanes based on negative economic impacts have yet to be justified.

Bike lanes aren’t the only use for parking spots that can be good for business. Parklets are popping up in front of stores and restaurants in many cities, and they too, can increase sales for nearby businesses. Parklets take up only one or two parking spots, but their occupancy rate and turnover are far higher than a parking spot. As a result, places that install parklets often find that the extra activity promotes extra business.

The US continued its trend of increasing transit ridership last year, despite the dramatic drop in gas prices. While numbers varied widely across cities, the total number of transit trips in the country increased by 1% relative to 2013. Some of the increases in ridership were attributed to growths in transit service, while others were a result of economic growth. Interestingly enough, most of the national growth in heavy rail transit ridership can actually be ascribed to one city: New York. New York City makes up about one-fourth of all transit ridership in the US, so any changes there will have a significant effect on the overall numbers.

As mass transit continues to grow, one of the most useful tools to riders will undoubtedly be accurate, real-time information about their buses or trains. In fact, a study of New York’s Bus Time program, which provides real time bus tracking, found that ridership grew by about 2% on busy routes in the boroughs where the program was launched in 2011. A study done in Chicago found similar results, with ridership increasing about 2% for buses where a real-time information system was implemented. These are promising results for real-time tracking programs, but unfortunately, many of such systems in the US are often inaccurate, or broken.

On Monday, Google and Trimet rolled out a wireless train arrival beacon in Portland for the MAX light rail. The beacon connects to bluetooth-enabled Android phones and sends automatic notifications to riders at the MAX station. Whether the beacon will be a success will have to be seen: the service is not available for ios, and currently only works with Android 5.0 or newer. Riders can also access their train info online, so it’s uncertain if having an extra notification when they are already at the station will be worthwhile. Nonetheless, as public transit grows in the US, it’ll be important to expand and improve our current systems of tracking arrivals.

Self-driving cars are getting a lot of publicity–and for good reason.

Some think that driverless cars will completely reshape our cityscapes. With fewer traffic accidents due to human error, autonomous vehicles would change the car repair and insurance industries. Ride-hailing companies like Uber and car-share companies like Zipcar could be transformed. One of the biggest changes, however, will be that cities won’t need nearly as many parking facilities. While there will still be a place for private car ownership, many major cities will end up having surplus parking space that can be turned into parks or even repurposed for new commercial uses.

But no matter how transformative they are, autonomous cars are unlikely to replace mass transit. One big reason is because mass transit is simply more efficient in terms of density. In cities, where space is both limited and expensive, a bus or train that can carry dozens or even hundreds of passengers will always be more efficient in terms of space and cost. And because more and more people are moving to cities, the real innovation that may come out of autonomous vehicle technology might not be the cars, but self-driving buses. After all, the US road system was built for cars, and it works just as well for buses.

Some experts fear that self driving cars will promote sprawl. Long, arduous commutes incentivize living near urban centers, but if commuting by car became much easier, the allure of city life might give way to the appeal of lower costs and bigger homes in suburbs. Many projections estimate that self driving cars could roll out as soon as the early 2020s, and since we’ve seen the effects of sprawl on health and economic mobility, it’s a big concern that planners will need to deal with soon.

More often than not, transit agencies in the US will choose to develop rail service where public transit is needed, even though a bus service would be far more affordable while providing a similar level of service. The reason, according to a 2009 Federal Transit Administration report, is that bus service in the United States suffers from an image problem. Riding buses carries a “shame factor” that is not associated with trains. Unfortunately, this negative perception of buses can also extend to bus rapid transit. Successful bus rapid transit lines, with high frequency and dedicated lanes, like Los Angeles’ Orange line, aren’t even seen as buses by many riders–they are described as train-like or even bourgeois.

A poll of 1,370 people in 6 Australian cities shows that a majority of people will rank rail over bus rapid transit, despite being aware of both modes of transit. While this may suggest that people simply prefer rail to buses, a closer analysis shows that the quality of transit service is more important that type of transit. The data from Sydney, which recently improved its bus service, seems to support this, as it ranked buses highest out of all the cities. Other factors that made it more likely for a rider to rate buses positively include having a seat for the entire trip or even just riding the bus recently.

Another problem with buses may also be that transit agencies don’t run enough buses to comfortably satisfy the demand. In New York, the buses are so crowded that if they were to have better marketing, and attract those who currently take cabs, it is highly unlikely that every rider would have access. In this case, it seems that the bus’ negative image is at least in part derived from its inadequate service, and not simply because it needs better marketing.

Regardless, buses deserve a bit more credit in the US. This goes especially for bus rapid transit systems that have level boarding, dedicated lanes, reliable service, and off-board fare payment.

China has become one of the world’s largest economies in only a couple short decades. While the country’s average growth has slowed–its GDP grew by only 7.4% last year–it has established its place as a global economic superpower and will most likely maintain its ranking with a formidable economy estimated to be at $11.3 trillion in 2015.

However, this rapid growth has not come without its issues. China’s growth may have been rapid, but it has also been immensely sprawled. China became the world’s largest auto market, surpassing the United States’ 17 million car sales with 20 million car sales last year. While the country has taken measures to promote greener, more sustainable development, this auto-centricity has encouraged urban sprawl and devoured agricultural land. The destruction of agricultural land for development has in turn sparked worries over food production in China. With many farms being overtaken by airports and roads, food safety and food security are becoming increasing concerns.

This sprawl has also come with environmental costs. Many Chinese cities have become notorious for their smog levels, a consequence of its rapid urbanization which embraced cars, wide streets, and grandiose buildings. As the country developed, it welcomed foreign models of urban development, not accounting for the environmental effects that such development would have in an industrializing country with over a billion residents.

Not only that, as the country’s wealth has grown, its obesity rates have risen as well. Like other developed areas, China has seen a large influx of processed food and convenience stores. While malnutrition is no longer a big concern in urban China, obesity rates have risen quickly and dramatically. In 2012, an estimated 300 million out of 1.2 billion people were obese, making health care policy a growing priority.

China’s rapid development has been remarkable, but also challenging. It’s an opportunity for creative urban planning solutions and the development of growth policies that are more comprehensive, deliberate, and sustainable.

Bike culture has seen a huge resurgence in the US over the last decade, and this has led to a growth in bike infrastructure as well as increasing concern surrounding bike safety. Bike safety has become a growing issue not only in discussions amongst bike advocates, but also in all levels of urban policy. Last week, Senator Carol Liu proposed a mandatory bike helmet law for the state of California. Liu has been a long-time supporter of active transportation, and feels that this law would promote safer biking.

However, no mandatory legislation can increase bike safety as much as promoting a bike culture that is informed, aware, and cautious. A new book, titled The Urban Cycling Survival Guide, gives a rundown on how to navigate urban streets on a bike, as well as how to bike defensively. A bike advocacy group in Seattle found that merely changing the language with which we speak about biking has a huge effect on its public perception and makes it much easier to promote bike culture. By using phrases that are people-centric, such as “people on bikes” rather than “cyclists,” bike advocates were able to rebrand the bike argument into one that is centered around safety and personal responsibility.

Of course, some areas of the US are more bike-friendly than others. Recently, San Luis Obispo established a powerful bike funding policy that will allot 20% of transportation spending from the general fund to biking. This is an extraordinary amount of bike funding for an American city, and the figure is derived from the city’s larger transportation goals to increase biking and walking levels. San Francisco, which is one of the most bike-friendly cities in the US, will be completing 3 blocks of protected bike lanes and pedestrian upgrades this coming April, albeit after numerous delays. These are encouraging signs which bode well for bike safety in the US, and a sure sign of progress for bike culture overall.

Services like Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb have revolutionized private taxis and temporary housing rentals. At the same time, these large-scale sharing economy services are in their infancy, and legislators often disagree about whether or not to regulate them, and if they do, how to regulate them.

Many cities, like New York, are concerned about the effects that Airbnb may have on affordable housing, while others have been far more accepting. Following the footsteps of San Francisco, London recently announced that they will be legalizing Airbnb, which is prohibited under the current legislation. The new legislation will allow homeowners to rent out their properties for up to 3 months of the year. While some support the move, stating that the current legislation is outdated and inconsistently reinforced, others fear that legalizing Airbnb will disrupt neighborhoods and reduce the amount of long-term housing for locals, therefore driving up the cost of rent.

Services like Uber are also troubling to local governments, because they operate outside the scope of traditionally established laws for private taxis. As a result, they’ve forced traditional taxis to reform their operations and improve the quality of their service. However, because they aren’t governed by traditional taxi laws, there are concerns over whether or not their insurance is adequate and if their drivers have been vetted enough. Not only that, there are currently no laws requiring Uber to provide services to people with disabilities, or to people who don’t have Internet access or credit cards.

Despite all the headaches that these sharing economy services give to legislators, one thing is certain: they are innovative and challenge the status quo. It’ll be interesting to see how cities will regulate these services, but hopefully they’ll able to do it in a way that won’t stifle innovation.

Tech is transforming everything, and urban planning hasn’t been overlooked.

Uber recently offered to share its private trip data starting with the city of Boston, and this, as well as other private data, has some big implications for traffic planning. Private car data can be lifted from phones, taxis, sensors, and cameras. It can elucidate real-time traffic patterns and has the potential to help planners drastically improve street networks and remedy traffic congestion. It does have some downsides however with the data coming from certain demographics and geography limitations.

Tech has also introduced some really useful tools that have the potential to make planning far more efficient, simple, and transparent. Transitmix was created as a fantasy bus route tool, where users could create bus routes, see their costs, plan their stops, and even overlay Census data such as income. It soon became apparent that a tool like this could be invaluable to professionals–it’s almost difficult to imagine that transit planners went so long without a specialized tool to quickly map out transit possibilities.

Social media opens up a channel of communication between transit agencies and their constituencies. In December, New Jersey Transit decided to take a much more proactive stance to their Facebook and Twitter pages, and it’s allowed them gauge rider opinions as well as provide updates to users. Social media is also being used as a means of promoting California’s extensive but struggling state park system. A new app, called CaliParks, pulls images from Instagram and Flickr to allow users to get a dynamic and appealing view of over 12,000 green spaces in California.

Technology has proved to be a disruptive force in planning, and many of the innovations it brings forth forces us to upgrade some of our archaic and inefficient practices, as well as rethink some of the incorrect perceptions we based our planning decisions on.

A shortage of affordable housing has been a huge problem for urban areas, and a recent pair of charts from Trulia’s chief economist really highlights a big issue with housing development in the US. For the past few years, housing development has grown the most in suburbs and less in urban areas, but the price of housing in urban areas is rising the fastest. Basically, the housing supply in urban areas is not growing quickly enough to meet demand.

This problem has been illustrated perfectly in San Francisco. The city’s population has grown rapidly, but the growth in its housing stock has lagged behind. Since 2010, the population of San Francisco has increased by 45,000 people, but the housing stock has only increased by 7,500 units. With that kind of population growth and the relatively meager amount of housing development, it’s really no surprise that housing prices in the city have skyrocketed.

A similar phenomenon is happening in San Diego, which was recently named America’s least affordable city by Realtor.com. San Diego is slated to have 590,000 more people by 2050, and the only way to accommodate all these new residents is to increase the city’s density and develop more housing.

Developing more housing is what Austin did in response to its growing population, and it’s had some promising results so far. Though the cost of housing in Austin rose for the past several years, the addition of 10,000 new units to the area last year seems to have somewhat stabilized rents. The occupancy rate in the Austin area dropped by 4% down to 94% last year, the lowest it has been since 2012. While we have to see how the housing stock will hold up over the years, it’s no question that some cities, like San Francisco, would probably benefit from an increase in housing development.

Car culture seems to be declining worldwide, and urbanization and technology may play a big part in that. Millennials are more willing to live in cities and stay there rather than move to suburbs, unlike the previous generation. This means that they’re less likely to own cars and more likely to take public transit, walk, or use private taxis like Uber. Not only that, social media allows people to stay in touch without ever leaving their home, and e-commerce makes it possible for people to purchase things online, decreasing the overall number of trips that people need to make. The number of cars per driver in the US has fallen from 1.2 in 2007 to 1.15 this year.

This trend is global. For instance, in London, cycling levels have risen rapidly over the last couple years, to the point where cycling now makes up one-sixth of all traffic in central London. This is a record-breaking level of cycling in the city, and part of it is due to the increased availability of bike share docks and bicycles. In San Francisco, the majority of trips are made without private cars, and it’s been that way for several years. In addition, the prevalence of shared-use structures like pedestrian and bike bridges has grown all over, and we’re only going to see an increase in infrastructure dedicated to car-free transit in the coming years.

Another major reason for the decline in car culture is that automobiles are simply not sustainable. Global leaders, such as Al Gore and former Mexican president Felipe Calderon, have proposed a radical idea: why don’t we spend the $90 Trillion that will be invested in infrastructure over the next 15 years toward developing cities that aren’t car-centric?

Some will argue we’ll never get there, but the times, they are changing.

Right now is a crucial time in shaping the future of urban transportation. 75% of the infrastructure that will exist in 2050 hasn’t been built yet, so the decisions that we make about the direction of our cities’ transportation systems over the next few years will be critical.  Let’s not take them for granted

Last week, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced the “Mayors Challenge for Safer People and Safer Streets.” Foxx, who was the mayor of Charlotte from 2009 to 2013, urges mayors to make pedestrian and bike safety a priority for the next year. While road deaths in other categories have dropped over the last few years, the rate of biking and pedestrian deaths in the US has trended upwards since 2009.

A big part of pedestrian and bike safety is street design, and a major part of the Mayors Challenge is committing to take a Complete Streets approach to making transportation decisions. The Mayors Challenge isn’t a funding solution, but it is an opportunity for mayors to take on the challenge of assessing the current state of their street design guidelines and actively pursue the best practices to transform their transportation networks

A study of over 70 US mayors finds that regardless of city size, mayors often had the same priorities: growing their cities while managing transportation and operations within their limited budget constraints. The three most common policy priorities cited by US mayors for the next year are eco­nomic development, quality of life and infrastruc­ture.

However, mayors can’t transform their cities completely on their own. The mayors of San Francisco and Seattle, in particular, have come out and said that they do need the help of the federal government on transportation issues, particularly infrastructure. As American cities continue to grow, a national urban agenda and support from the federal government is necessary to ensure that our cities succeed.

But it looks like we’ll need the mayors of our cities to get it started.

Many American cities are experiencing a shortage of affordable housing. It’s a big problem that needs to be addressed, but there’s little consensus about how to address it. Add to that the NIMBY attitude that many people seem to hold toward affordable housing projects, and we’re looking at a problem that is both complex and politically charged.

Housing costs in San Francisco have skyrocketed in the past few years and it doesn’t look like they’ll stop increasing any time soon. One of the reasons for the price increase is because discretionary permitting prevents the housing supply from increasing rapidly as the population grows. Some such as the blog Market Urbanism believe that reforming regulations so that development is less restricted would go a long way in addressing the issue. On top of that, creating a land tax would encourage denser development, and funding housing vouchers with that tax money would ensure that the amount of funding increases when housing demand goes up and drives up the cost of land.

Los Angeles is suffering from a lack of affordable housing as well, and some feel that the local government should be doing far more to address the issue. Some suggested solutions to LA’s affordable housing issue include overhauling the zoning code so that it’s easier to develop, offering incentives to developers for building affordable housing, and preserving the current stock of affordable housing.

All of these proposed solutions include some form of government intervention. However, we have seen that some government responses, like rent control and subsidized housing, have not exactly solved the affordable housing problem in the past. If that’s the case, how should the government intervene in affordable housing issues? Whichever way we choose to address the problem, it’ll be important to understand the housing market, as well as acknowledge the shortcomings of our previous solutions.

Gentrification is most commonly debated about in the sense that people disagree on how to counter its negative effects. However, there are also some who debate whether gentrification is actually harmful at all. Some people think it’s is one of the biggest urban issues in the developed world, some acknowledge that it’s not good but feel that there are bigger problems to worry about, and others deny that the negative effects of gentrification are nearly as abundant as the media make them out to be.

A recent Slate article argues that for the most part, the negative effects of gentrification are hugely exaggerated, to the point where gentrification is more of a myth than an established urban phenomenon. After all, gentrification in which a previously poor neighborhood becomes overtaken by upper and middle class residents is extremely rare, and the article argues there is little proof that displacement happens in gentrifying neighborhoods any more than it happens in non-gentrifying neighborhoods. Socioeconomic status of most neighborhoods is quite stable over time, and neighborhoods that have had rises in average income actually reap some benefits from it.

Others vehemently disagree. Looking at New York, which is one of the most illustrative cases of gentrification, we can see a definite and dramatic change in racial and income demographics over the last couple decades. The black population in many neighborhoods decreased while the white population increased, along with an increase in income. Subsidized affordable rentals are far more likely to convert to market rate in gentrified neighborhoods, driving out lower income residents who will no longer be able to afford the cost of housing.

This City Limits survey shows that while some people think that gentrification is a good thing, the majority of readers feel that gentrification is problematic, though they vastly disagree about how to counter it or whether it can even be remedied. If there’s one thing the debate over gentrification shows, it’s that the issue is complex and nuanced, and that no easy answers will be appearing anytime soon.

It’s pretty widely acknowledged that America’s driving boom is over. The average VMT per person in the US has remained stagnant or declined since 2004, and even the Federal Highway Administration’s most recent projections predict future driving levels to remain fairly even. However, the US decline in driving may have begun far earlier than we think. For many states, like Washington, their peak driving levels may have occurred as early as the 1990s. Only a couple outlier states have had their driving levels increase in recent years. This information challenges earlier notions that declines in driving may have been caused by the poor economy, and further cements the possibility that our peak driving levels are permanent.

As more of the world population moves into cities, where car ownership and driving are less practical than public transit, options for shared mobility are becoming increasingly popular. The car share service Car2Go is subscribed to by almost 10% of Seattle’s population and  has resulted in over 2,000 Seattle residents giving up their cars. Google continues to improve its self-driving car, and recently has been in talks with Ford, Toyota, and Volkswagon to try to bring the cars to the market as early as 2020.

Some think that driverless cars will have trouble becoming widely adopted because most people have a passion for driving. Cars, in addition to being a convenient means of transportation, are also objects that reflect our personal taste and identity. While that may be true, driving can actually cause quite a bit of stress and commutes can lower happiness levels. Driving seems to be correlated to higher blood pressure and anxiety levels, as well as a decrease in overall job and life satisfaction. In fact, not having to commute may be the happiness equivalent of as much as a $40,000 raise.

Knowing that, promoting shared mobility seems like a no-brainer. Creating our car-centric cities has failed to create lasting economic growth. This is our opportunity to create smarter mobility for more sustainable, inclusive cities as well as improve overall quality of life.