good traffic.

Portland, Oregon has a polarizing reputation — it seems drugs and homelessness dominate headlines nationally. Though it has uphill battles like any place, it’s also an undisputed leader in urban design and multi-modal infrastructure. We’re spending the next two weeks here, biking and walking all over the city and its surrounding neighborhoods. Today, we start with three (of many) physical choices...

Joan Lyons — transportation planner and urbanism writer — is in good traffic sharing on the Women Moving People project, which focuses on emboldening women's perspectives in the planning and transportation industries. We agree strongly on the importance of early exposure to urbanism for children and students. Joan also talks her career as a transportation planner in Louisiana, Denver, and Nort...

On inefficiency of single-use spaces. Questioning the norm of planning for exceptions rather than the rule. Cities and individuals make choices based on rarer needs, leading to underutilized spaces. In homing differing usages in one space — like a morning coffee shop turning into a bar at night, or a parking lot hosting a farmer's market — we can deduplicate resources, overhead, and infrastructure...

Kev Polk — founder of Edenicity — is in good traffic this week discussing a permacultural approach to urbanism. This is: ecologically sound cities that provide housing, food, energy, and transportation in a cohesive system. Kev shares his path from space exploration to realizing the importance of localized systems and cities in addressing environmental crises. Kev emphasizes the potential for grea...

On the hobby of spot-checking availability in nearby parking garages, and American driving and parking data. We discuss: 00:00 Counting unused parking spots in downtown Columbus, Ohio. 00:27 Parking garage supply and demand. 01:47 Reevaluating urban land use. 02:44 U.S. parking data. 03:57 Parking case study: Des Moines, Iowa. 06:09 Larger implications of car-centric infrastructure. 11:11 Personal...

Ryan Short — cofounder of CivicBrand — joins good traffic to emphasize why cities and towns of all sizes should care more about branding. We talk the need for civic pride and intentional urban design, qualitative and quantitative data collection, and using community perspective to refine strong, holistic, evergreen messaging. From Dallas, to suburban North Carolina, to mountain town Colorado, Ryan...

Recently, my partner Aly reflected on our walks in Columbus (OH) feeling safer than elsewhere in the states. We discussed the why behind this perceived feeling, and articulated the claim into five attributable rationales. We decided to rehash those, here. As planners, designers, and urbanists get deeper into the technical, it's important to keep the way that a place or piece of infrastructure...

Rob Parker — president of the Town at Trilith — is in good traffic this week to share on constructing a walkable town around creatives and the film industry. 40 minutes outside of Atlanta, a 235-acre neighborhood is taking shape. It’s budding around one of the largest film studios in the U.S., and is looking to become a cradle for creatives, on the way to establishing a revamped, stronger model of...

Musing from recent neighborhood walks. Notably: counting single occupancy vehicles (SOVs) entering and exiting the city during rush hour. Surely, some of these are coming from — and going to — similar areas of the metro. There has to be a better way. And, they're all driving increasingly-large SUVs, too. Bigger, heavier cars. More inefficient, wasted space. There is much we can glean from a ba...

This is a brief excerpt from my appearance on the Real Finds podcast , last week. Within, we examine why walkability, livable neighborhoods, and human-scale environments should be top of mind for commercial real estate professionals and business owners. Find the full hour here. Thanks to Gordon Lamphere for the audio.

Road signs seem to get read less than a seventh-grade history textbook. Even the most ubiquitous, exact signs like — STOP — are seemingly up for interpretation (everyone is an artist now, or something). Unfortunately, we're not obeying those crafty yard signs that encourage slowing down, either. Signs that give dynamic feedback — thanks to a radar function that feeds a display board — do make...

Reflecting on traffic calming infrastructure seen this week in suburban Dublin, Ohio, on Tara Hill Drive. When car-dominated suburbs build infrastructure like neighborhood traffic circles , it's an acknowledgment that we surely know how to design safer streets, and thus every street designed on the contrary is an active choice against resident livability. The road to stronger, safer, and more...

Live from the move from Tempe, Arizona to Columbus, Ohio: noting constant roadway maintenance, contextualizing intercity v. intracity transportation, and looking forward to getting out of this car. Also, just a tad bit of CNU Cincy FOMO.

Steve Nash — NBA hall-of-famer and founder of BLOCK training — is in good traffic to chat on the concept of healthspan , and how quality of life and neighborhood design interconnect. We talk baking mobility and movement into everyday life, training intentionally, and stacking habits in a scalable way. Steve shares the framework and ethos behind his current endeavors with BLOCK, and origins in mobi...

Aly Marchant — my transit-taking girlfriend and a good traffic regular — is back for a walkthrough of being a women on public transportation. She shares recent challenges, protocols to help avoid and navigate uncomfortable situations, our collaboration towards mitigation as a couple, the role of young men, and optimism for female riders. For context: ⁠ Gender distribution of public transit travele...

Expanding highways and adding lanes doesn't solve traffic. If it did, the cities that have been doing so for decades would have fixed their traffic woes. But, they're worse than ever. Through the continuously misguided approach to transportation, we've learned a lot about the principle of induced demand , and Jevons paradox . In short, when we increase capacity in the name of efficienc...

This week, we briefly touch base on three prevailing sentiments, from recent comment sections: There is a massive difference between a personal lifestyle choice, and a scalable development pattern. Folks seem to think the only kind of real estate or housing that one can buy is a detached, single-family home on a large lot. Of course, this is not true. "Not everyone wants to live in a city!&qu...

Dan Burden — America’s most legendary walkability and bikeability expert, and director of innovation at Blue Zones — is in good traffic to share a lifetime’s worth of work on making cities and streets more livable. He’s played a role in walkable design projects in thousands of communities, in all 50 states. Dan is also the mastermind behind the 4,300 mile long TransAmerica bike route, and leader o...

Megan Kimble — Journalist and author of new book City Limits: infrastructure, inequality, and the future of American highways — is in good traffic to discuss the most infamous part of our cities. Megan contextualizes the current fight over the widening of I-35 through downtown Austin, navigating a freeway-crazed Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), and extensive research into the relationsh...

Using the word suburb to describe both small towns and endless sprawl seems like a mistake. Small towns — even when on the periphery of a larger city — sometimes do gentle density even better than cities do. Sprawl is the beast that we are up against. We also touch on the misconception that cities and growth are bad for the environment, and why the rural v. urban debate is a false polarization. A...

Maddy Novich — @cargobikemomma on Instagram — is in good traffic this week to talk raising and transporting a family by bike. Maddy moves throughout New York City daily via one of her many cargo bikes. We discuss the relationship between parenting and car-reliance in the U.S., and how parents can begin replacing car trips with bike trips sooner than they might think. In the episode, you might just...

Corey Woods — Mayor of Tempe, Arizona — is in good traffic while leading a walkable, healthy, and multi-generational college town, suburb, and rapidly-growing city, all at the same time. We converse on the beauties and challenges of density, tourism, and different forms of transportation in one of the United States’ most underrated cities. Notably, we touch on Prop 478, which is on the table (in M...

Interest in cults is extremely high, at the moment; Americans' Netflix and podcast queues suggest as much. Why are these notorious communities always so walkable and human-centered in their designs? Can we create community-oriented places without another, separate shared purpose? Aly Marchant - actor, teacher, and my thought-provoking girlfriend - is back in good traffic for a conversation on...

Mallory Baches — President of the Congress for the New Urbanism (or, CNU), and urban designer — is in good traffic to hash out the details of the New Urbanism movement, and the overall progression of urban design, urban planning, and urban development in the U.S. We discuss: 00:00 On Mallory, and the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU). 04:10 How have urbanism and urban development evolved in the...

A Columbus Dispatch article recently came out discussing why suburbanites aren't visiting the mixed-use Short North neighborhood as often. It prompts the question: should we be depending on suburban residents for the success of our city neighborhoods (especially when they have to drive there)? Or, should we be recalibrating the conversation around density and increased residency in/around thes...