• How DOTs can help Main Street

    The nation’s more than 7,600 Main Streets are hurting. Nobody knows exactly how much. At some point in 2021, when the vaccine has become available to everybody and the numbers of Covid cases plummet, we will collectively look around American downtowns and see how many businesses are closed for good...Read more

  • My Christmas wish: A return to street grids

    As an urbanist, I ask Santa to bring America a renewed interest and understanding of the importance of street grids (more precisely, connected networks of streets with relatively small blocks). That may be a tall order for Santa, but I have been good and grids are good. This basic infrastructure...Read more

  • Complete streets: Visible counter to Covid recession?

    The US needs public works investments to help main streets.
    The pandemic’s full negative impact on main streets is unknown, but significant. Many storefronts have closed and small businesses are hurting. We don’t know how many local employers will succumb to the economic hardships that communities have experienced. Meanwhile, 2020 has been a year of eerily...Read more

  • Building community through transportation

    To meet the challenges of the 21st Century, traffic engineers and transportation planners need to think of streets as places and the foundation for community.
    Up to the middle of the last century, we built thoroughfares that formed the bones of mixed-use, complete communities. After that, for six or seven decades, we built thoroughfares to primarily move automobiles. The former method creates places of long-term value that have come back into popularity...Read more