• A trenchant critique of traffic engineering

    Charles Marohn points the way to reviving cities and towns through reform of the profession that builds the framework for sprawl.
    Charles Marohn, founder of Strong Towns, retired as a civil engineer in Minnesota at the end of last week. Marohn is not yet 50, has not practiced engineering in more than a decade, but maintained his credentials as one of the most prominent critics of traffic engineering of our time. He was caught...Read more

  • A new era of people-oriented infrastructure

    We have been investing in automobiles, at the expense of people, for too long. The story of Oklahoma City indicates that change is possible, because the dialog is shifting.
    “You are winning,” says Christopher Coes, principal deputy assistant secretary for transportation policy at US DOT, told the CNU 30 audience in Oklahoma City last week. “The argument for more connected, livable communities, is resonating on the left and right, on the national level and on main...Read more

  • Comprehensive redesign makes city more livable

    Project 180 transformed the fabric of Oklahoma City’s downtown. OJB Landscape Architecture and Speck & Associates won a Merit Award in the Neighborhood, District, and Corridor category of CNU's 2022 Charter Awards.
    Oklahoma City reversed a half century of automobile-centric street planning in a comprehensive makeover of its downtown public realm in the last decade. A public-private partnership, Project 180, redesigned every downtown street. In Jeff Speck’s plan for the 50-block downtown core, the one-way...Read more

  • Let main streets be main streets

    A community should determine what kind of community it wants to be, not unelected DOT engineers.
    Before moving to Ithaca, New York, more than 20 years ago, I lived on Main Street in the town of Emmaus, Pennsylvania. Cars would go by at 40 mph, sometimes 50 mph late at night. On-street parking buffered pedestrians from the fast-moving traffic, but crossing the street was uncomfortable. Few...Read more