• Spokane can avoid a big mistake

    There is no compelling reason to build a five-mile freeway through the east side of the city, according to engineer Ian Lockwood. A boulevard would do the job better.
    DOT released its Every Place Counts Design Challenge report yesterday, based on workshops in Spokane, Nashville, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis-St. Paul last summer. CNU helped organize those workshops, set up to explore mitigation of Interstate highways that have historically damaged minority and...Read more

  • Providence freeway has a future

    The good news: The highway will be improved. The bad news: The boulevard idea is officially dead.
    While working on CNU’s upcoming semi-annual Freeways Without Futures report, we learned that one of the candidate highways, the 6-10 Connector in Providence RI, now has a future. The highway that divides a half dozen neighborhoods in West Providence will be rebuilt, according to a compromise plan...Read more

  • Street trees are essential for Walk Appeal

    Trees should be planted either in swales (on primarily residentail streets) or in tree wells (on Main Streets). Do not listen to “urban foresters,” who insist that trees must be planted in landscape beds large enough for their mature drip lines.
    Street trees are essential for strong Walk Appeal almost anywhere in the US, which makes them a fundamental part of the public frontage, which extends from the property line to the edge of the street. We’ll talk about other public frontage parts later, but street trees are so important that they...Read more

  • 'Urban' is bigger than it appears

    A "new analytic framework" by the Urban Land Institute ignores walkability and sets back our understanding of cities and suburbs.
    ULI released a report this month, Housing in the Evolving American Suburb , which found that suburbs are grabbing more than 90 percent of metropolitan growth. The report is based on a "new analytic framework" to parse what is urban and what is suburban. ULI's sorting system is often hard to...Read more