Posts by David Alpert — Founder
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Rockville Central reports on Pike meeting
It looks like Cindy CG of Rockville Central was at another Parking and Loading table at Wednesday’s Rockville Pike meeting. Keep reading…
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Skybridges don’t make the connection
It sounds simple and appealing. Your city has a major road with a lot of traffic, but city planners and citizens want to make it more pedestrian-friendly, encouraging more walkable stores in place of purely big box strip development. How about pedestrian overpasses? With a walkway, people can cross in complete safety and not interfere with the existing traffic. You can even build… Keep reading…
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Consensus and controversy in Rockville’s Pike
Last night I attended a community meeting in Rockville about “envisioning a great place” for Rockville Pike, specifically the segment from Twinbrook Parkway to Richard Montgomery Drive (just north of Wootton Parkway). This section is almost entirely filled with strip malls behind large parking lots—the cookie-cutter suburban retail that makes Rockville’s… Keep reading…
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Rat-filled subway vs. Fisher-Price subway
Was the DC Metro trash talking New York City? NYT’s City Room thinks so and does some trash talking of its own back. But I’m not going to disagree that the WMATA map could use some more “sophistication”. Keep reading…
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LA radically changes nothing
The LA Times thinks LA traffic planners “do a 180” when they shift from building freeways (that increase traffic) to… adding traffic lanes on major boulevards (that increase traffic). But the city’s chief planner thinks the city isn’t ready to talk about better solutions like “complete streets”. Street Heat LA begs to differ. Meanwhile,… Keep reading…
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Tysons stepping away from the edge
Tysons Corner is the classic Edge City, and perhaps the original inspiration for the term. They’re the cities created entirely around the automobile, the mall, and the suburban office park style of architecture—what Christopher Leinberger calls the “Futurama vision” of the shiny new America that looked so exciting in the 1950s. Now that we’ve… Keep reading…
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Parking reformers have some educatin’ to do
Image by emily geoff on FlickrWhen Jane Jacobs wrote The Death and Life of Great American Cities in 1961, almost everyone from planners to the public believed in freeway construction, single-use zoning, and urban renewal projects. Today, you’re not going to see a lot of people commenting on a blog like DCist arguing that we should run a freeway between Dupont Circle and Adams… Keep reading…
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Nelson\\Nygaard parking presentation
Here’s the presentation on parking policy given by Jason Schrieber of Nelson\Nygaard here in DC a few weeks ago. Thanks to Gwen of Cleveland Park for posting it. Keep reading…
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Density police not required
Urban, walkable, mixed-use areas are the future of America. They’re more environmentally friendly, better for healthy people and strong communities, shorter commutes make people happier, and the market wants more of it. Keep reading…