Posts about District of Columbia
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Brooklyn puts retail in municipal building
“From the street, [Brooklyn’s Municipal Building] looks like ‘dead space,’” writes the Brooklyn Paper. “‘People have just accepted that government buildings are only for government,’” says Joe Chan of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. Downtown DC is even worse, with back to back Federal buildings each of which… Keep reading…
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Hope for DC’s waterfront
DC’s Southwest Waterfront neighborhood is a classic example of failed urban renewal - old row houses and tenements (some nice, some less so) were razed, replaced with a freeway and 1960s/70s-era buildings where cars enjoy more square footage than people. The dinner cruise on the Potomac Stefanie and I took for our six-month anniversary departed from a pier in Southwest, and… Keep reading…
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The federally tilted playing field on transportation
The Washington Post recently ran an article exploring the impact of the Federal Transit Administration on transit projects. Fierce competition for the FTA’s limited transit funding and strict criteria mean that states are forced to make many changes, wise or unwise, to their projects to qualify. Virginia had to drop plans to put the Tyson’s Corner segment of the planned… Keep reading…
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“We Are Smart Growth”
You know Smart Growth—the philosophy of building “compact, transit- Keep reading…
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Washington’s good streets and bad streets
Washington, DC is a city with some of the most magnificent public spaces and some of the worst at the same time. The Mall is mixed; it’s a huge tourist attraction with great, free museums and monuments, but many of the buildings present blank stone walls to the streets and there are too many cars, rendering it more of an empty grassy space between attractions than a destination in… Keep reading…
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Georgetown never blocked a Metro stop
Conventional wisdom says that the Washington DC Metro was supposed to go to Georgetown (after all, it barely misses it between Rosslyn and Foggy Bottom), but NIMBY residents in the 1970s blocked the station. But it’s not true. Keep reading…
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Proposed Metro expansion in 2001
In 2001, WMATA proposed a set of expansions for the overburdened system. Keep reading…
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Which is better?
Which street would you prefer? Keep reading…
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Freeways that never were
In the 1950s and 60s, urban planners were busy constructing freeways across America, through plains and mountains where they were needed, and into the centers of cities where they bulldozed vibrant communities and hastened sprawl and urban decay. Keep reading…
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WMATA expansion plans
New York City’s subway first opened in 1904, and Boston’s in 1908; but by the 1960s, Washington DC still had no subway system. A comprehensive plan designed at that time has by now been built, with a few changes. Therefore, WMATA has developed a new master plan to keep systems in good repair, extend trains to eight cars, make pedestrian access improvements,… Keep reading…