Land Use

In the 1960s, the beautiful Penn Station was torn down and replaced by the hideous Madison Square Garden, relegating America’s busiest train station to a cramped basement.  Now, New York is poised to build a new grand Moynihan Station on the west side of 8th Avenue, in the old Farley Post Office building that happens to have been designed by the same architects.  No…  Keep reading…

Which street would you prefer?  Keep reading…

As Boozy so entertainingly informed us, Le Corbusier’s vision for a city was the Radiant City, of rows of identical buildings and skyscrapers separated by parkland.  Robert Moses’ vision for the city included wide expressways (which eventually became choked with traffic) cutting across boulevards of urban renewal style projects.  And Jane Jacobs famously…  Keep reading…

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…

None but the most corrupt of politicians would think that moving Yankee Stadium over to a public park, farther from the highway, replacing that park with some space on top of garages and other parkland crammed up against the river far away from the neighborhood, and having the city kick in $70 million for this, could possibly be a good idea.  Keep reading…

Smart growth, transit-oriented development - there are many names for the idea of building mixed-use, walkable communities.  Whatever you call it, it’s starting to catch on in suburban communities from San Mateo to Silver Spring.  But most are areas with existing transit, near to already walkable cities.  What about America’s great bastions of…  Keep reading…

In Westwood, MA is the Route 128 rail station, a stop on Amtrak’s Acela and Regional trains between Boston and the rest of the Northeast Corridor cities to the south.  It is also a stop on the MBTA’s commuter rail, and immediately off Massachusetts’ Route 128, (in that area at least) better know to the rest of the country as I-95.  Keep reading…

A Harvard economist, Edward Glaeser, got some press recently for a report he has written about the connection between land-use rules in Massachusetts towns and housing prices.  It’s really not much of a surprise that many towns, like Lincoln and Weston (among the richest towns in the Commonwealth) use land restrictions to keep their towns small and expensive.  Keep reading…

I first read about this idea in the RPA’s analysis of congestion pricing, but now that traffic reduction ideas are a talked-about topic, another more radical idea has hit the blogs: closing Broadway to traffic.  Paul White of TA brings up the idea in a Gothamist interview, and MemeFirst follows up with some more detailed detailed thoughts.  Keep reading…

Consider two groups of people, both of whom call themselves “conservatives.”  One is the Republicans of Bush, Frist, DeLay, Enron, and the oil companies.  They believe that unregulated business and low taxes are the cures for all ills.  They also claim to believe in small government, but they really believe in big government that gives subsidies,…  Keep reading…