Next American City features transit maps, DC bloggers

Greater Greater Washington, BeyondDC, Track Twenty-Nine and other Washington area blogs appear in the latest issue of Next American City not once but twice.

One article covers the impact of blogging on the political discourse here in DC:

It was a sight to behold: D.C.‘s Zoning Commission meeting was running behind schedule because so many citizens had come to testify in favor of reduced parking requirements. One after another, young professionals explained that they had chosen to live in Washington, D.C., because they wanted to get around without a car for reasons of physical, ecological and environmental health.

“It was great turnout,” said Cheryl Cort, policy director for the Coalition for Smarter Growth, a local advocacy organization. “It was very exciting because it probably wasn’t the kind of people that the Zoning Commission is used to hearing from.”

The cause of the turnout? Bloggers. The article goes on to quote Matthew Yglesias, Dan of BeyondDC, and me on our efforts to rally supporters. I told writer Ben Adler, “The blog reaches a lot of people for whom meetings aren’t practical. It taps a market of people that I think 10 years ago wouldn’t have been organized at all.” Adler even goes on to quotes frequent GGW contrarian commenter Lance (whose contact information I provided).

Later in the same issue, Jordan Hruska covers a growing nationwide trend: amateur cartographers creating maps to visualize potential transit expansions in their cities. The article discusses DC’s many maps by BeyondDC, Track Twenty-Nine, and Greater Greater Washington, including an image of Track Twenty-Nine’s potential streetcar network.

Both articles require you to subscribe to the magazine to read online. I highly recommend subscribing; this is one magazine that really digs in to the issues we discuss every day with high quality content.