One Central Park in Sydney, Australia, has hanging gardens and a heliostat on the roof to redirect sunlight. Image by Rob Deutscher licensed under Creative Commons.

How to design for equity and the environment. Are we really that close to everyday life with autonomous vehicles? Can e-bike subsidies make riding a bike more accessible for everyone?

Designing for a bleak future: Both urban design and architecture involve planning for the future. But with climate change, racial injustice, and pandemic geographies all part of our current reality, it will be tough to determine what the future holds. The key is to design with the environment and equity in mind, while also developing systems that allow us to survive. (Nikil Saval | New York Times)

We are years away from self-driving cars: Even though automobile companies presented big promises to have fully autonomous cars by 2021, there are multiple planning and technological barriers that they need to overcome before these vehicles become an everyday reality. (Eric Adams | Recode)

An e-bike rebate program could support boom: During the pandemic, more and more people use bicycles to get around. The logical next step to further this trend is to extend e-bike rebates and subsidies that support the growth of this sustainable model, in which 65% of purchases were made to replace auto trips. (Andy Olin | Kinder Institute)

Challenging large lot single-family zoning: Civil rights lawyers in Connecticut are taking on exclusionary zoning in the Town of Woodbridge by asking the city to build a four-unit building on a lot that only allows one home on 1.5 acres. If the project is rejected, the lawyers are prepared to take the city to court. They believe the case could have statewide implications for zoning and the provision of affordable housing. (Jacqueline Rabe Thomas | CT Mirror)

Utah wants to incentivize remote work: This summer, Utah saw fewer commuters, more telework, and lower numbers of bad air days. Now, the state is considering what businesses need to make remote work more available to reduce air pollution. (Emma Penrod | Utah Business)

Vanya Srivastava contributed to these summaries.

Quote of the Week

“A local firm is going to be much less likely to do something that makes a lot of people in Durham angry, because that directly affects their standing in their community and therefore their bottom line. If you don’t pay the rent, there’s nobody to appeal to, nobody to protest.”

Durham Council Member Jillian Johnson in Indy Week discussing how out of state landlords own a greater share of property than they did in previous years.

This week on the podcast, Dani Simons of Waze joins the show to talk about carpooling.