St. Marks Square in Venice by Kent Wang licensed under Creative Commons.

Barriers in Venice stave off dangerous tides. A look at the intersection between equity and urban commutes. Bergen, a city in Norway, is planning an emissions-free neighborhood.

Venice will finally avoid the tides: Venice, Italy is known for its canals and waterways and the fact that the city is slowly sinking into the lagoon in which it sits. High tides frequently cover a third of the city but last week barriers built in the lagoon held back the water for the first time ever. (Colleen Barry | AP)

The unequal urban commute: A new Urban Institute report establishes metrics measuring transportation access to opportunity, finding that higher-income residents have greater access to public transit than lower-income and non-white populations. (Wesley Jenkins | Urban Institute)

Accounting for all neighborhood emissions: Planners in the Norwegian city of Bergen are building a zero-emissions regenerative neighborhood from a sprawling warehouse and container district called Dokken. In order to reach the goal, planners are measuring how each decision will impact the project in the long run. (Adele Peters | Fast Company)

Blue cities in red states: Researchers looking at blue metro areas in swing states have found that gerrymandering and more conservative laws written by rural interests often siphon off tax dollars and weaken city autonomy. (Karen Danielson, Robert Lang, David Damore | Brookings Institute)

An unprecedented loss of small businesses and labor participation: Since the pandemic began, the country’s wealthiest have increased their hoard by $845 billion as small businesses face losses never seen during any recession. Experts believe the pain is likely to get worse given an already low labor participation rate and looming reductions in unemployment benefits. (Bob Hennelly | Salon)

Vanya Srivastava contributed to these summaries.

Quote of the Week

“Most people who are cycling used public transport before. But now they need an alternative. Before COVID we had 1,000 cyclists [on the main shopping street], now we have 7,000.”

Milan’s Deputy Mayor for Urban Planning Pierfrancesco Maran in BBC News discussing the massive increases in cycling, the topic also of a 20 minute BBC feature.

This week on the podcast, Angie Schmitt joins the show to talk about her book “Right of Way”.