National links: The UK city looking to cut out through traffic

In the UK, Birmingham has big plans for less car traffic. The state that looks most like the country’s future. High rise construction goes way back in Yemen.

Birmingham’s plans for a downtown low traffic zone: Birmingham, UK city officials are looking to remove through traffic in the center city by creating a low traffic zone in the urban core. The plans would have the transit agency run more zero-emissions buses and build more bike lanes before next year’s Commonwealth Games. For cars, through trips will be banned in the seven zones inside of the city’s ring road. (Carlton Reid | The Guardian)

Texas offers a glimpse of the future: Steven Pedigo, Director of the LBJ Lab at the University of Texas, argues that if the United States wants to see its future, it only need to look at Texas. Since 2010, 95% of the state’s growth has been people of color and the four largest urban areas make up 70% of its population. While politics and anachronistic ideas continues to complicate the picture, there’s a reason to pay close attention to the Lone Star State. (Steven Pedigo | New York Times)

Yemen’s centuries-old high-rises: Yemen has multiple unique “skyscraper cities” built from mud bricks built starting at least in the 8th or 9th centuries that rival modern mid-rise cities. The buildings were constructed vertically because people needed more space behind the protective city walls and wanted to preserve prime agricultural land. The buildings are sustainable and well suited to the desert climate. (Ulrike Lemmin-Woolfrey | BBC Travel)

Climate migrants flock to Duluth: Duluth has been pegged as a climate-proof place, but initially, the impacts of that designation seemed far in the future. However, some people are already making decisions based on climate considerations, and the climate migration has already started. It’s worth noting, howver, that climate migrants moving by choice are very different from those that will be forced the move in the future. (Dan Kraker | MPR News)

Case against mega contracts in mega transit projects: Large public works and infrastructure projects can cost billions. But just because a project will cost a lot overall doesn’t mean it should be bid out as a single project. Projects that have come in under budget around the world, such as subway lines in Spain, did so because the projects did not have a single big contract, but several smaller ones that promoted competition and protected projects from disruption. (Paul Lewis | Eno Center for Transportation)

Quote of the week:

“Patching these holes in the environmental review process will help reduce conflict and litigation and help clear up some of the uncertainty that the previous administration’s rule caused.”

Brenda Mallory, chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, in the New York Times on the Biden administration’s move to restore climate criteria in the National Environmental Policy Act.

This week on the podcast, Tufts professor Justin Hollander joins the show.