Greyscale photograph of people sitting in a car. Image from Suzy Hazelwood via Pexels.

The 100th anniversary of car dependence. How to stop wasting billions on transit projects. Real estate prices are falling, but not everywhere.

100 years of auto dependence: Traffic engineer Edward J. Mehren wrote a journal article 100 years ago this month saying, for the first time, that streets should be for motor vehicles alone. As historian Peter Norton noted, auto interests lobbied hard to make this a reality in order to relegate pedestrians, cyclists, and other road users to sidewalks. Mehren was notable for developing one of the first major interstate highway proposals and sat on several commissions appointed by Herbert Hoover. He also died in a car crash. (Carlton Reid | Forbes)

How to stop wasting billions on transit projects: Researchers at the Marron Institute of Urban Management at NYU will release their transit costs report this month which includes a number of potential solutions for lowering construction costs on transit projects around the country. The good news is that it’s possible to reduce costs. The tough news is that it will take institutional capacity building and getting politicians and voters alike to care about this issue. (Aaron Gordon | Motherboard)

Real estate prices are falling, but not everywhere: With high interest rates making housing more expensive to potential buyers, home prices are dropping across the country. States like California and cities like Austin, Texas are seeing declines, but Florida is still seeing home value appreciation. None of the explanations for why this is happening in some regions and not others paint a full picture. (Tim Lee | Slate)

New world atlas shows global infrastructure disparities: Researchers at Iowa State University studied infrastructure differences around the world using satellite data from 2015. They found a stark disparity between infrastructure development in the Global North versus the Global South. In fact, 9 out of 10 humans live in a country with less per capita infrastructure than the average for the Global North. The study may provide lessons for policymakers who are looking for more equitable development strategies. (Iowa State University News Service)

Boulder’s heat mapping experiment: A citizen volunteer-led project to map Boulder, Colorado’s hottest areas, with support from NOAA and the city, found that cooling stations and other heat-reducing solutions were needed in areas where heat was trapped by large commercial corridors with big roads and neighborhoods with fewer trees and green spaces. The city will take the findings into consideration when finalizing cooling solutions and heat impacts. (Tatiana Flowers | The Colorado Sun)

Quote of the Week

“I think part of the dynamic is we have had a huge amount of federal stimulus money, then we had infrastructure, now we’ve got the [climate bill] that just passed. And I think you sort of get lost in the big numbers, and it might be difficult for people to get their arms around all of it.”

Patrick Meyers, Colorado’s chief economic recovery officer, in Politico, discusses why so few voters (25%) know that the infrastructure bill even passed.

This week on the podcast, Amanda Howell at The University of Oregon’s Urbanism Next talks about sidewalk delivery robots.