National links: Urbanization isn’t what’s hurting the environment. In fact, we need more of it.

As humans rapidly urbanize, one of the greatest threats to our natural world is not urbanization itself, but urban sprawl. What would it take to bring high-quality, zero-emissions transit to every major city in the US? Department store sales are contracting alongside the shrinking middle class.

We need more urbanization, not less: Urbanization around the globe means our cities are growing at a frenetic pace, but they are not getting dense enough. Our sprawling world is pushing into wildlands with devastating effect on climate and biodiversity and if we continue down this path we risk outcomes far worse than a lack of space. (Ben Wilson | Fast Company)

Better transit in every city: To bring zero-emission, high quality, frequent transit to cities with over 100,000 residents in the US would require at least a $2.2 billion annual investment, according to new research — only a 4.5 percent increase in operating budgets nationally. The first improvements should be in communities of color that have been deprived of access and service quality. (Yonah Freemark | Urban Institute)

As the middle class goes, so goes the department store: The future is bleak for American department stores, which have seen sales fall since 2008 even as e-commerce giants and direct-to-consumer branding have risen. But this fall from grace also tracks with the shrinking of the middle class as high-income households accumulate more wealth. The two are more intertwined than we once thought and the pandemic could deal the final blow. (Jason Del Rey | Recode)

Tony Hseih’s Las Vegas legacy: The late former Zappos CEO Tony Hseih tried to redevelop a neglected and abandoned corner of the old downtown Las Vegas by attracting other entrepreneurs to the area and investing in space. He aimed for the area to transform into a community-focused city, but his Downtown Project met with internal challenges as well as critics that argued it made the city more expensive. (Karen Weise and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs | New York Times)

Climate warnings on gas pumps: In an effort to educate drivers on the climate impacts of oil and gas usage, Cambridge, Mass. is putting caution labels on gas station pumps, a similar strategy used for many years for cigarettes. The climate fight requires behavioral change and education, but this attempt will likely be met by legal complaints from the industry, as a similar attempt was in North Vancouver in Canada. (Dharna Noor | Gizmodo Earther)

Vanya Srivastava contributed to these summaries

Quote of the Week

“Some 7.2 trillion synthetic particles are washing into San Francisco Bay each year. Almost half those stormwater particles — so a really high percentage — were rubbery particles that we think are mostly coming from tires.”

Rebecca Sutton, a senior scientist at SFEI, discussing particle pollution in The Atlantic.

This week on the podcast, we’re sharing Part 1 of the University of Iowa Transportation and Law symposium.