National links: The pandemic has left some storefronts vacant. Owners are getting creative.

In-person commerce has seen better days, so owners are coming up with new ways to draw shoppers. One reason for all the transit operator shortages. Parisian suburbs are getting a major rail expansion.

What to do with vacant storefronts: Retail was struggling before the pandemic as e-commerce took business away from brick and mortar locations. But the pandemic has tightened the screws even harder and landlords have had to get creative in order to rent out space. Some have allowed more advertising and art while others turned to leasing to non-profits and pop ups, or creating more flexible alternatives to their usual long-term leases. (Jane Margolies | New York Times)

Stop operating transit like a for-profit business: Operator shortages continue to be a problem at transit agencies across the country. Former MBTA employee Laurel Paget-Seekins believes that part of the problem is treating transit agencies too much like a business, hiring MBAs with no transit experience into upper level positions, where they then cut costs. This strategy is part of a broader trend that contributes to inequality by limiting workplace mobility. (Laurel Paget-Seekins | Laurel in Transit)

Paris has big transit plans: The 35.6 billion euro Grand Paris Express is a plan for four new metro lines and 68 stations that will double the size and ridership of an already extensive rail transit network in the Paris region. While 2.2 million people live in Paris proper, 10.5 million live in the suburbs, and when completed in 2030, suburban trips by transit will be made easier by ring routes with links to existing lines to make connections. (Natalie Bicknell Argerious | The Urbanist)

What is green infrastructure: A new analysis of 122 plans from 20 US cities found that no one really has a definition for green infrastructure, though 693 types were identified. This is frustrating in that if you don’t know what green infrastructure is, how can you know what you’re getting when you plan for it? Most of the definitions are dominated by hydrology, but that definition alone could limit positive social and ecological services, writes the paper’s lead author. (Science Daily)

The Metaverse recreates the worst parts of Walmart: Advertising and promotions are hard at work selling the Metaverse to the world, even if we still aren’t sure what this virtual world actually is for. Architecture critic Kate Wagner discusses why a Metaverse mockup of Walmart brings about one of our worst fears: that we’re going to get sucked into a virtual commercial world not because we want to go there but because we have to. Like her, I’m glad there’s still a real world to fight for. (Kate Wagner | Gawker)

Quote of the week:

“The physical city is populated by human beings. In the city of social media, you could be talking at any time to someone who is secretly a robot. In a physical city, travel takes time. In the city of social media, it’s trivial for Macedonian teenagers to assume the identities of thousands of people in a different hemisphere.”

Sahar Massachi in MIT Technology Review discussing how we can save social media by treating it more like a city.

This week on the podcast, Michael Spotts, a senior visiting research fellow at ULI’s Terwiliger Center for Housing and head of Neighborhood Fundamentals, joins the show.