The social costs of driving that are not paid by the driver amount to a $300 billion subsidy each year. The EPA (Lowe, 1988) found that if employees were directly handed this subsidy, transit and bicycle use would go up and auto traffic would go down by 25 percent. A Seattle study found that society pays a $792 subsidy to each motorist each year (excluding a $1,920 annual free parking subsidy). In New York City, the metro area loses $55 billion each year in hidden auto costs associated with safety and environmental damage. More than 90 percent of all commuters park for free at work.

…Dispersed, auto-dependent development in Loudoun County, Virginia, is a net loss to the tax base of $700 to $2,200 per dwelling unit. In San Jose, California, planners determined that such development would create annual deficits of $4.5 million compared to a $2 million surplus if future development is compact.

nozziwalkablestreets, 05.03.13.

next time you’re reading the comments on a news article and some ignorant biased guy caps locks saying bicyclists should pay for the road, get licenses, etc, point them to this article.

The hollow shells stared at me with broken windows for eyes, and the existential void beneath the layers of darkness reminded me of the abandoned buildings littered throughout the city of Houston. I’ve been documenting the evolution of the city photographically for half a decade, and in that time I realized two things: There is a large population of homeless citizens out on the pavement and there are numerous unused buildings that have been empty for years. It’s ludicrous to me that there are shelters for these people, but a NO TRESPASSING sign and an idle security guard keeps A and B separated. Logic tells me that A plus B equals C, the solution in which abandoned buildings can be used as housing for the homeless, even if only temporarily. But politicians have a different equation, a different kind of mathematics, a different kind of logic. They would rather raze the buildings and sell the lot to developers, thus bringing business to the area, and that would pump money into the city…

What cities throughout America need is not just a new approach in urban planning, but a new urban policy. Abandoned structures should not only be regenerated as a housing project for the homeless, but also as hosts for education centers to teach the citizens new skills that will allow them to be independent and self-sustaining.

notebook no.9, 13.02.13.

We have a number of formal and informal ways to think about what makes a good walkable community. I’ve written before about the popsicle test (can a child comfortably walk to buy a popsicle and walk back home?), the Halloween test (does the neighborhood attract kids walking door-to-door on Halloween?), and 20-minute neighborhood (can you meet most all of your daily needs within a 20-minute walk or transit ride?).

Walk Appeal… explains several things that were heretofore either contradictory or mysterious. It begins with the assertion that the quarter-mile radius (or 5-minute walk), which has been held up for a century as the distance Americans will walk before driving, is actually a myth.

Both images below are at the same scale, and the yellow dashed line is a quarter-mile radius. On the left is a power center. As we all know, if you’re at Best Buy and need to pick something up at Old Navy, there’s no way you’re walking from one store to another. Instead, you get in your car and drive as close as possible to the Old Navy front door. You’ll even wait for a parking space to open up instead of driving to an open space just a few spaces away… not because you’re lazy, but because it’s such a terrible walking experience.

The image on the right is Rome. The circles are centered on the Piazza del Popolo (North is to the left) and the Green radius goes through the Vittorio Emanuele on the right. People regularly walk that far and then keep on walking without ever thinking of driving.

great post on walkability. read more at: atlanticcities, 30.07.12.