As politicians in California debate the merits of going forward with the state’s $68 billion high speed rail project given the uncertainty of receiving federal matching funds, across the country, another state has essentially decided to go it alone. The Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation is forging ahead on several state rail improvement and expansion projects using mostly state funding, concerned that even promised federal funds won’t materialize in time. (via Virginia Forges Ahead On State Rail Projects, Sans Federal Support | TPM Idea Lab)
The Rise of the Sharing Economy - Jobs & Economy - The Atlantic Cities
Millennials aren’t just into sharing cars; they’re into sharing everything, and car-sharing just happens to tap into this broader movement. Some people have begun to dub this the “collaborative consumption economy,” following the idea that children who grew up in an ownership society now would rather rent a lot of things instead.
Reblogged from emergentfutures with 62 notes
"There is a lot of evidence that people want bicycles"
New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.
"Buildings, in their simplest form, are made of vectors and envelopes. How one enters a building and moves through it constitutes the vectors. What keeps out the rain, cold, heat, noise and burglars constitute the envelope. Vectors activate; envelopes define."
Bernard Tschumi
Gilles de Bure. Bernard Tschumi. Basel: Birkhauser, 2008. p 116.
"
The most vital element for the future of our cities is that the bicycle is an instrument of experiential understanding.
On a bicycle, citizens experience their city with deep intimacy, often for the first time. For a regular motorist to take that two or three mile trip by bicycle instead is to decimate an enormous wall between them and their communities.
In their cars, the world is reduced to mere equation. “What is the fastest route from A to B?” one will ask as they start their engine. This invariably results in a cascade of freeway concrete flying by at incomprehensible speeds. Their environment, the neighborhoods that compose their communities, the beauty of architecture, the immense societal problems in distressed areas, the faces of neighbors… all of this becomes a conceptually abstract blur from the driver’s seat.
Yes, the bicycle is a marvelously efficient machine of transportation, but in the city it is so much more. The bicycle is new vision for the blind man. It is a thrilling tool of communication, an experiential device for the beauty and the ills of the urban context. One cannot turn a blind eye on a bicycle - they must acknowledge their community, all of it.
Here lies the secret weapon of the urban renaissance.
"
- Kasey Klimes, The Real Reason Why Bicycles are the Key to Better Cities
via underpaidgenius
(via smartercities)
Reblogged from smartercities with 111 notes
