Angie Schmitt
Angie is a Cleveland-based writer with a background in planning and newspaper reporting. She has been writing about cities for Streetsblog for six years.
Recent Posts
London’s New Mayor, Sadiq Khan, Pledges to “Accelerate” Cycling Progress
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London bike advocates proved they were a political force to be reckoned under Mayor Boris Johnson. After cyclists demonstrated that they would not be satisfied with half-measures, Johnson started to make serious headway on safe bike infrastructure in his second term. It looks like that progress will continue even with a new mayor from a different party. Last week, Londoners chose Sadiq Khan of […]
Paris Kicks Off Monthly Car-Free Sundays on the Champs-Élysées
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It’s been almost six months since Paris held its big car-free day, a jubilant event that temporarily cleared the air of poisonous diesel emissions and imparted a sense of how great streets could be without the constant roar of motor vehicles. Now Mayor Anne Hidalgo is moving to make “open streets” a monthly event. Richard Layman at Rebuilding Place in the […]
Historical Photos of St. Louis Capture the Great Violence of “Urban Renewal”
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Some of these images, dug up by Alex Ihnen at NextSTL, almost look like a war zone. Buildings exploding. Entire city blocks reduced to ghost towns. Families out on curbs, carrying all their belongings in suitcases. It wasn’t a war, though — it was mid-century St. Louis. Perhaps no other American city more enthusiastically embraced the development strategy known as “urban renewal,” a euphemism […]
Using Stress Maps to Identify Gaps in the Bike Network
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Here’s an interesting way to evaluate how well a street network works for biking. Stephen Tu and Alex Rixey are mapping streets in Montgomery County, Maryland, based on how comfortable riders of different skill levels find them. Tu and Rixey based their mapping technique on the famous Portland survey that found “strong and fearless” riders willing […]
U.S. DOT Wants to Show America How to Heal Divides Left By Urban Highways
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Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx opened up earlier this spring in a refreshingly personal speech about how highway construction in American cities isolated many neighborhoods — especially black neighborhoods — and cut people off from economic opportunity. Now U.S. DOT is following up with an effort to demonstrate how those wrongs can be righted. Yesterday the agency announced the Every Place […]
It’s Not Rocket Science: If Streets Are Safe, More Kids Walk or Bike to School
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Yesterday was national Bike to School Day, an event that shows kids what it’s like to power their own way to school. The fact that we have a special day to promote what used to be part of the daily routine for many children also speaks to the way biking and walking have been marginalized on American streets. Two generations ago, in 1969, almost half […]
How Would Jane Jacobs Zone?
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Everyone’s paying tribute to Jane Jacobs today, on what would be the pioneering urbanist’s 100th birthday. Jacobs’ classic critique of mid-century American urban planning dogma, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, is probably the most influential book ever written about planning. But her legacy is also contested, and her ideas still go unheeded in most cities. Was […]
Highway Propaganda Vids Sell City Residents on the Wonders of Wider Roads
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It’s not enough for highway builders to carve out land at great public expense so they can jam more cars into cities. Now they want you to believe their projects are great for the neighborhoods that bear the brunt of the added traffic and pollution. Up top is a video produced by the Colorado Department of Transportation to sell the […]
Cyclists Will Pay to Park at Seattle’s New Light Rail Stations. Will Drivers?
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Right now, the Seattle region is hashing out how to spend $50 billion to expand transit. The project list, known as ST3, is tilted heavily toward the suburbs, not the urban core where ridership would be higher. Included with all those suburban stations will be thousands of new parking stalls, which each cost tens of thousands of dollars to build. Interestingly, Josh […]
Cycling Booms in London, and the City’s Not Looking Back
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Boris Johnson says that one of his goals as mayor of London was to make cycling “more popular and more normal.” As Johnson’s eight-year tenure winds down, it looks like the progress he made in his second term has accomplished that mission. If current trends continue, bike commuters will outnumber car commuters in central London by 2018, according to a […]
Owners of Big Parking Lots Have to Pay More in Northeast Ohio
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Impermeable surfaces like parking lots are terrible for the environment in several ways, including the water pollution that results when stormwater runoff causes sewer systems to overflow. In Ohio, the state’s highest court recently upheld a fee on parking lots to help mitigate the damage to water quality. Greater Cleveland, like a lot of older cities, was ordered by […]
Take a Moment to Appreciate the Absolute Enormity of This Interchange
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Every once in a while you have to step back and gape at the sheer scale of the highway interchanges America has built smack in the middle of our cities. Branden Klayko at Broken Sidewalk is taking a moment to do just that with Louisville’s Spaghetti Junction, between downtown and the waterfront. This giant interchange is being expanded as […]