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
Parking Madness 2015: Can Your Parking Crater Compete?
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March is a special month on Streetsblog. It’s the time when the nation’s worst downtown parking scars face off head-to-head for the shame of winning the “golden crater” — and the local publicity bonanza that comes with it. For the third year running, we’re asking you to help seed the bracket in our Parking Madness […]
The Terrible 60-Year-Old Parking Advice That’s Still Haunting America
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Scenes like the one above — enormous pieces of land devoted to half-empty parking lots — are ubiquitous throughout the United States. And that’s no accident. Chuck Marohn at Strong Towns was looking over some 1954 guidance from the American Planning Association. Today, most planners would recognize it as terribly destructive, but it still holds sway […]
How the Lure of Spending Keeps Dumb Highway Projects Alive
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Decades ago, Ohio officials drew a line on a map — the Eastern Corridor, a highway for commuters living in Cincinnati’s eastern suburbs. No matter how much time has passed and how little sense it makes to build that highway today, that line can still seem like destiny. The Eastern Corridor began as a 1960s […]
To Put Transit on Stronger Footing, Stop Lavish Subsidies for Driving
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There’s an interesting conversation happening in urbanism circles about how to make transit financially sustainable, going back to a piece in CityLab last June from University of Minnesota professor David Levinson. Levinson made the case for running transit like a public utility, not a government agency. There’s one thing that’s largely missing from these discussions, argues Cap’n Transit, […]
The Enormous Promise of a Carbon Tax-and-Dividend
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Absent any foreseeable action from Washington, some states and localities are stepping up with policies that put a price on carbon. And that has a number of exciting implications for cities and sustainable transportation. California is using revenue from its cap-and-trade program, for instance, to subsidize housing near transit. In Oregon, advocates are now pushing a […]
Koch Brothers Loom Over Maryland’s Purple Line Fight
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Look whose envoy has been dispatched to undermine Maryland’s Purple Line. Once again, Randal O’Toole of the Koch brothers-funded Cato Institute has been deployed to attack a light rail project in distress. On Monday, the Maryland Public Policy Institute, a right-wing think tank, is hosting a debate on whether to construct the light rail project in the […]
The Remarkable Drop in Car Commuting to Downtown Seattle
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In a testament to how quickly travel behavior can change, new stats out of Seattle show that the share of downtown workers who commute alone by car has dropped significantly in the last 15 years. The rate of solo car commuting to downtown Seattle was 50 percent in 2000. Now it’s down to 31 percent, […]
Cincinnati’s Highway Revolt on the Verge of Victory
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Could the end be near for the $1.4 billion Eastern Corridor highway project proposed for eastern Cincinnati? Language added to Ohio’s transportation budget, which is being debated right now, would specifically “prohibit [Ohio DOT] from funding the Eastern Corridor Project in Hamilton County.” The amendment was introduced by Republican state lawmaker Tom Brinkman, who represents an eastern portion […]
The “Urban Renewal Mindset” Persists in St. Louis
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St. Louis is home to one of the more notorious failures of the “urban renewal” era: the Pruitt-Igoe housing project. When these towers were demolished a generation ago, it seemed like the end of an era in city planning. The clearance of city blocks to make way for mega-development projects is now considered a colossal […]
Maryland Gov Larry Hogan Plays Chicken With Purple Line Funding
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Newly elected Maryland Governor Larry Hogan says he’s putting off bids on the Purple Line light rail project in an attempt to cut costs, but the delay could also jeopardize the whole project by putting federal funding at risk. A cloud of uncertainty has been hanging over the Purple Line since Hogan’s election in November. On […]
In Major Shift, Central Cities Edging Out Sprawl in Competition for Jobs
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Job sprawl — picture suburban office parks with lots of parking — might be past its peak. The last few years have been good ones for central cities, as far as job growth is concerned, and not so hot for mid-height, reflective glass office campuses. That’s according to an analysis by researcher Joe Cortright at City Observatory. […]
You Can Make a More Effective Bus System for Cheap, But It’s Not Easy
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Bus service in Houston is about to get a lot more useful — without costing any more to operate. The city’s new bus network, which transit consultant Jarrett Walker of Network blog Human Transit helped design, will bring frequent service to much more of the city. The plan was unveiled last year and has been getting a fresh round […]