Cities are launching pads for all sorts of human aspirations. (Photo: Gold41 via Flickr) Yesterday, at The Urbanophile, Aaron Renn posted a thoughtful essay about the idea of the "city as platform." He looks at all the different meanings of the word platform and muses about how they apply in the urban context. To me, […]

Regular readers will notice something new and different across all our sites starting today. Currently, some of the posts you see on the local Streetsblog sites — New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Capitol Hill — actually originated on a different Streetsblog site and are being syndicated. Starting today, you’ll see a little icon, […]

It says something about the country that we live in that the simple act of walking to work can merit a blog post. But so it is. Today, at her fine blog The Naked City, Mary Newsom wrote about her experience walking the 4.2 miles from her home to her office. She lives in Charlotte, […]

At Streetsblog Network member blog Planning Pool, this week is being billed as "Fail Week" — a full five days on "information about bad planning, lack of planning, and planning generally gone awry." We can’t wait to see what they’ll be doing. There’s certainly no shortage of potential topics. Their first fail-related post actually has […]

If you’ve ever wanted a breakdown of the benefits of commuting by bike versus commuting by car, Carfree.us has got it for you. The writer of this Streetsblog Network member blog, a resident of Charlotte, North Carolina,  is not actually totally car-free, but he has made a commitment to commuting by bike or bus for […]

As malls have struggled over the last 20 years or so to stay culturally relevant — or even profitable — one of the solutions that has gained ground is the "lifestyle center." These are malls with sidewalks and sidewalk musicians, European-style fountains, open-air restaurants, and of course, lots of shopping. They are prefab places masquerading […]

Following up on yesterday’s post about family-friendly transit, which generated a raft of interesting comments on Streetsblog New York (and even more on our SF, DC and LA sites), we’ve got a dispatch from the front lines. Carla Saulter, who writes the always excellent Bus Chick blog out in Seattle, weighs in on how going […]

As someone who is raising a child without a car in a transit-rich city, I sometimes need to be reminded that for many people in the United States, the reality of maintaining a family life without a personal motor vehicle is impractical — or simply unthinkable, for a variety of reasons. This often holds true […]

Streetsblog Network member Boston Biker has picked up the most recent Streetfilms release, Fixing the Great Mistake: Autocentric Development, and written an eloquent post about the necessity of moving away from car-centered planning. The post begins by taking on the question so may of us have had to answer — you know the one, about […]

The Vancouver Olympics may be over, but Jarrett Walker at Human Transit writes that the legacy for public transportation in that city could be a lasting one. During the games, the city moved nearly 1.7 million people per day on its transit system. Walker sees it as a sort of Olympic exhibition of what the […]

The theme of today’s post from the Streetsblog Network is mayors who talk sense. First, at Fort Worthology, Kevin Buchanan files a report on what Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief had to say in his State of the City address: Mayor Mike Moncrief of Fort Worth: "Friends, we cannot continue to focus solely on building […]