Cities & Planning

A roundup of efforts that offer protection from dangerous heat — and also seek to reduce emissions.

Right now, the city of Seattle is at a crossroads. As a robust job market, the city has never had a housing plan that meets the demand. Thankfully, the Washington State Legislature has done a lot of work this spring, legalizing fourplexes everywhere in Seattle, and legalizing sixplexes near frequent transit. So, you may think

A slim cataloguing of the rich diversity of small vehicles that help shape street life in the world’s largest city Unusually for me, this is a post with little in the way of context. Rather, it is …

Amtrak is about to see more Federal funding than it’s had in decades, and is finally in the position to talk about major growth. But their “Amtrak Connects US” vision document is worth reading to notice two things: They continue to face a conflict between ridership goals and coverage goals, and they don’t feel that […]

The Urbanist Podcast is on summer break so we thought we'd share with you a guest podcast on a topic near and dear to hearts of many urbanists and bike advocates. On Resources Radio's From Rails to Trails, Peter Harnik discusses how nonprofits, local stakeholders, and policymakers convert abandoned railroad lines into multi-use recreational trails

In the eras before air-conditioning, southern China's skywells played a key role in keeping people's homes cool. Could they do it again today?

An enhanced geothermal system expands the range of sites able to be tapped for geothermal energy, and Fervo’s demo is the first time a company has shown it can be done on this kind of commercial scale.

Rollie Williams of Climate Town walks through the history of minimum parking laws and growth of parking in America with a few cameos from Jason Slaughter of Not Just Bikes. Williams highlights the many problems with such laws and the arbitrary nature of them.

Fixing Math 'n' Stuff's broken windows is probably cheaper than paying cops overtime.

During the Cold War, the US built a network of tunnels in the Greenland ice sheet. Sixty years later, the base has provided a critical clue about the climate crisis.

Colonization decimated Pacific herring, surf smelt and eulachon populations. Now the Tsleil-Waututh Nation is trying to ‘reset the clock.’

An early view of the Chicago Bears' stadium and mixed-use development project would look on the site of the former Arlington Park Racetrack ...

An energy company called Fervo says it has achieved a breakthrough in geothermal technology.

This past May, the city of Los Angeles rolled out a brand new, state-of-the art feature for bus shelters. It’s called La Sombrita. La Sombrita is a metal screen that’s intended to provide shade for the thousands of people who ride the bus every day. The shade screen is about two feet wide, ten feet

A rendering of a rooftop terrace installed by the Parisian startup Roofscapes. With its zinc roofs and minimal tree cover, Paris was not built to handle the new era of extreme heat. Now, like other...

The City of Kirkland is in the middle of a deep dive on how it could make one of its most popular downtown streets more inviting, more people-centric, and more activated. That street is Park Lane, a 400-foot stretch of quiet one-way roadway connecting busy Main Street and Lake Street with popular businesses on either

Earlier this month, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) started construction on a small stretch of multi-use pathway near I-90 that will have an oversized impact: It will finally connect the main neighborhood greenway throughout the Rainier Valley to the Mountains to Sound trail to Beacon Hill and across the lake to the Eastside. Since

Street parking takes up space and incentivizes driving. New curb management companies are trying to help cities better use this space

Hopes for the first high-quality Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line in Pierce County were formally dashed this week when Pierce Transit told its board of commissioners that it could no longer move forward with plans to create any dedicated space for buses along Pacific Avenue between downtown Tacoma and Spanaway. The line, which was to

One year ago, Spokane shocked the state by passing a sweeping housing reform bill that, among other things, reduced minimum lot sizes and legalized fourplexes anywhere you can build a single-family home. Passed unanimously by a Spokane City Council seen as split 5-2 between progressives and conservatives, the reform arguably catalyzed the passage of HB 1110, which

Cold Call: Time Theft as Avoided Emissions is an unconventional carbon offsetting scheme that draws on strategies of worker sabotage and applies them in the context of high emission companies in the fossil fuel industry.

Sound Transit is advancing some service change proposals for next year. By and large, the proposals are similar to concepts that the agency shared in May. Changes being proposed are relatively modest given that agency partners are still struggling to maintain current service levels under a tough staffing environment. In South King County and Pierce

Photo by Andrey Metelev on Unsplash Batteries and transmission are in direct competition. Both enable electricity arbitrage – the profitable repricing of a resource by matching different levels of …

A short and spicy post. There remains, even in 2023, a substantial fraction of the “future of energy” hivemind who are still convinced that the solution to all our problems is to build …

As I've been thinking more about spaces [https://www.rahulshankar.com/default-spaces/] I'm trying to get smarter about how zoning and land use is structured in the United States and different parts of the world. If I had to define zoning, it would be something like this – The legal apparatus

Circular Economy. A selection of articles, interviews and projects

The rise of remote work offers a family friendly way to cut emissions

This weekend, elected officials and staff with the City of Kirkland cut the ribbon on the new Totem Lake Connector bicycle and pedestrian bridge. The new bridge finally stitches together the nearly 6-mile gravel Cross Kirkland Corridor trail over two oversized and dangerous roadways, Totem Lake Boulevard and NE 124th Street, connecting the city's growing

For many working-class Americans, cars are a burden and a necessity.