The pandemic has people thinking differently about everything from work, to family, to traffic.
Join Sunday morning at 9:30 am for a conversation about some of these ideas:
Oakland banishing cars from 74 miles of city streets. ‘Oakland Slow Streets’ will open 10% of city’s roads for cyclists, pedestrians (Mercury News)
Urban planner Mike Lydon is keeping track of all of the cities launching #Covid19Streets.
Cities Close Streets to Cars, Opening Space for Social Distancing (New York Times)
To help get essential workers around, cities are revising traffic patterns, suspending public transit fares, and making more room for bikes and pedestrians (CityLab)
| America’s first ‘15-Minute City,’ built from scratch |
|
| Late last year, officials in Utah started a nationwide search for developers for the new town “The Point,” a city built from scratch on the former land of the decommissioned Utah State Prison.
What is a 15 Minute City: The term was coined by mobility expert Carlos Moreno to describe cities where residents can reach most of their day to day destinations within 15 minutes either on a short walk, bike ride, or local public transit from home.
- Unlike most master planned communities, that amount to tiny sprawl grids, this city aims to “reduce the need for cars with extensive, regionally connected biking, walking, and transit systems.”
- The Point will house roughly 7,400 homes with additional schools and businesses.
- Vehicles will be restricted to a .125-square-mile stretch of the downtown core known as a “pedestrian priority zone.”
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
| Urban View: State leaders hope that ‘The Point’ will serve as a model for the rest of the country on how to develop a sustainable, minimally car-dependent city. This project is the first of its kind at such a large scale. Roads that do allow car traffic will feature protected cycling lanes and sidewalks.
What they’re saying: Utah’s vision for this project came directly from an intensive public engagement process last year.
“Thousands of Utahans have expressed their vision for the future, and among those priorities was a future-focused transportation system that minimizes car dependence and impacts on air quality,” said Alan Matheson, executive director of the Point of the Mountain State Land Authority, the government agency in charge of the project.
“Those public priorities really were put directly into this plan. I don’t know that this happens that often.” |
|
|
|
|