Roland Beinert

This may be a bit off-topic, but have you seen this article about food waste powered street lamps: http://www.ecogeek.org/component/content/article/3069

Was the maintainance plan just part of the specs?

I will try to limit myself to just saying this:This is one part of a system that makes many European cities much safer than American cities for bicyclists and pedestrians. They have pedestrian- and bicycle-only areas, too, in European cities like Drachten. I’m all for using this sort of thing here in the US. But the whole system needs to be…[Read more]

Interesting article. My parent’s yard doesn’t have much lawn. It was one of the few spots in the neighborhood where there were still tall trees and native plants. If my parents had torn out the trees and put in lawn, I don’t think I would have enjoyed it as much. The dogs were fine, too. My parent’s neighbors have actually said they appreciate the…[Read more]

I’m glad to see that New Urbanists are absorbing the sustainable agriculture thing. I’d never heard the term “nourishable place” before you mentioned it. I agree that landscape architects could make some major contributions to the sustainable ag. movement.
It’s hard to respond to this topic when I agree with most of what’s been said.

I’m not sure whether people will completely disagree with me on this or not. I’d say one of most important things for a successful park, and, unfortunately, something we LA’s have little control over, is what surrounds the park. If you have a single type of use, like residential, then you will only get people using the park when they are home from…[Read more]

About time. It’s not just their environmental impact that gets to me. The things the large corporations do to farmers are pretty nasty sometimes.
I just saw Michael Pollan speak at WSU a couple of nights ago.

I haven’t seen too many new urbanist projects that really hold true to all the principles. It seems like people pick and choose the principles they like. Maybe I just haven’t seen enough NU projects, though.

I found it interesting in the first video that he said the fungi in the mulch were putting off a waxy substance that was locking up the salt and making it insoluable. I wonder if soil scientists are actually studying that possibility. I imagine rainwater will always be much more free of salts, which makes you wonder why the idea of swales is…[Read more]

I guess I see cars as a transportation type: transport for moderately long distances for people like farmers and a good way to transport goods from trains or farms or whatever to individual stores. What fills that niche if cars go? Horse and buggy? There were problems with horse and buggy, too. Horses had to be stabled. Their waste had to be…[Read more]

I can’t say I like cars much, either. I survived till the age of 25 without one and I’d gladly still be without one. My sister is four years older than me and has never gotten a drivers license, which I find impressive even if no one else does. But they exist here, and something else would take their place even if they disappeared.
People in the…[Read more]

Hey Trace, where did you see that info about the reverse flow bike lanes in Colorado? I couldn’t find anything on them. I think it was you who mentioned them.
Parking lot/plazas? Is that what you’re comparing to a woonerf and shared space? I guess there’s a shopping street called a winkelnerf that could be compared in a very rough way to a parking…[Read more]

Would a world-wide summit of design professionals be more effective? Or industry CEO’s? I think it’s a problem with some very complex contributing factors, and needs to be tackled from all angles. Politicians are ineffective because they are the only group trying to do something about it en masse.

True. I’ve heard of attacks on isolated bike paths before. It also probably has to do with recreational riding vs. riding for practical reasons. If I’m riding to the grocery store, I have to use the streets. There are bike lanes along some streets, but they’re scattered and don’t connect. Quite honestly, I have no clue why those bikers rejected…[Read more]

Trace,
I do like the idea of the woonerf (I did my senior capstone on it), but I’m mainly just defending the idea against you in this case (you did start this argument in that discussion about progressive urbanism, not me). Why should every street have to give priority to cars? The woonerf is less about moving cars (or bikes or pedestrians) around…[Read more]

To summarize my rant about your last reply, I guess I just don’t get what you’re talking about when you say shared space is a “developer’s answer”. Monderman did not come up with the idea to benefit developers in any way. And the original woonerf concept is more to do with allowing streets to be public space FOR RESIDENTS than anything. How do…[Read more]

I’ve heard of only a few projects in the US, and see no evidence they are being over-used. I’ve never lived in New York or Virginia, so maybe they are used there a lot and just aren’t widely known about in the midwest and west. Can you name a few of these projects in New York or Virginia and point to articles where residents say they hate the…[Read more]

Trace, based on everything you’ve said here and in the other discussion, I think you are confusing the general lack of sidewalks and bike lanes in the US with the concept of shared space from the Netherlands. Developers in the US don’t use shared space as an excuse to not put in sidewalks and bike lanes, especially since most of them have never…[Read more]

You’re right that it is a tough sell. I think it will take a few really good projects in the US before the idea begins to catch on. There are only a few now in the US, and they are really just one or two streets or portions of streets in a few cities.
I guess what you’re getting at is that this is more of a local solution to traffic at the scale…[Read more]

As the article pointed out, it is unfortunate that traffic planners aren’t trained along with other design professionals. I think that would help.