It’s Memorial Day here is the U.S., so our office is closed. For readers in other countries – or people who just want a little distraction on the holiday weekend – here are five articles we read recently and really enjoyed. From the practical to the personal, these pieces all offer some new perspective on the design, the use, and – of course – the feeling of urban spaces. Read on, if you’re curious…
Do rain gardens really save a city money?
Soils Matter
I love the Soils Matter blog and highly recommend it for anyone interested in practical, bite-sized pieces of information about the role of soils in our world.
On the job with an urban arborist
CityLab
“People think of trees as permanent fixtures, but they’re in constant states of change,” says urban arborist Clint Robinson, who works in Dallas/Ft. Worth. Clint walks us through what the people who care for trees (in cities, anyway) do all day.
New federal guide will show more cities the way on protected bike lanes
Streetsblog
A new document has been released by the Federal Highway Administration detailing designs for safer, more protected, and straight up nicer bike lanes. This is exciting to me as a bicyclist and also because it pushes us into new thinking about the street and sidewalk as the landscape of the city. A new approach to bike lines can and should work in tandem with new approaches to integrating trees and plants into the public right of way.
Cities: For people – or cars?
Strong Towns
“Before the automobile, before modern zoning, and before massive central government intervention in real estate markets, cities grew and developed around the dominant transportation technology of the day: a person’s two feet. Cities were scaled to people who walked because most people walked everywhere they went.” You’ll remember how it feels.
Taking “resilience” out of the realm of metaphor
The Nature of Cities
This global roundtable features voices from 21 different people talking about how to measure resilience in cities – and what it really means. Read through responses from people in Stockhold, Paris, Venice, Durban, Tokyo, San Paolo, Bangkok, and more to stimulate your thinking and perspective on this extremely relevant topic.
Bonus:
CityLab
The title says it all. Just read it!
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