From StrongTowns.org — The "Stroad"

When you combine a street and a road, you get a STROAD, one of the most dangerous and unproductive human environments. To get more for our transportation dollar, we need an active policy of converting STROADs to productive streets or high capacity roadways.

From The Atlantic Cities — Shouldn't Pedestrians At Least Be Safe From Cars on the Sidewalk?

SARAH GOODYEAR
On one day last week, within hours of each other, two women standing or walking on New York City sidewalks were killed by drivers. 

One of those senseless deaths happened in Manhattan, and one in my Brooklyn neighborhood, where a woman named Martha Atwater stepped out of a bagel store after buying cookies there for her family. A few steps away, she was struck by a sport pickup truck whose driver had mounted the curb and come up onto the sidewalk. When I saw the picture of where the crash had occurred, I had to sit down. I had been in that exact spot about 20 minutes before it happened. Not that there’s anything particularly remarkable in that for anyone but me. I’m just one of hundreds of people who walk that stretch of pavement every day.Read more: Shouldn't Pedestrians At Least Be Safe From Cars on the Sidewalk? - Commute - The Atlantic Cities

From NPR: The Picture Show — Ezra Stoller, The Photographer Who Made Architects Famous

Design Research, Benjamin Thompson, Cambridge, Mass., 1970

Ezra Stoller probably wouldn't care about this question, but let's indulge it anyways: What makes a "beautiful" photograph?

To a degree, a lot depends on the subject, right? Would Ansel Adams have been half as famous if those landscapes hadn't already done most of the work?

Then again, beauty is also in the eye of the beholder. Bill Brandt didn't design the human body, so how can he take credit for its beauty in his photos? Because he knew how to capture the poetry of all its curves and angles — forcing us, in turn, to see the body in ways we hadn't seen it before.

Architectural photography, though often relegated to its own genre, is no different. The task is to capture the intention behind someone else's design — to distill the philosophy of a building into a single, digestible image that transcends explanation. It's not easy, but when it's done well it looks effortless. So much so that you're left admiring the building alone, and likely never think twice about the person who helped you see it. Read more: The Photographer Who Made Architects Famous : The Picture Show : NPR

From This City Life — Revitalized Public Market Helps New Westminster Get Back to its Roots

River Market (photo c/o River Market)

When you think of suburbs, you don’t typically think of a charming, local shopping experience. Big box stores, retail chains and sprawling parking lots are more likely to come to mind. But it doesn’t have to be this way, as suburbs like Metro Vancouver’s New Westminster are proving. With its re-invented public market, the city is helping bring back the local shopping experience and attracting a new generation of young families to its historic downtown core in the process. Read more: Revitalized Public Market Helps New Westminster Get Back to its Roots: 

Maximum City — A Curriculum and Research Project in Sustainable Urban Design For High School Students

Maximum City is an award-winning curriculum and research project in sustainable urban design for high school students. For the past two summers, select students from a variety of schools across the Greater Toronto Area have worked together with leading experts in architecture, design, transit, and civic engagement to tackle real-life sustainability challenges and planning issues. The unique lessons and expert learning modules developed in the summer program are currently being taught to a broader cohort of students as part of their in-school curriculum. Read more... maximumcity.ca |

From Planetizen.com — A Plan To Shrink Detroit (Well)

Critics of the status quo call for a type of city planning that is less driven by the wasteful economic development policies of the last several decades, where firms were recruited with tax abatements and grants only to close their doors, deep in debt. They demand that change is less driven by the traditionally dominant "growth" industry of real estate developers, bankers, and large property owners who line their own pockets at the expense of neighborhood quality.

This new model for city change is grounded in a pragmatism based on demographics: if a place is growing, let's manage that growth through new infrastructure and coordination of services. If a place is shrinking, let's manage that shrinkage by right-sizing it. For "Detroit Future City", that means focusing money and resources around the islands of residential and business energy that remain in the city and turning the rest back to nature. Well, not quite nature... Read more: A Plan To Shrink Detroit (Well) | Planetizen

#FF @runurb This is great, a blog dedicated to bollards! absolutebollards.tumblr.com
— TheSidewalkBallet (@1sidewalkballet) March 1, 2013