Recent Streetsblog SF posts about Urban Design

A Very Astute Critique of Highways by an Editor of The Weekly Standard

By Matthew Roth | Mar 2, 2009 | 2 Comments

Eisenhower signing the 1956 Highway Act Far be it from us to take political sides on Livable Streets issues–you don’t have to be a donkey or an elephant to appreciate pedestrian safety, traffic calming, and quality public space–but why is it that two of the best columns connecting transportation policy reform, land use, and energy […]

Using Software to Find Walkable Neighborhoods and Live Car Free

By Matthew Roth | Feb 27, 2009 | 4 Comments

The Bay Area’s public transportation circulatory system. Click for larger view Though David Brooks might argue in his New York Times column that Americans want to live in small towns and suburban dreamscapes, the fact is more and more of us live in metropolitan areas, and discussions about what we want should have to do […]

San Francisco Should Take Cues from New York and Just Try It!

By Matthew Roth | Feb 26, 2009 | 19 Comments

The vision for closing Broadway in Times Square, which will happen by May Urban space advocates the world over use best practice examples from other cities to raise the bar on policy and praxis in their own cities. For years in New York, Transportation Alternatives and the NYC Streets Renaissance Campaign invoked the phrase "Lessons […]

The Myth of the Urban Driving Shoppers

By Matthew Roth | Feb 20, 2009 | 25 Comments

A valuable sidewalk, but parking should be removed and the sidewalk widened to accommodate pedestrians and meet ADA requirements. As we wrote a couple days ago about Jefferson Street, merchants on the commercial street there and throughout the city often assume parking spaces in front of their stores are vital to business, that their customers […]

Planning Department Unveils San Francisco’s First Pedestrian Priority Street

By Matthew Roth | Feb 18, 2009 | 8 Comments

The proposed design for a single-surface pedestrian priority Jefferson Street The City Design Group at the Planning Department has released its proposal for transforming Jefferson Street at Fisherman’s Wharf into a single-surface pedestrian priority street, the first of its size in San Francisco. Based on shared space or woonerfs, the plan calls for removing traditional […]

Obama Calls For Better Regional Planning Measures in TEA Reauthorization

By Matthew Roth | Feb 18, 2009 | 1 Comment

The vision of an unsustainable land use and transportation future File the following in the "Can’t Believe My President Gets It" category. In an interview with columnists last week on Air Force One, President Obama drew a clear link between regional planning, land use, transportation, and energy policy, implying that bad planning has led to […]

Show More Stories