Don’t miss LOCUS’ upcoming Opportunity Zones webinar
Next week, join LOCUS, the Economic Innovation Group, and the Michigan State Housing Development Authority for a comprehensive discussion of the new federal Opportunity Zones program.
Next week, join LOCUS, the Economic Innovation Group, and the Michigan State Housing Development Authority for a comprehensive discussion of the new federal Opportunity Zones program.
Over the two days in Nashville, we were able to ask some of our speakers to share their thoughts on Complete Streets, the importance of equity in our transportation planning and systems, and what creative placemaking means to them. Watch the trilogy of videos below for inspiration. Intersections 2018: Creating Culturally Complete Streets Intersections 2018: … Continued
The small Colorado town of Pagosa Springs is focused on revitalizing its downtown and supporting more mixed-use, walkable development to both address a lack of affordable housing and accommodate a large volume of tourists. There are a number of opportunities to make progress in the near-term, including turning a recent disaster in the downtown into a catalytic redevelopment opportunity.
Smart Growth America is offering free technical assistance to six communities interested in using small-scale manufacturing to help revitalize a downtown or neighborhood and create economic opportunity.
To address recurring, dangerous speeding problems on neighborhood streets, the City of South Bend launched a demonstration project to test out traffic-calming tools they had never used before including traffic circles, chicanes, and bump outs. They worked closely with the local community to decide where these traffic-calming strategies were most needed. They also added educational signs to help teach people how street design can improve safety by encouraging drivers to slow down while simultaneously creating more vibrant places for people. As a result of this demonstration project, drivers drove slower on these streets, and South Bend also built trust with the community. To replicate the success of this project elsewhere, South Bend will develop a toolkit based on this experience to launch additional traffic calming projects in other neighborhoods throughout the city to improve safety and convenience for people on foot or bike.
Two particular intersections along Bryan Avenue in Lexington, KY were dangerous and confusing places for everyone, including people walking, biking, and driving. Both intersections had unusual turning angles and missing crosswalks, and it was often unclear who had the right of way. To slow the speeds of cars traveling through these two intersections and transform them into safer, more predictable, and more comfortable places for people, a team from the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government launched a temporary demonstration project. They worked closely with the local community and used inexpensive, flexible materials to redesign the intersections by redirecting cars and adding crosswalks and pedestrian refuges. Lexington also tested out more interactive strategies for letting the people in the community most affected by the project take the lead on envisioning safer streets.
The Orlando metropolitan region has long had notoriously dangerous roadways, especially for people walking. A team from the City of Orlando dedicated to improving safety launched a demonstration project on Curry Ford Road, a commercial arterial with a history of crashes involving people walking and biking that spans both the city’s and county’s jurisdictions. By collaborating with Orange County staff and with local elected officials, the team transformed this five-lane speedway into a three-lane Complete Street with protected cycle tracks and a mid-block crossing with a painted pedestrian refuge. Although local business owners and nearby residents supported the demonstration project, people who commute through the neighborhood were resistant to the changes, which raised important questions about the necessary trade-offs between safety and speed when designing safer streets for people.
If you’re curious about how form-based codes guide development to support smart growth principles, watch the recent webinar hosted by the Form-Based Codes Institute at Smart Growth America.
This month on Building Better Communities with Transit, our host Jeff Wood talks with Stan Wall of HR&A Advisors about value capture is and the NoMa–Gallaudet U station in Washington, DC. According to Stan, that station is “the most textbook, beautiful example of the possibilities in creating value and leveraging that to extreme positive benefit for a city.”
Yesterday, the full Senate Appropriations Committee approved its Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Appropriations subcommittee’s FY19 appropriations bill. The legislation provides $71.4 billion in discretionary spending for the U.S. Departments of Transportation (USDOT) and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and other related agencies through the end of September 2019 and is $1.1 billion above FY18 enacted levels.