"The preferences of Gen Y are similar to those of people of color across all the generations. These different demographic cohorts are all growing in number, and together are creating a significant market shift toward compact, mixed-use development that is close to transit."
— Where Americans Want To Live: New ULI Report, America In 2013, Explores Housing, Transportation, Community Preferences Survey Suggests Strong Demand for Compact Development | 5/15/2013, Urban Land Institute
"Urbanism is a powerful tool for solving environmental problems, and green advocates who fail to use it are serving their cause poorly."
— Five green community stories to watch in 2013 | Kaid Benfield, 1/2/2013
"…Stop feeding, or accepting, the unhealthy and distracting “war on the car” rhetoric…All ways of getting around work better, including cars, if we emphasize walking, biking and transit."
— A New Year’s Eve Call to Action for Urbanists | Planetizen
"The greater Buffalo area has sprawled over three times the land mass it covered in 1960 while population dropped, including a steady exodus of young adults…”How many kids graduate from college and say, ‘I want to go where there’s great sprawl’?"
— NY economic development plans getting urban focus | Wall Street Journal
"For generations, government policies have been geared toward creating endless landscapes of strip malls…We have eaten up farmland and forest. We have…endangered the lives of our senior citizens. We have engineered a world where children cannot walk or bike to school without risking their lives. We have created countless places devoid of any real social value."
— Sarah Goodyear, Atlantic Cities, Debating the Root Causes of Zombie Infrastructure
Curbed Atlanta has a cool post today about reasonable vs. unreasonable expectations for Atlanta becoming more walkable and densely populated. They begin by pointing out the futility of comparing Atlanta to an uber-dense place like New York City and then offer the reasons for more realistic goals.
A quote:
Atlanta does have a decent start, but it will be a long time (if ever) before the city can credibly be labeled a ‘walkable’ or public transit-oriented city. Does that mean we should drop efforts to help Atlanta grow in a more dense, sustainable fashion? Of course not.
I think there’s a great chance for walkable, compact nodes to develop all over metro Atlanta. They will probably never be as dense or as well-connected as those in a city like NYC, largely for the geographical reasons (Atlanta isn’t surrounded by a natural boundary like water). But they’ll be a hell of an improvement over the copy & paste, car-centric sprawl of the past few decades.
Photo of Glenwood Park by Flickr user peterlfrench
