Planning for Place and Plexus

Planning for Place and Plexus
Author: David M. Levinson
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2008
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 041577490X

Planning for Place and Plexus provides a fresh and unique perspective on metropolitan land use and transport networks, challenging current planning strategies and offering frameworks to understand and evaluate policy. The book suggests actions for the future urban growth of metropolitan areas and includes current and cutting edge theory, findings, and recommendations which are cleverly illustrated throughout using international examples.

The Metropolitan Revolution

The Metropolitan Revolution
Author: Bruce Katz
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2013-06-19
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0815721528

Across the US, cities and metropolitan areas are facing huge economic and competitive challenges that Washington won't, or can't, solve. The good news is that networks of metropolitan leaders – mayors, business and labor leaders, educators, and philanthropists – are stepping up and powering the nation forward. These state and local leaders are doing the hard work to grow more jobs and make their communities more prosperous, and they're investing in infrastructure, making manufacturing a priority, and equipping workers with the skills they need. In The Metropolitan Revolution, Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley highlight success stories and the people behind them. · New York City: Efforts are under way to diversify the city's vast economy · Portland: Is selling the "sustainability" solutions it has perfected to other cities around the world · Northeast Ohio: Groups are using industrial-age skills to invent new twenty-first-century materials, tools, and processes · Houston: Modern settlement house helps immigrants climb the employment ladder · Miami: Innovators are forging strong ties with Brazil and other nations · Denver and Los Angeles: Leaders are breaking political barriers and building world-class metropolises · Boston and Detroit: Innovation districts are hatching ideas to power these economies for the next century The lessons in this book can help other cities meet their challenges. Change is happening, and every community in the country can benefit. Change happens where we live, and if leaders won't do it, citizens should demand it. The Metropolitan Revolution was the 2013 Foreword Reviews Bronze winner for Political Science.

Metropolitan Transportation Planning

Metropolitan Transportation Planning
Author: Reid Ewing
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2018
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9781351211345

Planning at a metropolitan scale is important for effective management of urban growth, transportation systems, air quality, and watershed and green-spaces. It is fundamental to efforts to promote social justice and equity. Best Practices in Metropolitan Transportation Planning shows how the most innovative metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) in the United States are addressing these issues using their mandates to improve transportation networks while pursuing emerging sustainability goals at the same time. As both a policy analysis and a practical how-to guide, this book presents cutting-edge original research on the role accessibility plays - and should play - in transportation planning, tracks how existing plans have sought to balance competing priorities using scenario planning and other strategies, assesses the results of various efforts to reduce automobile dependence in cities, and explains how to make planning documents more powerful and effective. In highlighting the most innovative practices implemented by MPOs, regional planning councils, city and county planning departments and state departments of transportation, this book aims to influence other planning organizations, as well as influence federal and state policy discussions and legislation.

Metropolitan Transportation Planning, 2nd Edition

Metropolitan Transportation Planning, 2nd Edition
Author: John W. Dickey
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 628
Release: 1983-06-01
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9780891169222

This book concentrates on a transportation planning process, and focuses on transportation problems. It emphasizes the planning process, identification of problems and goals, data collection, and solution implementation.

The Metropolitan Airport

The Metropolitan Airport
Author: Nicholas Dagen Bloom
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2015-08-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0812291646

John F. Kennedy International Airport is one of New York City's most successful and influential redevelopment projects. Built and defined by outsize personalities—Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, famed urban planner Robert Moses, and Port Authority Executive Director Austin Tobin among them—JFK was fantastically expensive and unprecedented in its scale. By the late 1940s, once-polluted marshlands had become home to one of the world's busiest and most advanced airfields. Almost from the start, however, environmental activists in surrounding neighborhoods and suburbs clashed with the Port Authority. These fierce battles in the long term restricted growth and, compounded by lackluster management and planning, diminished JFK's status and reputation. Yet the airport remained a key contributor to metropolitan vitality: New Yorkers bound for adventure and business still boarded planes headed to distant corners of the globe, billions of tourists and immigrants came and went, and mammoth air cargo facilities bolstered the region's commerce. In The Metropolitan Airport, Nicholas Dagen Bloom chronicles the untold story of JFK International's complicated and turbulent relationship with the New York City metropolitan region. In spite of its reputation for snarled traffic, epic delays, endless construction, and abrasive employees, the airport was a key player in shifting patterns of labor, transportation, and residence; the airport both encouraged and benefited from the dispersion of population and economic activity to the outer boroughs and suburbs. As Bloom shows, airports like JFK are vibrant parts of their cities and powerfully influence urban development. The Metropolitan Airport is an indispensable book for those who wish to understand the revolutionary impact of airports on the modern American city.

Rights in Transit

Rights in Transit
Author: Kafui Ablode Attoh
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2019-02-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0820354228

Is public transportation a right? Should it be? For those reliant on public transit, the answer is invariably “yes” to both. Indeed, when city officials propose slashing service or raising fares, it is these riders who are often the first to appear at that officials’ door demanding their “right” to more service. Rights in Transit starts from the presumption that such riders are justified. For those who lack other means of mobility, transit is a lifeline. It offers access to many of the entitlements we take as essential: food, employment, and democratic public life itself. While accepting transit as a right, this book also suggests that there remains a desperate need to think critically, both about what is meant by a right and about the types of rights at issue when public transportation is threatened. Drawing on a detailed case study of the various struggles that have come to define public transportation in California’s East Bay, Rights in Transit offers a direct challenge to contemporary scholarship on transportation equity. Rather than focusing on civil rights alone, Rights in Transit argues for engaging the more radical notion of the right to the city.

The Great Society Subway

The Great Society Subway
Author: Zachary M. Schrag
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2014-08
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1421415771

As Metro stretches to Tysons Corner and beyond, this paperback edition features a new preface from the author. Drivers in the nation's capital face a host of hazards: high-speed traffic circles, presidential motorcades, jaywalking tourists, and bewildering signs that send unsuspecting motorists from the Lincoln Memorial into suburban Virginia in less than two minutes. And parking? Don't bet on it unless you're in the fast lane of the Capital Beltway during rush hour. Little wonder, then, that so many residents and visitors rely on the Washington Metro, the 106-mile rapid transit system that serves the District of Columbia and its inner suburbs. In the first comprehensive history of the Metro, Zachary M. Schrag tells the story of the Great Society Subway from its earliest rumblings to the present day, from Arlington to College Park, Eisenhower to Marion Barry. Unlike the pre–World War II rail systems of New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, the Metro was built at a time when most American families already owned cars, and when most American cities had dedicated themselves to freeways, not subways. Why did the nation's capital take a different path? What were the consequences of that decision? Using extensive archival research as well as oral history, Schrag argues that the Metro can be understood only in the political context from which it was born: the Great Society liberalism of the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. The Metro emerged from a period when Americans believed in public investments suited to the grandeur and dignity of the world's richest nation. The Metro was built not merely to move commuters, but in the words of Lyndon Johnson, to create "a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community." Schrag scrutinizes the project from its earliest days, including general planning, routes, station architecture, funding decisions, land-use impacts, and the behavior of Metro riders. The story of the Great Society Subway sheds light on the development of metropolitan Washington, postwar urban policy, and the promises and limits of rail transit in American cities.

Better Buses, Better Cities

Better Buses, Better Cities
Author: Steven Higashide
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2019-10-10
Genre: Transportation
ISBN: 1642830143

"Better Buses, Better Cities is likely the best book ever written on improving bus service in the United States." — Randy Shaw, Beyond Chron "The ultimate roadmap for how to make the bus great again in your city." — Spacing "The definitive volume on how to make bus frequent, fast, reliable, welcoming, and respected..." — Streetsblog Imagine a bus system that is fast, frequent, and reliable—what would that change about your city? Buses can and should be the cornerstone of urban transportation. They offer affordable mobility and can connect citizens with every aspect of their lives. But in the US, they have long been an afterthought in budgeting and planning. With a compelling narrative and actionable steps, Better Buses, Better Cities inspires us to fix the bus. Transit expert Steven Higashide shows us what a successful bus system looks like with real-world stories of reform—such as Houston redrawing its bus network overnight, Boston making room on its streets to put buses first, and Indianapolis winning better bus service on Election Day. Higashide shows how to marshal the public in support of better buses and how new technologies can keep buses on time and make complex transit systems understandable. Higashide argues that better bus systems will create better cities for all citizens. The consequences of subpar transit service fall most heavily on vulnerable members of society. Transit systems should be planned to be inclusive and provide better service for all. These are difficult tasks that require institutional culture shifts; doing all of them requires resilient organizations and transformational leadership. Better bus service is key to making our cities better for all citizens. Better Buses, Better Cities describes how decision-makers, philanthropists, activists, and public agency leaders can work together to make the bus a win in any city.

Trains, Buses, People

Trains, Buses, People
Author: Christof Spieler
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2018-10-23
Genre: Transportation
ISBN: 1610919033

What are the best transit cities in the US? The best Bus Rapid Transit lines? The most useless rail transit lines? The missed opportunities? In the US, the 25 largest metropolitan areas and many smaller cities have fixed guideway transit—rail or bus rapid transit. Nearly all of them are talking about expanding. Yet discussions about transit are still remarkably unsophisticated. To build good transit, the discussion needs to focus on what matters—quality of service (not the technology that delivers it), all kinds of transit riders, the role of buildings, streets and sidewalks, and, above all, getting transit in the right places. Christof Spieler has spent over a decade advocating for transit as a writer, community leader, urban planner, transit board member, and enthusiast. He strongly believes that just about anyone—regardless of training or experience—can identify what makes good transit with the right information. In the fun and accessible Trains, Buses, People: An Opinionated Atlas of US Transit, Spieler shows how cities can build successful transit. He profiles the 47 metropolitan areas in the US that have rail transit or BRT, using data, photos, and maps for easy comparison. The best and worst systems are ranked and Spieler offers analysis of how geography, politics, and history complicate transit planning. He shows how the unique circumstances of every city have resulted in very different transit systems. Using appealing visuals, Trains, Buses, People is intended for non-experts—it will help any citizen, professional, or policymaker with a vested interest evaluate a transit proposal and understand what makes transit effective. While the book is built on data, it has a strong point of view. Spieler takes an honest look at what makes good and bad transit and is not afraid to look at what went wrong. He explains broad concepts, but recognizes all of the technical, geographical, and political difficulties of building transit in the real world. In the end,Trains, Buses, People shows that it is possible with the right tools to build good transit.

How States Shaped Postwar America

How States Shaped Postwar America
Author: Nicholas Dagen Bloom
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2019-04-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 022649831X

The history of public policy in postwar America tends to fixate on developments at the national level, overlooking the crucial work done by individual states in the 1960s and ’70s. In this book, Nicholas Dagen Bloom demonstrates the significant and enduring impact of activist states in five areas: urban planning and redevelopment, mass transit and highways, higher education, subsidized housing, and the environment. Bloom centers his story on the example set by New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, whose aggressive initiatives on the pressing issues in that period inspired others and led to the establishment of long-lived state polices in an age of decreasing federal power. Metropolitan areas, for both better and worse, changed and operated differently because of sustained state action—How States Shaped Postwar America uncovers the scope of this largely untold story.