Past Issues

Local governments are leading planning efforts to ensure their transportation systems are both ready for flooding and other impacts of climate change and not contributing it. In New Jersey, examples include governments in the Passaic River Basis, those along the New Jersey shore and the City of Hoboken.

Related: Funding Resiliency in Michigan by Jessica Zimmer
Related: Flood Walls in Alton, Illinois by Jessica Zimmer

Shopping malls had been suffering for a decade or more due to a “retail apocalypse” brought on by the rise of online shopping. Now the pandemic may push many over the financial edge. The trend to reinvent malls with housing, offices and other uses will accelerate.

The auto industry and governments have increased their commitments to electrifying the transportation sector. Despite the challenges presented by the pandemic, the commitments will endure. Can consumers be persuaded?

Related: Electrifying Other Vehicles
Related: Carbon Concerns

There are the investors, who want to see as many units squeezed into a property as possible. There are the towns, which demand projects abide by intricate sets of local zoning regulations. And there are the residents, who sometimes cast a skeptical eye toward what an application will mean to their schools and traffic. Guiding a transit-oriented development (TOD) through to fruition can be an exercise in navigating competing interests. For architects, finding ways to artfully compromise can mean compromising art.

This year, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (Metro) decided that a ribbon-cutting alone would not suffice. The agency announced the opening of the first phase of its long-awaited Silver Line—a heavy rail extension through the suburbs and edge cities of northern Virginia—with a singular video. In it, suburbanites are roused from their homes by an irresistible groove.

Of course it does. Everything we make is the result of design. Design knows no scale. To paraphrase Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus, the most famous design school of the 20th century, design should cover everything from the teacup to the city.At the scale of the city and its infrastructure, design can be overwhelmingly complex, taking enormous time and effort.

On a North Carolina interstate, a van cruises with traffic at 65 miles per hour while taking 1,000 pictures per mile. A half-dozen 2D and 3D cameras mounted on the vehicle—some trained forward, others sideways or straight down at the road—capture a high-definition view of its surroundings

In the past year or so, two innovative companies emerged, amid bitter competition but parralel success, to solve some of transportation's most vexing problems. They have brought spirited late-night revelers home safely. They have gotten travelers to the airport on time. They have dropped off sandwiches to hungry offices. They have given taxi companies fits

Handwritten notes on bulletin boards at truck stops were once a principal means that shippers with goods to haul and willing truck drivers found each other. Then in a groundbreaking move, Dial-A-Truck in 1978 installed television monitors in truck stops to post trucker and shipper notices.Today, finding freight to haul – or truckers to move merchandise – is as easy as logging into one of many smartphone applications on the market

How do you get from 38,000 to zero? It’s a life-or-death question that has fogged minds, baffled and simply eluded policymakers, transportation professionals and the general public for years.Thirty-eight thousand is the number of people killed nationwide in motor vehicle accidents, including pedestrians, in 2014.

They’re called smartphone zombies. Walking head down, so engaged in their phones they don’t notice other people around them, obstacles in their path or oncoming traffic. Waking them up from their cell phones is one of the focuses of the “Heads Up, Phones Down” message 

In St. Louis, a non-profit group is seeking to integrate an abandoned train trestle into its ambitious plans to complete a 600-mile trail network connecting rivers, parks and communities. In Chicago, the city this year celebrated the first birthday of The 606, a recreation trail along an abandoned rail line. In New Jersey, the City of Newark is planning to expand the initial phase of its Riverfront Park built on reclaimed industrial properties along the Passaic River.