Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Placemaking

Indianapolis Brings Street Life Downtown With a Flurry of Quick Changes

By Tanya Snyder | Aug 25, 2015 | 7 Comments

Indianapolis is building public support for a major street redesign the same way DIYers and tactical urbanists do: by testing out temporary changes. Monument Circle, where the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument stands tall at 285 feet, is a downtown traffic circle and city park with a lot of potential, but with three lanes of traffic whirling around […]

How One-Day Plazas and Bike Lanes Can Change a City Forever

By Tanya Snyder | Jul 29, 2014 | 9 Comments

This post is part of a series featuring stories and research that will be presented at the Pro-Walk/Pro-Bike/Pro-Place conference September 8-11 in Pittsburgh. Sam Rockwell rides his bike every day from his home in Minneapolis to his office at BlueCross BlueShield of Minnesota in Eagan, 12 miles away, where he spends his days plotting ways to get other people […]

William H. Whyte in His Own Words: “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces”

By Clarence Eckerson Jr. | Jul 25, 2014 | No Comments

When I first got started making NYC bike advocacy and car-free streets videos back in the late-1990s on cable TV, I didn’t know who William “Holly” Whyte was or just how much influence his work and research had on New York City. A few years later I met Fred and Ethan Kent at Project for Public Spaces. I got a copy of […]

Connecting Detroit Neighborhoods With Better Streets and Public Spaces

By Angie Schmitt | Jul 16, 2014 | No Comments

Can safer streets and livelier public spaces help knit Detroit back together? The Michigan Municipal League thinks so, and it is working hard to show southeast Michigan how. Recently the organization teamed up with some partners to address a problem area in southwest Detroit, or Mexicantown. Sarah Craft at the Economics of Place blog explains: […]

A 12-Block Shared Space Neighborhood Rises Along the Potomac

By Payton Chung | Jul 14, 2014 | 7 Comments

Earlier this month, Streetsblog went on a streak about “shared space” — the idea that some streets can work better when, instead of using curbs and traffic signals to separate users, pedestrians get priority using subtle but effective visual cues. We interviewed a key shared space messenger, Ben Hamilton-Baillie; we showed off built examples in Pittsburgh and Batavia, Illinois; and we […]

Talking Headways Podcast: How Does This Podcast Make You Feel?

By Tanya Snyder | Feb 12, 2014 | 7 Comments

This week, Jeff Wood and I get indignant about Miami-Dade County’s misuse of transit funds for roads, and we speculate about why — with the current success of pedestrian projects like Times Square — old-style pedestrian malls are still going belly-up. And then we peek behind the curtain at an exciting new frontier for urban […]

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