Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Transit-Oriented Development

Team Obama Adviser: Here’s How to Make Sustainability Mainstream

By Elana Schor | Oct 7, 2009 | 2 Comments

Shelley Poticha, head of the Obama administration’s inter-agency sustainable communities push, is so new to the job that the legislation creating her office has yet to be officially approved by Congress — but she has already hit upon two goals aimed at remaking the way Americans, and their government, view local development. Shelley Poticha (Photo: […]

White House Urban Affairs Chief: Promising Words But Little Hint of a Plan

By Elana Schor | Oct 6, 2009 | No Comments

Adolfo Carrion Jr., director of the White House’s new Office of Urban Affairs, today vowed to begin reconnecting Washington with the needs of the nation’s cities — even as he offered few tangible plans for breaking through the morass of the federal bureaucracy and effecting change in the near term. White House Urban Affairs director […]

The Good Problem With Housing Near Transit: It’s Almost Too Popular

By Elana Schor | Oct 1, 2009 | 2 Comments

Local officials are catching on to the power of transit-oriented development to transform quality of life while decreasing congestion, as my colleague Ryan Avent has explored. But now that the federal government is starting to explore how to expand transit-accessible housing, an intriguing problem is arising: it’s almost too popular. Transit-oriented development in Jersey City, […]

The Assumption of Inconvenience

By Ryan Avent | Sep 30, 2009 | 5 Comments

Early this week, I noticed a number of my favorite bloggers linking to this Elisabeth Rosenthal essay at Environment 360, on the mysterious greenness of European nations. The average American, as it happens, produces about twice as much carbon dioxide each year as your typical resident of Western Europe. Rosenthal attributes much of this difference […]

Can State DOTs Be Trained to Kick the Sprawl Habit?

By Ben Fried | Sep 25, 2009 | 1 Comment

I had the chance to listen in yesterday to top staffers from USDOT explain their collaboration with HUD and the EPA — the "Partnership for Livable Communities" that was first unveiled in March and touted again by President Obama in July. Three officials, including one of Ray LaHood’s top deputies, Beth Osborne, outlined their plans […]

Predicting the Future is Hard

By Ryan Avent | Sep 25, 2009 | 7 Comments

About two years ago, the Urban Land Institute published Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change, which argued that it will be crucial to build cities in a more compact fashion if the country hopes to avoid substantial growth in vehicle miles traveled and carbon emissions over the next few decades. At […]

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