The Lakeview Area Master Plan (LAMP) will be revealed tonight, but there is one element that I think deserves special attention. When research began on the project we were out surveying neighborhood inventory, like bike racks, streetscape environments, facade conditions, and public space. After investigating we found that Lakeview contains only .2 acres of open […]
Transporation
moss Conquers Street For the Day
We could not have done this without our wonderfully generous sponsors; Southport Grocery, Uncle Dans’s Outdoor Store, Grand Street Gardens, Lake Street Landscape Supply, Farmers’ Market Nursery, Sam & Willy’s, and Alderman Tom Tunney. Thank you so much for all of your support. Photos and media coverage inside.
moss Selected for Lakeview Area Master Plan
We have been selected by the Lakeview Chamber of Commerce to prepare a master plan for the Lakeview commercial areas, which we are calling, unsurprisingly the Lakeview Area Master Plan (LAMP). Along with our consultant partners, PLACE, we will lead the sustainability and environmental review portion of the planning process. We are using this year’s […]
PARK(ing) Day 2.0, September 17
Parking. Its a sore subject here in Chicago. In 2008 the City decided to privatize it’s 36,000 parking meters – in reality leasing an 8′ wide section of asphalt from the curb to the sometimes-present-bike lane – to a group made up of Morgan Stanley, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Allianz Capital Partners for a […]
Google Expands to Cycling, Cities to Follow?
Even if real streets are not becoming any more hospitable to cyclists, the virtual ones sure are. Today everyone’s favorite online map rolled out bicycling navigation as a native feature of Google maps. The bike routing is available in 150 cities, Chicago included, and also shows bike trails in addition to bike-friendly autoways. As a […]
PARK(ing) Day U-Turn
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyCsheIcDqw] Our PARK(ing) Day installation was a rousing success. What was once a dearth of human interaction sprouted into a buzzing public park for the day. Imagine if this one day turned into a week, months, years. A much better use of our shared public space. For more, read our parking treatise here.
PARK(ing) Day 2009: Renting Public Space
This PARK(ing) Day, we consider what could happen if the streets weren’t just unitaskers for cars. Chicago contains roughly 8,000 miles of surface roads, amounting to 77,575 acres of pavement dedicated to the driving and parking of automobiles. Automotive real estates further balloons when you consider the private parking lots, garages, and alleys. Comparatively, Chicago […]
Eisenhower 2.0
A recent New York Times Magazine article described the difficulty of piecing together the ballot-initiated California High Speed Rail, which will connect Los Angeles to San Francisco in 2 hours and 40 minutes (with eventual spurs to Sacramento, north, and San Diego, south) at top speeds of 220 miles per hour. Quite an improvement over […]