Thursday, December 25, 2014

Trillions wasted on #autosprawl. Planners: "oops."

BetterCities : "How did the transportation planning and engineering professions go so wrong? In the Journal of the American Planning Association, Eric Dumbaugh of Florida Atlantic University explains how some tenets of modern street design grew out of conjecture, not science, that seemed reasonable at the time. Research that did not fit with the prevailing model was disregarded as aberration. This thinking was not questioned as long as US real estate markets and public opinion favored suburban expansion.

Now the market and public sentiment has shifted and new tools like Walk Score are breaking the foundations of conventional traffic engineering. After trillions of dollars invested, this must be embarrassing."