The Sunday Diigo Links Post (weekly)

• A Very Brief History of Why Americans Hate Their Commutes – Martin Wachs – The Atlantic Cities

  Zoning.
  QUOTE
  As mechanization of transit made it ever cheaper, safer, and cleaner, reformers and idealists seeking to overcome the “congestion evil” pushed for lower residential densities and deliberate suburbanization for more than a century. In 1909, at the First National Conference on City Planning and the Problems of Congestion, speaker after speaker advocated the introduction of zoning ordinances and the extension of transit routes to outlying areas, hoping to lower urban densities by enabling people to travel longer distances to work.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: zoning cities commuting transit cars martin_wachs atlantic_cities

• 9 Reasons the U.S. Ended Up So Much More Car-Dependent Than Europe – Ralph Buehler – The Atlantic Cities

  Zoning (again). This is reason #9, and it seems the most compelling.
  QUOTE
  Zoning laws. There are many differences between land-use planning systems in the United States and Europe. Europeans tend to allow a greater mix of uses in their residential zones, thus keeping trip distances shorter. For example, in Germany, a residential zone can include doctors’ offices, cafes, corner stores, or apartment buildings. By contrast, single family residential zones in the United States typically forbid those uses. Zoning in Germany also occurs for smaller land areas—almost at the block level—facilitating shorter trips than in U.S. cities, where zones tend to be much larger. And while most U.S. zoning codes still require a minimum number of parking spots, many European countries operate with maximum numbers to limit parking.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: zoning parking cities cars atlantic_cities ralph_buehler

• Ink on Paper: Some Notes on Note-taking | Wray Herbert

  Fascinating (and not too surprising).
  QUOTE
  Apparently there is something about typing that leads to mindless processing. And there is something about ink and paper that prompts students to go beyond merely hearing and recording new information — and instead to process and reframe information in their own words, with or without the aid of asterisks and checks and arrows.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: wray_herbert note_taking studying analog

• Why It Makes Sense for Long Island to Rethink the Parking Garage – Anthony Flint – The Atlantic Cities

  “Structured” parking as an alternative to the awful parking lot? Good idea. Not so sure about the “horizontal skyscraper” idea, aka the “fatscraper”…
  QUOTE
  Building structured parking is thus seen as an intermediary step in that process. In the ParkingPLUS Design Challenge, architectural firms were asked to be creative in their designs, to conjure places that would not simply store the cars, but open up new possibilities for public use of the space. Roger Sherman Architecture + Urban Design envisioned a “horizontal skyscraper” relating to Main Street in Ronkonkoma; dub Studios submitted a shared parking scheme in Patchogue; LTL Architects rendered a parking garage with a landscaped terraced rooftop cascading towards the rail line in Westbury.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: parking garages retrofit atlantic_cities anthony_flint transit_oriented_development suburbs

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.