Washington State Legalizes Woonerfs

A Dutch woonerf, shared Street.

Every day at The Overhead Wire we sort through over 1,500 news items about cities and share the best ones with our email list. Each week, we take some of the most popular stories and share them with Urban Milwaukee readers. They are national (or international) links, sometimes entertaining and sometimes absurd, but hopefully useful.

Nation’s first shared streets law: A first in the nation law passed by Washington State gives cities the legal authority to create shared streets that give pedestrians priority. The law limits speeds to 10 mph, makes pedestrians the primary users above bikes and cars, and gets rid of jaywalking laws. These types of streets are well known in Europe as woonerfs and can also contain more hardscaping, bollards, and even tables and chairs outside of a central clear zone for movement. (Mark Ostrow | The Urbanist)

Friends who built own apartment building: In Seattle a group of friends that were thinking about leaving the city of Seattle for the suburbs decided to join together to build an apartment building with all the amenities they were missing. They purchased enough land to build a five story building with their homes and 24 other units as well as the lot next door to build a public playground for neighborhood kids. (Adele Peters | Fast Company)

Denver to Fort Collins rail line planned: A new passenger rail line from Denver to Fort Collins Colorado could begin service by 2029 with the support of state officials. The line would be a joint service between a larger planned line along the Front Range and the Denver transit agency RTD. Funding for the project would come in part from recently passed fees on rental cars and oil and gas production. (Chase Woodruff | Colorado Newsline)

The 50% problem: Andrew Miller argues that right now isn’t the most dangerous time during the autonomous vehicle transition, but rather when the robotaxi/autonomous vehicle to human driver saturation point is at 50% and neither knows how to navigate driving with the other. Absent good policy, the midway point where complex systems like driver assistance, conditional automation, and full autonomy collide could last decades. (Andrew Miller | Changing Lanes)

US built social housing: In a two year period during WWI the United States government built social housing in 80 different projects for almost 100,000 people. But it wasn’t just temporary spaces, it was whole neighborhoods with commercial spaces and schools. After the war the government began selling the homes at reasonable rates to the tenants that lived in them as a path to stable homeownership. (Eran Ben-Joseph | The Conversation)

Quote of the Week

It wasn’t always like this. I moved to this city as a wide-eyed twenty-year-old, ready to take on the world with energetic abandon. Now, I’m no longer twenty years old. Something really has changed with this city.

–Devin Wallace in his McSweeney’s article entitled The Problem with My City is that it’s a City.

This week on the Talking Headways podcast, we’re joined by Leah Rothstein to chat about the follow up book to The Color of Law she co-wrote with her father Richard entitled Just Action: How to Challenge Segregation Enacted Under The Color of Law.

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