Parklets Provide More Than A Place To Gather

Parklets at Club Charlies and Bavette La Boucherie in 2017. Photo by Amanda Maniscalco.

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.

Toronto designates transit areas for development: The government of Ontario which encompasses Toronto has released a list of 120 officially designated major transit station boundaries. The designation allows for more planning and greater density/building heights in these areas and moves the region to focus growth and providing more housing options. Minimum density targets within walking distance are now around 80 jobs/residents per acre for subways and 61 jobs/residents for light rail. (Brandon Donnelly) 

World’s smartest city: After gaining a reputation as being a town too far from other places, Etteln, Germany created a digital connection strategy and now every part of the city is connected by fiber and to the broader economy. With those connections, the small town has been able to access digital city services and real-time weather displayed in a 3D digital twin. Etteln was recently voted smartest city in the world according to IEEE. (Michaela Haas | Reasons to be Cheerful)

In Vienna, anyone can build a parklet: Since 2015, more than 100 parklets called Grätzloasen have popped up in Vienna, Austria. The parklets are community-driven and funded by a city-funded organization. While some residents wonder why anyone would want to replace a parking space, they soon warm to the idea that it also serves as an urban cooling function. (Will Grimond | The Guardian)

Rethinking the 85% rule: Speed limits on urban roads have been set by the 85% rule for decades, meaning that the 15th fastest car should set the speed limit. But the rule came from outdated studies on rural roads and has persisted even as the science has changed. Now states and cities are rethinking the rule in the name of safer streets. NACTO suggests following the city limits rule which sets speeds based on activity levels and potential for conflicts. (Jeff McMurray | Associated Press)

Range anxiety: New research on 40k electric vehicle drivers finds that drivers only used 12.6% of their range on average. As vehicles start moving towards getting 400-500 miles per electric charge, the research shows drivers really aren’t using that much of the battery and so shouldn’t worry about “what if” scenarios of a road trip more than daily driving when purchasing a vehicle. (Tim Levin  | Inside EVs)

Quote of the Week

“This is an important and carefully planned move, and we are approaching the finish line. The church is truly unique and means a lot to many people beyond just being a landmark of Kiruna, and we want to give everyone the opportunity to follow and be a part of this historic event.”

–Stefan Holmblad Johansson in Dezeen discussing moving a huge 67- ton church three miles away to make room for more underground mining in Kiruna, Sweden.

This week on the Talking Headways Podcast, we’re joined by Oxford Ohio City Councilor and Miami of Ohio geography professor, David Prytherch. We chat about his new book Reclaiming the Road: Mobility Justice beyond Complete Streets.

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