From Elevated Highway to Waterfront Park

Overlook Walk from Pike Place Market to the Waterfront, Seattle, Washington, U.S. Photo by Joe Mabel, (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons

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.

TXDOT admits to transit necessity: A draft document from the Texas Department of Transportation lays out the state’s transportation needs as it is expected to add 9 million people. The report acknowledges the highways and road construction are far outpaced by increases in drivers and that more ways to get to destinations are needed. Having a plan doesn’t mean it will be embraced by lawmakers, but advocates are hopeful that it starts a conversation about transit in the state. (Joshua Fechter | KERA News via Texas Tribune)

Developing world needs more roads: As cities in the global south continue to grow, tightly packed urban development makes it harder for residents to move around. Saarthak Gupta suggests that wider roads and more transportation change is needed to improve agglomeration effects and allow for greater mobility. He points to western cities like Paris who made this change to address transportation issues. (Saarthak Gupta | Works in Progress)

Affordable housing at the ballot box: Cities around the country voted last Tuesday on ballot measures that would improve housing outcomes. Voters mostly approved housing plans that ranged from increasing bond debt to build infrastructure, funding workforce housing, and increase tenant protections. New York passed several housing measures including a new digital map that would speed up zoning approvals. (Roshan Abraham | NextCity)

In search of low cost of living: Many Millennials moved away from cities during the pandemic in search for a lower cost of living that would lead to an improved quality of life. What they found however was that it created pressure on existing small communities housing prices and culture. But new opportunities emerge as well when you have more disposable income and infrastructure to take care of a family’s needs. (Anjulie Rao | Dwell Magazine)

Seattle’s waterfront transformation: After an earthquake damaged the Alaskan Way viaduct, an urban highway along Seattle’s waterfront, the city tore it down and dug a tunnel to replace it. The transformation took 15 years and replaced a crumbling seawall with a waterfront park and new surface boulevard. The waterfront is now an example of habitat restoration and a cultural destination. (James S. Russell | Bloomberg CityLab)

Quote of the Week

The sheer range of their work illustrates that their artistry can and does simultaneously serve a critical safety function.

–Ydanis Rodriguez, the NYC transportation commissioner in the New York Times discussing the team that works on cobblestone streets in the city.

This week on the Talking Headways podcast, we’re joined by Corrigan Salerno of Transportation For America for an exclusive look at why America keeps freakin’ building highways, how President Trump is targeting transit and how we can all get a better federal transportation bill if we want it.

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