The Relationship Between Third Spaces and Happiness

Interval Coffee Shop, 1600-1602 N. Jackson St. Photo by Mariiana Tzotcheva

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. At the end of the 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.

Is the key to happiness proximity to a coffee shop?: Recent research surveying 1,900 people in the Vancouver BC area by the consultancy Happy City has found there’s no evidence that density reduces happiness. However, they did find that that well designed places with access to amenities and transportation are necessary for happiness though not sufficient. Most types of housing can make people happy, though tiny or underground units are likely to have a negative impact. (Eliza Relman | Business Insider)

Transit subsidies are productive: A new study published in Springer’s Transportation Journal has found that more transit subsidies make transit more efficient. Transit regions that spend more tend to have better service and more riders, and on a per capita basis spend less overall and generated more fare revenue. The findings suggest that funding transit could create a virtuous cycle of benefits and create long lasting value. (Kea Wilson | Streetsblog USA)

New York not flexing funds: The IIJA (infrastructure bill) allows for flexibility in transportation funding to be spent on transit but most states are continuing to spend on highways. In New York State, 90% of the $1B in flex funds spent went to roads with less than 1% going to transit. Ultimately the state will have $6B to spend and advocates want to make sure roads are not the only recipients of funding that can be used for all transportation. (Sam Mellins | NY Focus)

Rotterdam’s tidal park protects the city: Rotterdam is the largest port in Europe and 10th largest in the world but it’s also below sea level. During intense rain events that are increasing due to climate change, locals say that “water comes from four sides” meaning sea level rise, rainfall, ground subsidence, and from swelling rivers. To manage the water, Dutch designers have created a tidal park from a former industrial harbor where water squares collect water and disperse it slowly so as not to overwhelm drainage infrastructure. (Senay Boztas | The Guardian)

LA uptick in non-subsidized affordable housing applications: Los Angeles has seen an uptick in developers not typically involved in affordable housing pursuing plans to build more units affordable to median income purchasers. The key might be a 60 day permitting process the mayor of LA has allowed through an executive order and numerous state density bonus programs. Previous waits for development permits could last years. (Ben Christopher | CalMatters)

Quote of the Week

The pace of electrification has been the highest in the last 15 years: between 2011 and 2020, about 20,000rkm of railway lines were electrified, and another 20,000km of route kilometres have been electrified between 2020 and November 2023. This is an incredible pace of electrification for a railway system so vast.

–Sharif Qamar, associate director at the Energy and Resources Institute in Dehli in Energy Monitor discussing India’s electrification of 90% of its railway network.

This week on the podcast, we’re joined by Angie Schmitt, Owner and Principal at 3MPH Planning and Consulting. We chat about changing travel behavior in cities, the impact of recent social isolation on social trust, and polarization in policy solutions.

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