The Quad Urbanist

Well, if I'm going to talk about the advantages of elevated rail, it feels only fair to discuss some other advantages: like the advantages of the other main grade-separation option, underground rail.

So while the 15-minute City brand has been damaged by a lot of conspiratorial thinking, I do think the central idea that we should have easier, more consistent, and car-free access to the things that make life pleasant, easy, and livable remains a vital o…

I was talking to someone recently and they brought up the golf course that used to be in what is now extremely prime real estate by the river in Chicago.

There's no denying that weather happens to every city.

Here in the Midwest, the most iconic semi-local transit infrastructure is, naturally, the Chicago El, and specifically the Loop.

Today I want to talk about something that I think gets misunderstood somewhat in a lot of discourse over urban density: the question of privacy.

So here in Davenport we have a single ground transportation station that brings together all the transit modes available in the city.

A topic I keep coming back to is the idea that good transit is not merely extensive, frequent, or fast--it is, specifically, predictable.

A pair of videos that still live rent-free in my head are the "Safe City Showdown" pair from Not Just Bikes and Shifter a few years ago.

Look, this is a pretty basic post, and I know that.

One element of public infrastructure that I think is critically valuable to developing a culture of people existing outside in community is space for play--specifically but critically, not exclusively for children.

Today I want to talk a bit about how a city shows you the expectations you should have about what existing in that city will be like.

This is the third of three posts on the experience and design of the Goose Creek Connector, following up on the good and the bad of the implementation of the design.

Well, since there seems to be some further chatter about optimal density in the air, this seems like as good a time as any to address some thoughts I've been having regarding streetscapes and density, particularly in terms of height.

This is the second in my series on the Goose Creek Connector, following up on the good last week.

I was thinking recently about underrated elements that make for a pleasant streetscape for me to walk through, and I decided I should give some love to some things I experienced in Lincoln, Nebraska--a city I've given some attitude in the past, and which…

So the Goose Creek Connector opened recently, and I decided it was worth biking on it and evaluating it as a significant piece of new bike infrastructure here in the QCA.

How important is it that a city have a rail link to the airport?

This post is just to say that hey, it's pretty cool that Davenport has finally connected the trails in the north to the main trail along Duck Creek.

We've recently started doing more road trips with our electric vehicles, and I have some thoughts.

In addition to the REM, of course, Montréal has an older mass transit system, the Metro.

A lot of my examples on this blog come from larger cities.

A long-lasting concern in communicating transit to the public is how to best package the information: whether to do something like the iconic London Underground map with its complete ignoring of geographical reality or just slap the transit stations on a…

One thing that I constantly find myself thinking when I visit larger cities than the QCA is that things are just open later.

Pun in the title aside, I did get to go to Montréal and I do like the REM, their new "light rail" that is really just an automated metro like Vancouver's SkyTrain.

So as I mentioned in my last post, there's a bit of a blind spot to this blog sometimes, which is that while urbanism is about how people live and move in their cities, I tend to focus more on move than live.

The 250th anniversary celebration of the US seems like as good a time as any to think about how the US stacks up globally in terms of this blog's focus of urbanism and transportation.

There's nothing quite like being on a train and looking out at the cars that you're passing.

Since I talked about the Eglinton Crosstown, I figure I should also say something about the Finch West light rail, which I rode during the same weekend.

This post could also be called "the curse of 'recreational' paths."

Having recently taken the California Zephyr, Amtrak's Chicago-Bay Area service, for approximately half its length on a trip to the Rockies (as well as a lengthy set of experiences previously in my life, of course), I have some thoughts on train travel in…

When I recently visited Toronto, I found myself staying just off Eglinton Avenue, and thus primarily utilizing the Eglinton Crosstown extension of the TTC: a light rail that in many ways (including on the TTC maps) wants to be a subway.