I used to follow the Brazilian power industry for professional reasons but never imagined wind & solar could rise this fast. 14 years to get from near zero to about a quarter of electricity supply, in a $2.8 trillion economy. Almost all the rest is hydro.

Bike bridge, summer in São Paulo

Here's a reform that's been overlooked but fixes a problem caused back when city planners thought car speed was all that mattered. The choking of downtowns wasn't just from highways and parking lots but also one-way speedways. apnews.com/article/one-...

Driving school Italian style, teaching sidewalk parking

These two represent economies that produce $35 trillion a year of output, 20% more than the US in local purchasing power. They just signed a free-trade deal. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/09/b...

Not sure if gift articles can be shared in multiples, but this is the best review of the first year of New York congestion pricing www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Back in São Paulo. Grey day, Sunday family lunchtime, plus peak summer-vacation weekend. Never seen this bike/coffee lounge so empty.

A murderer is on the loose in NYC. He killed a man, 25 years old, immigrant from Ecuador, who was just walking home from celebrating the New Year. His weapon was an SUV, so this gets treated differently from other killings. He may get a ticket— for fleeing.

Every American transportation planner should read this www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Four decades after living in San Francisco with no car, I was disappointed to find during a Christmas visit that from a light-mobility perspective it's starting to feel like an also-ran compared to New York, Portland, or Boston, not to mention Montreal, Vienna, or Stockholm. 1/x

Was in Austin, TX this week and noticed this anti-housing sign in a central, single-family-home neighborhood called Rosedale. By "playing fair," residents mean blocking 435 apartment homes for others to live in, at the five-acre site of a closed school nearby.

This article is about housing, but the picture shows the incivility of planning cities around cars www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/b...

Officials in charge of these roadways should be ashamed. Or prosecuted. Table: Washington Post

How the white brick curve speaks to the circle of glass in the church next door. Southwark, London

Car brain

Main football stadium in Freiburg, Germany. Fits almost 35 thousand people, but the only on-site parking spaces are the ones you see. It does have 3,700 bike-parking spaces. Every game ticket includes free passage on 18 different transit providers: trams, buses, local trains, regional trains.

Late Art Deco 1939 Banespa building downtown São Paulo

Rather liked this schematic on a sales brochure for new building in São Paulo. Shows what's reachable in 2, 3, or 5 minutes walking, including subway stations, or on the outermost line 10 minutes biking. No info on parking, thank you.

What happens to bike uptake and safety when you build protected cycle networks

NYPD and their cars. Lawsuit says it was intentional. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/n...

EVs are better than fuel-burning cars, but take the same urban space. Here we can fit five cars, but eight bikes are in the space of one car and two more in the corner. Gripsholm, Sweden

People from Bangladesh migrated to England in numbers from about the 1950s to 1970s. Street signs in their London neighborhood of Spitalfields, now half gentrified, remain.

No surprise that the results of speed cameras in San Francisco are the same as everywhere else: they work. On the block with the most abuses, people speeding at least 11 mph over the limit dropped from 31% of all drivers to 3%. www.sfexaminer.com/news/transit...

Swedish small-town urbanism, Trosa

Further up the same Stockholm street from the clip below is another traffic-calming device: intersections where cars may cross but the design is a sidewalk with low curb. Drivers tend to inch across, some of them likely not sure if they're really supposed to be there.

Urban cul-de-sacs are a cheap, immediate way to calm down side streets. Cars can reach any address, but not cut through. Foot traffic instead good for business.

This 1970s mosaic by Burle Marx has been called the largest work of public art in the world. Three miles by 160 feet of individual hammered stones, not counting the paved lanes, in classic Portuguese red, black, and white only. Leme and Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro.

In 2010 I was stuck in traffic in a black cab on London's Victoria Embankment. The driver blamed it on construction of a ridiculous "Cycle Superhighway" along the route by the idiots at Transport for London, even though no one would use it because Londoners don't cycle. Here it is at rush hour now.

*Me listening in on a lady who just tried an ebike for the first time and came back to the bike shop* "That was amazing! I felt like I had super powers. I have to get my husband to try one!" And yes, she bought the bike. It was a Gazelle.

One smart, cheap, urban response to global warming: shade canopies. Seville, Spain

Can't get over this building. Liège, Belgium train station by Calatrava and the Jetsons.

Blue skies in Lisbon. Doesn't hurt that at this station electric bikes and scooters connect to electric trams, which connect to antique electric trams, which connect to electric buses, which connect to electric surface trains, which connect to electric subway trains. Even electric ferries out back.

The rapture, but for cars in cities.

No more diesel fumes in the face from airport boarding buses at São Paulo Congonhas. All-electric.

This Brazilian-modernist marquise by Oscar Niemeyer in Ibirapuera Park opened in São Paulo in 1954. It's six football fields long and connects five museums and event spaces. Every weekend it was a festival of activity under its shelter. Unfortunately it was falling apart, but 1/2

Rush hour in Stockholm. If they were all in cars, the flowers would have to go.

Lane assignments, Seville, Spain: -Two protected half lanes for bikes, scooters, e-wheelchairs, etc., one each way -One exclusive lane for buses, certain vans, taxis, and motorcycles, up to 50 km/h (31 mph) -Two lanes where private cars are OK, up to 30 km/h (19 mph)

Gotta like this speed limit, just under 5 mph

Charming town in Sweden discourages people from entering with a car, which keeps it charming. US destinations might want to give it a try.

The parking situation at Stockholm city hall

Not all urban clusters are on dry land

Parking is so easy by bike. Been known to search for a car spot at this São Paulo mall for 15-20 minutes, or just give up.

Modern bikeshare systems started in Lyon, France in 2005. Now they exist in 415 cities around the world. New York's Citibike alone ran over 123,000 rides each day on average in 2024, which makes blue bikes now more iconic than yellow cabs. www.planetizen.com/features/135...

How to enter New York City with no traffic (sound)

Almost boring how common this is. Delay barring cars because it's controversial, but once you do it, find out no one wants to go back. #seattle www.fox13seattle.com/news/pike-pl...

Renaissance Venetian gate at the tip of Lake Garda in Italy. I had to wait for a brief moment when it wasn't uglified by oversized cars trying to get into a walled city where they don't fit.

If you have any involvement in planning streets, this video is must-see vimeo.com/86721046?fl=...

What could go wrong?

"One of the fired officers had been convicted four times for motor vehicle violations, including driving 100 miles per hour in a 50 m.p.h. zone and striking a pedestrian, according to the law enforcement official." www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/n...

Not Paris. Lyon.