“Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic and made way for parks, people-streets and bike-lanes.” Better for the climate, better for health, better for livability & quality of life. Common sense. Such a no-brainer, it’s remarkable that more cities HAVEN’T done the same.

Fairmount Park is one Philadelphia's most underused assets, because it's not designed to be safe or usable as a park. Since 2019 41 people have been killed by crashes in the park. @bikeaction.org is trying to fix that. Sign their petition to call for a safer park: bikeaction.org/campaigns/de...

I have a major piece in Bloomberg Citylab today. Should the US let transit fail, as Pennsylvania is already doing? And if not, what are the arguments we need to let it succeed? www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

a few thoughts (gift link) www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/o...

#OTD 19 September 1991, walkers in the high Ötztal alps on the Italian border, found a body melting out of the ice. It turned out to be the remains of a c.5200 year old man preserved with all his kit. Of course, it was essential to replicate him in Playmobil. 1🧵 #PlaymobilÖtzi #PlaymobilInfestation

Hey hey -- I'm looking for analyses of corridor- and transit area-based upzoning policies or proposals. The analyses can be looking at the change in estimated capacity or expected outcomes (e.g., how much might be built), or the actual outcomes post-reform. Doesn't have to be in CA! Thanks!

Why is no one pointing out that he also pleaded the Fifth Amendment hundreds of times in order to avoid incriminating himself before Congress over January 6? Isn't that a pretty significant fact, given that January 6 was a violent armed rebellion intended to overthrow our democracy?

Many things are challenging right now, but here's a country that is taking the food/agriculture/nature/climate challenge problem very seriously and turning from not only policy development but early implementation with farmers, government, & environmentalists. Go Denmark! www.wri.org/insights/den...

You know, I used to believe this. I used to be (privately) annoyed by the dreamers and the artists who insisted on spending time imagining and sketching and writing about possible futures when we had SO MUCH TO FIX in the now. It took time to realize: that vision is the compass of movement.

Harry Fenton, himself an advocate for bike safety in Philadelphia, was killed by a speeding hit & run driver while biking through Fairmount Park: www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia... Fairmount Park is tragically decades overdue for safety improvements for people biking and walking.

not to mention completely preventable but the city allows Fairmount Park (Kelly, MLK, & Belmont) to be used as high speed cut throughs from 76.

I mean at least he's admitting the part none of them dare say: that they think being shaken down by fascists is preferrable to paying more taxes because the fascists are asking for less money

Do you think SEPTA's finances would be in such a poor shape (and ridership still way down) if the City government had actually built a few dedicated lanes for buses and trams along these corridors?

SEPTA defunding is going to go down as a cautionary tale against fiscal responsibility. you can count every penny, achieve efficiencies that put your costs an order of magnitude below peer systems, never expand the network and focus only on maintenance, and still get curb-stomped

In examining regional planning organizations @urbaninstitute.bsky.social, we've found that their boards rarely reflect the populations they represent proportionally: www.urban.org/urban-wire/m... In new research, we show that this has consequences: boards vastly overrepresent homeowners & drivers ⏬

Anas Al Sharif had these words to publish if he was martyred which he was tonight as Israel starts the invasion of Gaza City

Bought a print by David Oravez, a prof I had in college. It was his estate sale, he died in 2020. It's a woodblock of farmworkers titled "Migrants". He was one of the kindest professors. He felt everyone had value & was a lifeline, listening & helping when I was an exhausted student at a low point.

It's striking how "wildflower" is often used as a pejorative; a way to dismiss biodiversity as insignificant. The disconnect between humans & nature is fundamentally linked to our inaction on climate. The magnitude of ignorance is well illustrated in this cartoon, w/ the original by its side.

In a time where a new crisis seems to drop every min due to the current political regime, two crises remain at center of all life on earth: biodiversity & climate. Our inability to plan, prioritize & rein in consumption leads us to a false choice between the existence of a whole species and a mine.

The piece was shared on X and further illuminates what a dumpster fire platform it is. Comments from seemingly real people overwhelmingly call for the active harm of Tiehm's buckwheat. From "just move it" to "herbicide it" to "its just a wildflower".

Well this is depressing: a national survey finds that US adults actually think about climate change a lot, but when asked about solutions, almost always reach for individual action. They don't see it as political. Uuuuugh.

I wrote about the beauty (and virality) of Iranian brickwork

Oh my god, if you make cycling safe and easy, people will do it. Who. Would. Ever. Have. Thought.

The @washingtonpost.com assigned around 20 staffers to this account of the Texas flood, with one jawdropping anecdote after another One thing that becomes clear: The extraordinary courage of camp counselors, who evacuated their girls as older adults floundered and stalled Free link wapo.st/44N1cNI

Currently missing the Mojave and Wasatch meadows

More evidence that honey bees are detrimental to native biodiversity in North America.

Elite journalists wriggle & wriggle & try & try but they can not escape the fundamental dilemma: journalism is, by its nature, supposed to be on the side of accuracy, against lies & liars, but the GOP is lies & liars top to bottom. And for reasons of power & access, journalism can not say so.

This new Paris neighbourhood is VERY good. Clichy-Batignolles (former rail yard), 1 of many transformations at Metro transit stations around the city. Dense+mixed (urban IKEA, grocery store, schools, jobs etc), diverse (50% public housing, 20% middle class rental), 1/3rd beautiful park, 20k people.

The elite Democrat fantasy is getting a huge youth turnout, but only if those young people vote for 70-year-old boomers who don't want more housing, are OK with a police state and fossil fuels, and don't give a damn about crimes against humanity in Gaza

"Not for you." Palestinian citizens of Israel--21% of the population--are being excluded from bomb shelters on the basis of their ethnicity. This is the society the West will defend at all costs. www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/...

“He notched a victory in a Supreme Court decision against the City of Chicago in 1976. He then spent over 40 years making sure the ruling was enforced.”

Who was MN Rep. Melissa Hortman in the MN Legislature? READ about her consequential leadership in this THREAD by @taniel.bsky.social. Take the time.

Philly showin' up today

We've just updated the @wired.com guide to protecting your privacy while attending protests with the latest best practices. @agreenberg.bsky.social and @lhn.bsky.social report: www.wired.com/story/how-to...

Sometimes, "banning cars" does not mean banning them outright from a street or a neighbourhood, but rather restricting some of their movements via local and neighbourhood-level circulation arrangements—sometimes quite sophisticated ones.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called the lack of healthy food options on Native reservations a “genocide.” But the Trump administration ended a program that helped provide fresh, locally produced food for tribal food banks, saying the program no longer aligned with its priorities.

One of the big blind spots liberal elites have about this country is that they have no idea how prominent and prevelant stuff like "Christian Wealth Seminars" are. These typically recruit unsophisticated people into the scam *and* promote conservative ideology.

@kue.glitch.paris 🗣️: "When raising the concept of a funding source decoupled from the farebox and instead tied to a region's economic output, I've had some American urbanists brush it off as idealism. But this is a concrete reality to the millions of transit users in French cities."

“It's not my duty as Mayor to make sure you have a parking spot. For me it's the same as if you bought a cow, or a refrigerator, and then asked me where you're going to put them.” — Mayor of Pontevedra, Spain (re-elected 6 times)

Read past the headline on this one

I've long worried about this

Bingo. And we could have done this at any point after opposition to the first protected bike lanes in Manhattan, Times Square ped plazas and Citi Bike proved to be little more than knee-jerk, hair-on-fire NIMBYism. If we had, maybe we would've seen congestion pricing opposition as equally wrong.

The bank of the Seine in Paris used to be space for cars. Now for several years it’s been a special place for people in a city making more & more of them. All it took was leadership. Oh, and fighting and winning a court battle when that leadership was challenged. HT @emmanuelspv.bsky.social for pic.

Victim identified as Jeff Ishibashi, resident of Lansdowne. Likely biking to his job as a cancer researcher at Penn

11 single stair conditions for 208 apartments every unit faces southeast or southwest over half have daylight on opposite sides or more. studios to 4-bedrooms and 100% illegal in every part of the US.

Spent the morning talking to and writing about the alleged Delco road rage pooper and spent the afternoon exploring an overgrown Philly cemetery. That first beer tonight is going to taste real good. Journalism: It’s not just a job, it’s also a wacky profession.

How Far do your tax dollars for Transit go? After people complaining over and over that SEPTA was inefficient, I had to run the numbers of Ridership to Operating budgets and would you look at that. Not only is SEPTA good with money, but they are literally the best in the US

‘The cuts to SEPTA service would trigger a loss of revenue at both the state and local levels.’ Opinion piece from @danielpearson.bsky.social www.inquirer.com/opinion/comm...

“A new report finds that, when transportation costs are factored in, Texas’s biggest metros aren’t the bargain they often claim to be.”