Proud to present @streetsforall.bsky.social with the AD51 Community Excellence Award for Sustainability & Mobility. 🚴‍ TY for your work to make L.A.’s streets safer, healthier & built for people—not just cars—and to @mirijulip.bsky.social for accepting the award! #AD51 #Mobility #Sustainability

Looking for some personalized urbanist art? Need a gift for an urbanist friend? Send me your preferred design and I can embroider it on a tote bag, decorative embroidery hoop, baby onesie, or t-shirt. Email me: [email protected] Some examples of my work: Urbanist onesies:

Children shouldn't be a luxury good. In too many US cities, they are. Sharing this nice piece on the "motherhood penalty." www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/o...

Cities are finally relaxing zoning for small scale manufacturing. Next up: accessory commercial units? www.nytimes.com/2025/07/13/b...

California would rather shut down its oil refineries and pollute more shipping in fuel from overseas (added pollution the state doesn't count!) than pragmatically address energy policy.

When in Rome, walk don't drive. www.nytimes.com/video/world/...

To get to a car-free Olympics, LA will need: -6,000 more bus drivers -2,700 more buses -federal funds to pay for them (not yet approved) -to convince tourists to ride them and not rent cars to explore LA -to convince residents to drive less or get out of town 🤔 www.latimes.com/california/s...

My Youtube algorithm is apparently designed to trigger fear and guilt about my parenting ability..

I was skeptical of Waymo et al because I thought it was vaporware designed to undermine support for public transit and urbanism. Then I actually rode in the cars, looked at the data, and realized they’re safer than human drivers. Now it’s obvious that the opposition is just anti-tech culture war.

How was Musk ever going to square the circle of his personal interest in selling electric vehicles with the anti-environment policy of the party he attached himself to? Emissions/sustainability were trigger words DOGE filtered for - the irony.

I know America can build things quickly and efficiently because we do it for cars all the time. The slow, arduous permitting and construction processes we have for public transit, bike infrastructure, green energy, and housing are a policy choice that we are free to stop making whenever we want.

That seems like a bad incentive structure..

✅ MADE INTO A TWO YEAR BILL IN ASSEMBLY APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE: : AB 981 by Asm Gipson that requires speed limiters for people who have received repeat charges for reckless driving, excessive speed etc.

I think we should spend less time worrying about how affordable brand new homes are and more time worrying about how affordable existing older homes are.

Fascinating, and depressing, story on what it's like to be a ridehail driver at LAX. People waiting in an overcrowded parking lot for a "unicorn" ride that will make it worth their while.  www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/t...

Today's the day! 20 years later, Real ID is finally mandatory to get on a plane. Well, actually you can still fly without one, but not your next flight.. well.. hm.

I’ve found my people - the paper people. Had a blast this week workshopping papers at Northwestern with a diverse group of scholars interested in all kinds of IDs, from birth certificates to Real ID cards.

A fun parking study (based in the city my dad grew up in) that shows people prefer converting curb spots for "liveability" (bike lanes, public transit and greenery) than for other types of parking spots (charging spots, & car, bike and e-scooter sharing).

"Streets For All believes that everyone who wants to live near transit should be able to do so, and SB 79 will make that possible." @kerstanley.bsky.social

I'm excited to share the paper we've informally titled the "everything bagel" of transportation policy. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Fewer people are traveling to LAX. Policy brain: another signal of a struggling economy Selfish brain: maybe the horseshoe will be less gridlocked.. www.latimes.com/california/s...

Just learned about this org whose sole mission seems to be to improve this one horrendous intersection in LA (San Vicente/Olympic/Fairfax). Love the mission!

Today Joe Linton of Streetsblog LA filed a lawsuit to force HLA compliance on Vermont and other LA city streets (and other Metro projects) and eliminate the mandatory administrative appeals process. We support this action – we simply want safe streets. www.streetsforall.org/blog/first-h...

An early childhood education in street safety

you know things are going well when they break out the turnip photos

A must read op-ed on a perhaps well-intentioned but ultimately destructive tax on property sales in LA City. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

New, unpublished guidance from USDOT goes against the will of Congress and millions of city residents by subjecting already-approved local projects to new rounds of review, bureaucracy, and red tape—and potentially canceling projects already underway. nacto.org/latest/state...

The Karen Read case is one of those stories where you're reminded that drunk driving is still Totally Fine And Normal in much of America.

Throwback license proposal: Western Center lobbyist proposes the DMV license hitch hikers (the Uber of the '70s). The ID would be called an "autohitch license." "Hitchhikers are here to stay."

We truly live in a bizarre parallel universe, where the group actively fighting a city mandate to build multimodal infrastructure is the.. checks notes... county agency that funds, plans and operates multimodal transportation.

“I know of people who treat their vehicles better than their family because it costs more to maintain a car than a family sometimes." A glimpse of life under a rare flavor of transportation governance: one that prices driving to keep roads free of congestion.  www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/w...

An unsung hero of urbanization: sewers. This study finds that a 1% increase in sewer connections leads to a 6% increase in pop density. "Sewer access has obvious implications for our willingness to tolerate population density" www.nber.org/papers/w33597

“There is still this idea that 70 or so road deaths a year in Wales is acceptable. But we would never accept 70 deaths a year on the ferry to Ireland, or on buses.” 20mph speed limits in built up areas save lives. There's evidence to prove it. But motonormativity gets in the way.

Tempe's car-free Culdesac beats a suburban car-oriented cul-de-sac any day

Why did we ever stop planting trees in the middle of roads?

One of the best decisions I've made was to get involved with Streets For All. For a new and small organization, it's done incredible work helping to transform car-centric California into a safer, multimodal state. Just check out their bills this year (and 🔥 graphics)!

As predicted, women in New Hampshire had a hard time voting yesterday because of the new proof of citizenship law: “It doesn’t have my married name on it,” she said. Town voting officials then sent her away a second time, to get her marriage certificate. www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2025...

Dodge Charger drivers now get a pop up ad every time they hit a light, to encourage them to ignore all lights entirely..

It makes more sense for an AV taxi to look like this, rather than disguised as a regular car. Yet the sensible design for more passenger room and no driver is the one that gets outlawed, and the one with unnecessary rearview mirrors doesn't.

Pretty amazing statistic: In the 19th century, 1 in 3 Americans moved in any given year. By the 1960s, 1 in 5 Americans moved. In 2023, just 1 in 13 did.

Unfortunately for academic anti-YIMBYs, building more market rate housing to lower housing prices works in practice but not in theory.

It's always fun to find a new catchy word in academia. "Scaffolding" is a good one. So is "marginalizing." In nonprofit work, I see a lot of "convening."

Project 25's transportation chapter: "It is vital to consider the role of user fees and other pricing innovations with regard to transportation infrastructure." 🤔

Sure, cybertrucks are "funky" in the sense that they look more like a military tank than a family sedan. But what's truly weird is that this author never mentions how terrifying it is to have to bike - or even drive in a small car - next to these behemoths. It's impossible to see the driver.

There are many tributes to Prof. Donald Shoup; he touched the world with his grace, kindness, intelligence and humor. Thanks to his life's work, cities will never be the same. This loving tribute was written by his wife, Pat Shoup. www.legacy.com/us/obituarie...

"Government, in essence, is slow not by incompetence but by design. And it’s not just one law; the government’s inability to function today is the result of decades of procedural guardrails designed to prevent government from doing bad things."

Apart from Tesla, no vehicle manufacturer will meet CA's 35% zero-emission threshold in 2026. Rather than pay the fines, manufacturers will probably pay Tesla for emission credits and limit inventory (and flood markets in neighboring states), causing prices for ICEs in CA to spike.

This seems icky.. a site where people only sell property to residents who were most likely already homeowners? Or whose parents were homeowners? Why can't we imagine a more inclusive LA that builds up so that more people can live there, not defensively keep people out?

Very few upsides to any kind of tariff, but perhaps the tariff will do one thing no public official wants to do: raise prices on cars and gas. A lot of crude oil, and the engines in Ford F-series pickups, come from Canada.