I’ve heard this story in various forms over the past few years, but according to the London Times, pedestrian power is ready to be harnessed: Underfloor generators, powered by “heel strike” and designed by British engineers, may soon be installed in supermarkets and railway stations. The technology ...

Jonathan Maus, the prolific editor over at Bike Portland, did a very nice write-up of our session yesterday at the Towards Carfree Cities conference. The comments coming in over there so far have been amazingly positive, which is really encouraging. Btw, the photo, above, of Aaron Naparstek is weird...

Everyone is strutting their best transpo Ts here at the Towards Carfree Cities conference. Here are a few highlights… Official Carfree conference t-shirt. We’re trying to get our hands on a couple of these babies. Lots more after the jump. Updated many times so check back for new ones… Continue read...

The opening keynote speaker at the Towards Carfree Cities conference is Mia Birk, from a bike/ped planning firm here in Portland called Alta Design. Check out the short episode of “Big Ideas for a Small Planet,” above, featuring Mia talking about the pedestrian & bicycle planning movement in Portlan...

Live blogging from the Towards Carfree Cities conference in Portland, OR… Next to our table, we found a real estate broker from Portland who gives bike tours of houses for sale.  What a great way to see neighborhoods and get a taste of what it might be like to live in a place! Continue reading

This week, a handful of us from the Livable Streets team at TOPP are out in Portland, OR visiting the 8th International Towards Carfree Cities conference. Tomorrow morning, we’ll be giving a presentation entitled “Street Fight!  Lessons from the NYC Livable Streets Movement.”  So far, we’ve had a gr...

For the past several months, my coworkers and I over at The Open Planning Project have been hard at work on an important redesign and new product launch. I’m now excited to say that the final launch is, ahem, days away.  Streetsblog and StreetFilms have been hugely popular since they launched two ye...

(ok, I obviously need to work on less cheesy headlines, but for the moment…) On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of accompanying TOPP’s latest hire, Kim Wiley-Schwartz, on a pilot session for her new Livable Streets curriculum.  She’s developing an education program around Livable Streets that’s debuti...

Here at The Open Planning Project, we are currently looking to add to our talented design team.  If you’re a web designer with visual design talent, rock-solid production skills, and a strong intuition for user experience, we want to hear from you.  Download the full job description. Life is good at...

Yesterday, American Airlines announced that it’s going to start charging a fee for checked baggage. Of course, this will draw the ire of frequent and not-so-frequent flyers everywhere. But, perhaps it makes some sense. What’s making flying expensive right now is the cost of fuel. So, if people pack ...

Elizabeth Press over at Streetfilms has been producing awesome stop-motion animations recently. The latest: Diverter. This short video shows how diverters can be used to redirect traffic flow and make intersections more friendly for pedestrians and cyclists. This is a great follow-up to Clarence Eck...

Last Tuesday, Aaron Naparstek and I took in the Yankee game and watched the impressive Cliff Lee throw a 7-inning shut out and drop his ERA to 0.81, in what some analysts were calling “the pitching matchup of the season” (5-0 Lee vs. 6-0 Wang). It turns out, had we been a little earlier, we… Continu...

One of my colleagues at The Open Planning Project, Sebastian Benthall, has started blogging over at Digifesto. Seb is one sharp cookie, so keep an eye on this blog for lots of great web gems — the blog will be focusing on “how the internet and open source software can be used by civil society… Conti...

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the MX Conference in San Francisco. MX stands for Managing Experience, and is targeted at people like me: managers of creative teams attempting to produce great user experiences. The conference is put on by the folks at Adaptive Path, who have a fair amount...

Over the past two years, I’ve redesigned this website about 5 times, but never finished. Talk about frustrating. Eventually, I realized that I was getting nowhere, and that instead of a redesign, what I really needed was an undesign. So that’s what I did. Welcome to wrkng -1.0, my first undesign. La...

Today, we launched a redesign of the Carbon Tax Center website. The primary goal was to create a more impactful homepage that communicates CTC’s mission quickly and clearly. In doing so, we also reworked the site header (to remove distracting and unncessary graphics), and crispened up the typography...

The Professional Basketball Players were happy to be part of Make Music New York yesterday, the first incarnation of this international music festival here in NYC. We had a great time playing at the Liz Christy Community Garden on the Lower East Side — thanks to everyone there for having us, and to ...

I’m proud to announce the launch of StreetFilms, the new home of Clarence Eckerson’s short films about Livable Streets, and another site in the New York City Streets Renaissance family.Back when I was in college, riding the CalTrain to San Jose for work, I thought that one day I might make Public Se...

Supporting Women Artists Project (SWAP) is a new non-profit organization that offers free studio space for women artists in exchange for mentoring young girls who are interested in art. They are just gearing up for their first year, and are now accepting donations online. Way to go Frannie and Andre...

I am happy to announce the launch of another great NYC website: StreetsBlog. A project of the NYC Streets Renaissance Campaign and edited by NYC transportation/planning blogger Aaron Naparstek, this site will take a critical look at transportation issues in our area. I’ve been a fan of Aaron’s writi...