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 great time here in Portland — we picked up our rental bikes this morning, and the conference is just getting into gear. More to come…

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 years ago, making an impact here in NYC and beyond, and developing a great community of readers. The Livable Streets Network, as we’re calling the new, unified effort, intends to take this to the next level, by providing more online tools and new opportunities for collaboration.

We’ve code named the project “Woonerf,” which is dutch for “a street or group of streets where pedestrians and cyclists have legal priority over motorists.” It’s an apt title indeed for a group of sites that aims to unite and motivate citizens across the country who want to make their cities more comfortable, livable, and sustainable.

While we’re not quite ready to flip the switch, we do have a live demo that folks can check out in the meantime. If you’d like to see it, just fill out this short form, and we’ll send you a link.

Expect more soon as we approach the launch. Here goes nothing…

(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 debuting in several NYC public schools this spring.

This week’s session took two groups of students from PS 87 (1st, 4th, and 5th graders) out into the neighborhood to do streetscape observations (“do you see a bike lane?,” “do cars slow down at the speed bump?”) as well as radar gunning on Columbus Avenue to gauge traffic speed. Obviously, radar gunning was the more popular activity, with all the kids clamoring for a turn with Transportation Alternatives‘ Nathan John (above).

This is a really exciting new program, and it was great to see how tuned-in little New Yorkers already are to the urban environment around them. Go get ’em Kim!

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 TOPP — we work on really cool projects and have an amazing team, plus nice perks like five weeks paid vacation and lunch every day. We’re a “dot-org”: a new kind of non-profit that feels like a dot-com startup. If you’re interested in working with us, let us know.

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 less, planes will be lighter and use less fuel. The logic is sound. Of all the cost-cutting approaches airlines have employed lately (charging for movies, food, etc.), this one is particularly interesting, because it puts a valid question to the consumer: Do I really need to pack that much? Can I pack less and still be ok?

Every time I go to the airport, I’m blown away by how much people pack when they travel, even for short trips. Going on a weekend trip? You probably need a huge suitcase and a carry on. Taking a week vacation? Giant suitcase for everyone in the family. Please; give me a carry-on duffle and I won’t pack all those extra clothes I’ll never wear once I get there anyway.

Of course, there are many cases where packing lots of stuff and checking your bag is unavoidable. But in reality, these occasions are quite limited, and I know that more people could pack less if they tried. My wife and I have been on the no-checked-baggage-unless-we-absolutely-have-to plan for a while now, and let me tell you, it’s the way to go. No waiting at the baggage claim, and no schlepping around extra crap that you don’t need.

Regardless, I’m sure American is going to take some flack for this. We were just talking about this here at the office, and Bryan pointed out that being a first-mover on a fee like this is risky business. That’s for sure, although it sounds like United is seriously considering going next. Phil raised a good point that this fee would feel much better if it were posed as a discount rather than a fee. For example, a $15 discount for not checking a bag would be much more palatable to consumers. Now that’s nice. It will be interesting to see what happens to American here, whether people will run to other airlines or take the “discount” and pack light.

Unfortunately, what’s likely to happen is that everyone will start overpacking their carry-ons…