Check out this video from 1966 about EPCOT City. Walt Disney was a true visionary and an urban planner at heart. He goes as far as saying “The pedestrian will be king” in EPCOT. I sure hope we can unfreeze Uncle Walt so he can help us redesign our cities. Walt Disney-you da man.
Posts under ‘Urban Planning’
Brief Thoughts on HSR
As the USDOT pares down the list of applicants to the final recipients for the $8 billion available for High Speed rail, we hope existing regional, and local connectivity plays a significant role in the final assessment – a decision which certainly wouldn’t bode well for Florida’s proposed Orlando-Tampa connection. The Transport Politic aptly notes [...]
Miami’s Future, Miami 21
Elected Officials of the City of Miami:
The City of Miami is at a crossroads, poised with an opportunity to transpose the status quo from municipal mediocrity into a vibrant, livable community for generations to come. At a time when cities have reemerged at the forefront of urban innovation, Miami’s indolent city commission is struggling with [...]
Pic ‘O the Day
courtesy of B(ridge and T(unnel) Crowd
If You (We) Build It
If you build it – Traffic will consume the neighborhood, taxpayers will fund 73% of 2000 temporary construction jobs, Jeffery Loria will cash out in a few years, the Little Havana neighborhood will be revitalized disenfranchised, The Marlins will stay in Miami (for 35 years, guaranteed), etc…
This Friday, the Miami-Dade Commission will meet to determine [...]
Development Threatens M-Path, MacArthur to Get Bicycle Lanes?!
Yesterday’s Miami-Dade County Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC) meeting was filled with interesting news. As Spokes n’ Folks reported, much attention was given to a couple of urban infill projects in Coral Gables, located adjacent to the M-Path.
Dadeland Station developer Jeff Berkowitz is moving forward with plans to redevelop the Deel Ford parcel, the larger [...]
Obama To Focus On Urban Policy
If you keep up with the local or national news you have probably heard that president-elect Barack Obama will create an Office of Urban Policy when he takes office in January. You have probably also heard that none other than our very own Mayor Manny Diaz is being bandied about as a potential candidate to [...]
The Week in Review…
Lots went on this week in transit and I for one am exhausted. I know we have been silent these past few weeks on what has been happening, and speaking for myself, I didn’t have anything new to add to the discussion that I had not already said before. MDT is having problems, ridership is [...]
The week in transit
A lot happened this week behind the scenes and between the lines. Here is a review:
Kudos to this editorial today from El Nuevo Herald columnist Daniel Shoer Roth. I think he did an excellent job in highlighting how mismanaged our transit system is. Accountability goes out the window when ten different departments and municipalities are [...]
Celebration of Disconnectedness
On the Tomorrowland Transit Authority this past week, I passed a model of Walt Disney’s original plan for an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT). I got to thinking: “I wonder how many people passing this model on a daily basis know that the Walt Disney Company actually tried their own hand at an [...]
Thursday Quote: Density
“Higher density housing offers an inferior lifestyle only when it is without a community as its setting.”
- Andres Duany
Mid-Week News and Commentary
It somehow always seems that when Transit/Development news flares up, so do events in our personal lives. In any case, here are some of the top news stories this week, some of which we’ll get around to commenting on:
Local:
The next phase of the Metrorail extension hasn’t even broken ground and already the cost overruns [...]
Metro Monday: Vancouver’s Canada Line
“At a length of nearly 19 km, the Canada Line will be an automated rapid transit rail service connecting Downtown Vancouver with central Richmond and the Vancouver International Airport — linking growing residential, business, health care, educational and other centres in the region — and adding transit capacity equivalent to 10 major road lanes. The [...]
Mecca Farms = Mega Sprawl?
Remember the debacle which erupted in Palm Beach when attempting to identify a location for the massive Scripps Institute? Mecca Farms and Boca Raton were all suggested as alternative sites for the massive Bioresearch center, however in the end, a location in Jupiter near FAU’s campus was selected. In the end, [...]
