If you are interested in zoning, infrastructure, bikes, and a city's financial prosperity, you will love this collection of books, YouTube channels, and organizations. Every city has to decide what kind of community infrastructure they want. Do communities want to be walkable? Bikeable? Community oriented?
Cycle Sanpete stands for walkability and cyclability. Of course, we are not anti-cars, but safe, equitable means of movement is our sought-after standard, and is only made possible with with proper city design, community input and involvement. Sanpete County has not yet made the mistakes that bigger cities have made. So let's explore more ideas that will keep us moving in the right direction.
Cycling Digest 2023- Books
After decades of unchecked sprawl, more people than ever are moving back to the city. Dense urban living has been prescribed as a panacea for the environmental and resource crises of our time. But is it better or worse for our happiness? Are subways, sidewalks, and tower dwelling improvements on the car dependence of sprawl?
Award-winning journalist Charles Montgomery finds answers to such questions at the intersection between urban design and the emerging science of happiness and during an exhilarating journey through some of the world's most dynamic cities. He meets the visionary mayor who introduced a "sexy" lipstick-red bus to ease status anxiety in Bogotá; the architect who brought the lessons of medieval Tuscan hill towns to modern-day New York City; the activist who turned Paris' urban freeways into beaches; and an army of American suburbanites who have transformed their lives by hacking the designs of their streets and neighborhoods. Full of rich historical detail and new insights from psychologists and Montgomery's own urban experiments, Happy City is an essential tool for understanding and improving our own communities.
Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Build American Prosperity is a book of forward-thinking ideas that breaks with modern wisdom to present a new vision of urban development in the United States. Presenting the foundational ideas of the Strong Towns movement he cofounded, Charles Marohn explains why cities of all sizes continue to struggle to meet their basic needs, and reveals the new paradigm that can solve this longstanding problem.
You'll learn why inducing growth and development has been the conventional response to urban financial struggles - and why it just doesn't work. New development and high-risk investing don't generate enough wealth to support itself, and cities continue to struggle. Listen to this book to find out how cities large and small can focus on bottom-up investments to minimize risk and maximize their ability to strengthen the community financially and improve citizens' quality of life.
Strong Towns acknowledges that there is a problem with the American approach to growth and shows community leaders a new way forward. The Strong Towns response is a revolution in how we assemble the places we live.
A Best Book of the Year according to Planetizen and the American Society of Landscape Architects Jeff Speck has dedicated his career to determining what makes cities thrive. And he has boiled it down to one key factor: walkability.
Making downtown into a walkable, viable community is the essential fix for the typical American city; it is eminently achievable and its benefits are manifold. Walk-able City―bursting with sharp observations and key insights into how urban change happens―lays out a practical, necessary, and inspiring vision for how to make American cities great again.
In car-clogged urban areas across the world, the humble bicycle is enjoying a second life as a legitimate form of transportation. City officials are rediscovering it as a multipronged (or -spoked) solution to acute 21st-century problems, including affordability, obesity, congestion, climate change, inequity, and social isolation.
As the world's foremost cycling nation, the Netherlands is the only country where the number of bikes exceeds the number of people, primarily because the Dutch have built a cycling culture accessible to everyone, regardless of age, ability, or economic means.
Chris and Melissa Bruntlett share the incredible success of the Netherlands through engaging interviews with local experts and stories of their own delightful experiences riding in five Dutch cities.
Building the Cycling City examines the triumphs and challenges of the Dutch while also presenting stories of North American cities already implementing lessons from across the Atlantic. Discover how Dutch cities inspired Atlanta to look at its transit-bike connection in a new way and showed Seattle how to teach its residents to realize the freedom of biking, along with other encouraging examples.
Tellingly, the Dutch have two words for people who ride bikes: wielrenner (“wheel runner”) and fietser (“cyclist”), the latter making up the vast majority of people pedaling on their streets and representing a far more accessible, casual, and inclusive style of urban cycling - walking with wheels.
Outside of their borders, a significant cultural shift is needed to seamlessly integrate the bicycle into everyday life and create a whole world of fietsers. The Dutch blueprint focuses on how people in a particular place want to move.
The relatable success stories will leave listeners inspired and ready to adopt and implement approaches to make their own cities better places to live, work, play, and - of course - cycle.
Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town
In Confessions of a Recovering Engineer, renowned speaker and author of Strong Towns Charles L. Marohn, Jr., delivers an accessible and engaging exploration of America's transportation system, laying bare the reasons why it no longer works as it once did, and how to modernize transportation to better serve local communities.
You'll discover real-world examples of poor design choices and how those choices have dramatic and tragic effects on the lives of the people who use them. You'll also find case studies and examples of design improvements that have revitalized communities and improved safety.
This important book shows you: the values of the transportation professions, how they are applied in the design process, and how those priorities differ from those of the public; how the standard approach to transportation ensures the maximum amount of traffic congestion possible is created each day, and how to fight that congestion on a budget; and bottom-up techniques for spending less and getting higher returns on transportation projects, all while improving quality of life for residents. Perfect for anyone interested in why transportation systems work - and fail to work - the way they do, Confessions of a Recovering Engineer is a fascinating insider's peek behind the scenes of America's transportation systems.
Cycling Digest 2023- Websites
Strong Towns
Thousands of people across North America are working to make their cities safe, livable, and financially resilient. Are you ready to join the movement?
Bicycle Dutch
Welcome to this blog about cycling in the Netherlands. The utility type of cycling to get from A to B. This blog is not about cycling as a sport, nor to be green, but about the every day type of cycling on sit-up bicycles.
Dutch Cycling Embassy
https://dutchcycling.nl/knowledge/knowledge-clips/five-design-principles-for-bicycle-infrastructure/
Five Design Principles for Bicycle Infrastructure. We want to share our expertise and technology as the world's number one cycling country to facilitate cycling worldwide as the most modern, efficient and sustainable method of transport.
Wasatch Front Regional Council
The Wasatch Front Regional Council builds consensus and enhances quality of life by developing and implementing visions and plans for a well-functioning multi-modal transportation system, livable communities, a strong economy, and a healthy environment.
Utah League of Cities and Towns
Utah League of Cities and Towns (ULCT), first organized in 1907, serves incorporated communities throughout Utah. ULCT represents municipal government interests with a strong, unified voice at the state and federal levels. ULCT provides information, training and technical assistance to local officials on municipal issues, and works to create a greater public awareness and understanding of municipal responsibilities, governance, and administration. ULCT is a non-partisan, inter-local government cooperative.
Cycling Digest 2023- YouTube Channels
Stories of great urban planning and urban experiences from the Netherlands and beyond. There are a lot of reasons why Dutch cities are so great; it's not just bikes.
Bike Quest With Mike West
Join me on my quest to make our cities safer, healthier, and more livable by improving biking for all! This channel is through my lens and perspective as a North American city planner and explores different principles and strategies that can help make our cities more bikable. I also plan to present videos on other urban planning related topics including land use, sustainability, and even some fun videos. If this channel amounts to anything, I plan on donating the proceeds to the city I work for in Utah to contribute to active transportation safety improvements. Sometimes if you take a first small step in the right direction, it can change your whole trajectory into the future. Thanks again for checking me out and stay tuned for more to come!
Strong Towns
Join the the Strong Towns movement - for those passionate about the future of America's towns and neighborhoods. Our mission is to support a model of development that allows America's cities, towns and neighborhoods to become financially strong and resilient.
Have something you want to add to the list?
Leave us a comment!
Comments