Author Archives: Christopher Winters

Chicago loses—and gains—population

According to a report that the Census Bureau posted a couple of days ago, Chicago has been continuing to lose population. The city’s estimated population in 2016 was 2,704,958. In 2015 it had been 2,713,596. Chicago is the only city among … Continue reading

Posted in Urban | Tagged | Leave a comment

Phoenix urbanizes itself

Among all of what today are the largest cities of the United States, Phoenix was very nearly the smallest in the middle of the 20th century. In 1950 it had only 106,818 people—it was smaller than New Bedford!—and its metropolitan … Continue reading

Posted in Urban, Transportation, Rail infrastructure | Tagged | Leave a comment

Waiting for traffic lights to change on the new Expo Line

When I was in Los Angeles three weeks ago, I naturally rode the new Expo Line between Santa Monica and downtown a couple of times. I can confirm that the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority has a hit on its … Continue reading

Posted in Urban, Transportation, Rail infrastructure | Tagged | 1 Comment

Being a pedestrian in central Kuala Lumpur

I spent a few days in Kuala Lumpur last week. While travelling I was reading a terrific book, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya : negotiating urban space in Malaysia, by Ross King, a professorial fellow at Melbourne University. I had been in KL … Continue reading

Posted in Urban, Transportation, Pedestrian infrastructure | Tagged | 1 Comment

Why aren’t there more pedestrians and transit users in high-density Westwood?

An important article by Mark R. Stevens in the January 2017 issue of the Journal of the American Planning Association suggests that an increase in population density leads only to a modest decrease in automobile use. The article is based … Continue reading

Posted in Urban, Transportation | Tagged | 2 Comments

Fantasy transit in Chicago: a proposal

Building urban rail lines has always been expensive, and one of the consequences of this is that many more lines have been proposed than built. The shelves of Northwestern University’s excellent Transportation Library, for example, contain approximately 75 books or reports … Continue reading

Posted in Urban, Transportation, Rail infrastructure | Tagged | 7 Comments

The “park connectors” of Singapore

Singapore is often described by urbanists as having gotten a great many things right. An explicit goal of Singapore’s planning is to have a “car-lite” society. Singapore’s government has taxed automobiles at a very high rate for many years. It also charges … Continue reading

Posted in Urban, Transportation, Rail infrastructure, Pedestrian infrastructure | Tagged | 1 Comment

The recent geography of gentrification in Chicago

There is a widespread sense that some parts of Chicago are gentrifying at a rapid pace. Rising rents in many neighborhoods have been cited as support for this view. I downloaded and mapped data from the recently released 2011/2015 American … Continue reading

Posted in Urban | Tagged | Leave a comment

BRT, TRT, and a Metro U/C in Quito

There has been an enormous increase in the amount of bus rapid transit (BRT) in the world over the last forty years. While there are substantial BRT lines in many cities in well-off countries (for example, in Ottawa and Los … Continue reading

Posted in Urban, Transportation | Tagged | Leave a comment

Change in population by “race” and Hispanic status, Chicago area, 2010-2011/2015

The Census Bureau released the 2011/2015 American Community Survey (ACS) tract-level data this week. I’ve used these data to map tract-level ethnic changes between 2010 and 2011/2015 for the Chicago area. These maps are comparable to the 2000-2010, 1990-2000, and … Continue reading

Posted in Urban | Tagged | Leave a comment