Category Archives: Pedestrian infrastructure

Hamburg’s ambitious HafenCity

In the world of urban planning, Hamburg has perhaps become best known for HafenCity, which has been slowly replacing Hamburg’s obsolete 19th-century port in the years since 2003 (an enormous new container port has grown up across the Elbe). HafenCity is claimed to … Continue reading

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Jakarta tries to get beyond 1960s “modernity”

I had been in Jakarta only once before, in 1998. I concluded then that Jakarta was just about the most pedestrian-unfriendly city on earth. Many of its roads had only the narrowest of cracked sidewalks—and carried mind-bogglingly huge amounts of … Continue reading

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The skyscraper apartment buildings (and some other distinctive features) of Panama City

I spent a few days in Panama City at the end of January. I had been there only once before, in 2012, before the Metro opened. It’s a surprisingly distinctive place. Panama City’s most astonishing feature is surely its skyline, … Continue reading

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The difficulties of carfree life in Bangkok

I’d been in Bangkok half a dozen times since the 1990s and had come to know the city moderately well. Although it’s a large, pleasantly complicated place, with a rich traditional culture and a distinctive approach to modernization, Bangkok had … Continue reading

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Glimmers of non-autocentric urbanism in Austin

Austin, with a population of just under a million, is now the 11th largest city in the United States. Both the city of Austin and its urban area grew by more than 16% between 2010 and 2016. No other U.S. … Continue reading

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Some notes on Hong Kong’s newish waterfront “promenades” and on its other pedestrian facilities

Hong Kong is perhaps best known in the world of urban studies for its extraordinarily high transit share. Public transit accounts for a larger percentage of journeys in Hong Kong than in any other city in the world. Something like 77.6% of … Continue reading

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Why the BeltLine is so important to Atlantans

The still far-from-complete Atlanta BeltLine is one of the most discussed pieces of non-automotive infrastructure in the country. Two books have been written about its creation. A huge number of newspaper stories have also been devoted to it. Furthermore, dozens … Continue reading

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Harbin and Vladivostok

I was in Harbin and Vladivostok last week. These two cities may be in different countries, but they are only 500 km apart and have a common late-19th-century origin as Russian railroad towns. Harbin was the administrative center of the … Continue reading

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The Promenade Fleuve-Montagne in Montréal

When I was in Montréal a week ago, I made a point of visiting the new Promenade Fleuve-Montagne. The Promenade is a 3.8 km walkway between the old port on the Saint Lawrence (the “fleuve”) and the base of Mount … Continue reading

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New York’s pedestrian infrastructure gets even better

The New York area famously accounts for something like 40% of all U.S. transit trips. New York may do even better when it comes to pedestrian trips, but these are a great deal harder to measure. New York’s walkscore (89.2) ranks first, but … Continue reading

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