A few things to know this week: November 13, 2020
Happy Friday, friends! Every week we collect some of the best things that members of our Verdunity team read, watched, or listened to over the course of the week—plus anything new from us.
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This week’s things to know:
Barcelona's New Car-Free 'Superblock' Will Be Big (Bloomberg Business)
As the idea of transportation and how we spend our time has come further into focus with everyone spending copious amounts of time at home over the last year those who are responsible for the built environment in Barcelona are taking notice and rethinking things. Superblocks have been a thing in Spanish culture for a little while now, but these new iterations could make life a little simpler. -Ryan
Phoenix City Council approves plan to address homelessness (AZ Central)
Phoenix is definitely the subject of attention right now on the heels of their approval of a homelessness and affordable housing plan to help address the record numbers of homeless they're seeing in their city. Homelessness is such an important issue American cities continue to struggle to address in a meaningful way. There are concerns about how the plan will accomplish the ambitious goals it is intended to, but I'm anxious to see how it unfolds. -AJ
Changing the Narrative – Rudy Bruner Award
I had to share this interesting, downloadable document which highlights the stories of five projects which together represent this year's award winners for the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence. The stories are inspiring and there is great content throughout the publication, but especially in the "lessons learned" section, which touches on the themes below. I highly recommend taking a look at this! -AJ
Changing Attitudes, Expectations, and Perceptions About People and Places
Innovation Is Happening in Unexpected Places
Turning Deficits into Assets
Practical, Replicable Design Approaches
Addressing Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and the Unintended Consequences of Success
Who’s Driving Vision and Investment?
The Capital of Sprawl Gets a Radically Car-Free Neighborhood (New York Times)
A startup developer is spending $170M to create the first-ever car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the United States on a 17 acre lot outside Phoenix, Arizona. "Culdesac Tempe" will eventually feature 761 apartments, 16,000 square feet of retail, 1,000 residents — and exactly zero places for them to park. To assuage the city's concerns over insufficient parking (similar to those in other cities which have killed numerous great projects around the country), residents will be contractually forbidden to park a car on site or on nearby streets. If the development is successful, the company plans to build more neighborhoods and ultimately hope to build an entire city. Urbanists and those advocating for more walkable cities are cautiously optimistic, while suburban developers say the concept won't scale. Personally, I'd like to see these resources put into revitalizing and improving existing downtowns and adjacent neighborhoods in existing cities, but if the market wants to continue building new, this is a concept worth watching. -Kevin
What COVID-19 Taught Me About Leadership (ELGL)
Andrew Kleine is the former budget director for the City of Baltimore and Chief Administrative Officer for Montgomery County, Maryland, and author of one of my favorite books, City on the Line. I'm going to be talking with Andrew on an upcoming episode of our Go Cultivate podcast about outcome based budgeting, his experience working to close resource gaps in various communities, and what COVID taught him about leadership. This article he wrote for our friends at ELGL is a nice preview to the podcast. -Kevin
Tearing Down an Urban Highway Can Give Rise to a Whole New City (CityLab)
Another case for urban highways demise has come to our attention. A whole new city does sound nice sometimes, but what clearing out urban highways can do is revitalize areas that your city already has in ways that would otherwise not be available and possibly disconnects your city from itself. Is there a highway in your city that you think your community could be better without? -Ryan
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