A few things to know this week: July 30, 2021
This week’s things to know:
In Order to Achieve Tree Equity, the U.S. Must Plant 522 Million Trees in Urban Areas–via The Urbanist
This fascinating article by Natalie Brickell explores a new Report by American Forests which quantifies exactly how many trees we need to plant to create equity in tree canopy in US cities. I think most of us who explore large urban areas regularly have probably already seen how marginalized areas often are completely devoid of healthy tree cover but this article puts into stark perspective exactly how bad the situation is. There is a lot to unpack and discuss here, but the above graphic feels most telling to me. The disparity in green canopy between communities with a high percentage of people of color and those without and similarly comparing places with high and low poverty is just massive. The heatwaves that we have seen over the past weeks and are likely to see in the future will only exacerbate these issues
Where sidewalks and bike paths have priority–via CNU.org
In a quick article over at Public Square, Roy Symons takes a look at new plans and a showcase project in Nanaimo, BC where his engineering firm has worked with the city to create a Dutch-style sidewalk and pike path system along a major road.
National 'Vision Zero' Resolution Introduced–via StreetsblogUSA
The growing discussion over Vision Zero is one step closer to getting its day in Congress. Streetsblog has reported that a resolution has been introduced by a group of five senators and five representatives to allow states to use existing federal funding to build out their own Vision Zero Plans. Traffic fatalities are described as a public health crisis in the resolution – something I think many of us agree with. Should this ultimately be passed the next logical discussion is about what states will actually be putting into the plans they write. This got me thinking about an article Chuck Mahron over at Strong Towns put out titled One Billion Bollards this week which explains how often we design and build cities in a way that is designed to sacrifice pedestrians in order to protect the occupants of vehicles. His article reminded me of the Trolley Problem, except the trolley is a three-thousand pound SUV and engineers seem, most often, to choose to squish the pedestrians, to protect the occupant of the vehicle containing the product of decades worth of safety standards built in. Hopefully some forward-thinking engineering discussion goes into those Vision Zero Plans.
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