A little light reading: Lots on transit & transportation, a bit on cities, and a side of grammar

I like this idea so much I’m stealing it shamelessly (highest form of praise, right?) from Human Transit blogger Jarrett Walker. He runs a “weekend reading” post with links to other blog posts he finds interesting or insightful. Since I do most of my blog reading on weekends it works better for me to make this your Monday reading assignment for the week.

Why transit and transportation when this is BiketoWork Barb’s hangout? I read a fair amount on transportation and urban planning because:

• It informs my work representing my campus as we engage in development of Spokane’s University District.
• It interests me as someone who loves our downtown, neighborhoods, open green spaces and nearby farms and wants to see all of them thrive and maintain their distinctive qualities.
• It fascinates me as a student of public policy that we so often fail to recognize the ways that policy has shaped our current landscape and yet people fight the idea of using policy to shape it further. (Think that trying to plan and encourage shifts in people’s transportation choices involves “social engineering"? Well, what formed the habits they have right now? That’s right—social engineering.)
• My mental shift to full-time bike commuter took me out of full-time driver mode. When it’s too icy or seriously windy and I don’t bike, my first instinct is not to reach for the car keys—it’s to head for the bus stop four blocks from my house. When I compare the three modes, bike or bus beat car for me most of the time.
• More recently, as a result of my interest and engagement in active transportation in our community I was appointed to the Transportation Advisory Committee of the Spokane Regional Transportation Council, then appointed by the SRTC Board to serve as chair of the committee. My responsibility there is not to be BiketoWork Barb—it’s to bring an understanding shaped by bike and transit commuting as well as years of driving (and years of buying and using stuff brought here by rail and truck freight—ever stop to think of that as part of your personal transportation system?) to think about all modes of transportation.

With that really extended intro, here’s some of what I read (and commented on) recently:

• Engineer Scotty’s Dead Horse Times (don't flog a....) on transit planning and hierarchy of needs: The first post in this related set of three.
• Human Transit responding to Engineer Scotty on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and transit planning.
• Cap’n Transit Rides Again refining Engineer Scotty’s list of factors (“needs”). Comments on all three of these blogs are well-informed and extend the discussion—exactly what you hope for as a blogger.
• The Urbanophile on a recent speech by Federal Transit Authority chief Peter Rogoff. I’m quite glad to say that Spokane Transit is much better run than the systems cited here, which is why I was happy to be part of their recent ad campaign (some of it viewable on the Spokane Transit Facebook page).
• More on that same FTA speech by Human Transit. (Can you tell I totally got sucked into following links to discussions playing out over several blogs? That’s the Web for you.)
• Human Transit wrote about the choices we make about our commute when we choose where to live. Transportation for America launched the site My Commute Sucks where you can register your complaints. Since my commute doesn’t suck I was glad to see they also have a section where you can talk about what you like about your commute.
• A piece in The New Republic on the “livability moment” that calls on us to stress policy outcomes over individual transportation delivery modes.
• Ped Shed on intersection density and what it means for walkability.

Cities and Economic Development

• Urbanophile again on creative destruction and what it will take to be relevant as a city hoping to attract and keep economic vitality. He writes about the Midwest but it applies to us too.
• What’s So Urban About Agriculture? on the Sustainable Cities blog. This one caught my eye because I just finished reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by my beloved Barbara Kingsolver (Amazon link to buy or you can just go to Auntie's if you're in Spokane or your public library) and I’m more committed than ever to supporting local agriculture with my food dollars. This post is more about Dar es Salaam than anything in the US but the principles apply.

English Grammar

I majored in English and Linguistics and love word play and thinking about words. My future-English-teacher Second Daughter asked about the use of the conditional tense (“If I weren’t so cute, I would never get anywhere in life”).

• That led me to this page with a nice explanation of the conditional tense.
• There’s also the grammar tips site maintained by @GrammarGirl.
• No list of grammar/usage sites would be complete without WSU’s own Paul Brians’ page on common English usage errors (the most popular page on the site, I’ve heard).

That should keep you busy for a while.