Making Hingham more walker-friendly is the second-highest goal of the year for the town’s Board of Selectmen, the Hingham Journal reports. “This effort will include more planning for sidewalk repair and replacement,” the paper says. “In addition, the Selectmen will review whether pedestrian crossing areas can be made safer in areas around town.“
Officials realized that [...]
Archive for July, 2006
Hingham Selectmen Seek More Pedestrian-Friendly Roadways
July 28, 2006Gorbachev: Focus on ordinary residents in urban planning
July 27, 2006Speaking to the Earth Dialogues forum in Brisbane, Australia, former Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev and other delegates said that local leaders “should put ordinary residents at the centre of urban design and planning, and make cities more pedestrian-friendly,” according to a report from News Ltd. online.
Gorbachev currently chairs Green Cross International, an environmental policy group.
Sadly, [...]
North End Residents Battle Gentrification
July 26, 2006“A wave of condo conversions is wiping out the North End’s mom-and-pop cafes and homey convenience stores, sparking a revolt in the tightly knit neighborhood,” the Boston Herald reports. “Dozens of North End residents and activists packed a City Hall hearing yesterday to blast a proposal by a local developer to turn what had been [...]
Wanted: Not Just Any Business
July 22, 2006In Framingham, there’s been a lot of concern about properties coming off the tax rolls. Beside the often-acrimonious debate over social services (and how much is too much), is worry any time a building, land or use changes over from tax-paying to tax-exempt. But I’ve heard much less discussion about the type of businesses the [...]
D.C. Police Nail Drivers Who Don’t Stop For Pedestrians
July 18, 2006Washington, D.C. police were recently pulling over and ticketing drivers who didn’t stop for pedestrians in crosswalks — those pedestrians being undercover police officers, the Washington Post reports. Good for them! As a pedestrian in the Boston area, I frequently see cars whiz by as I’m already in a clearly marked crosswalk, and it’s dangerous.
No, [...]
Oregon town’s downtown ’serves people, not cars’
July 15, 2006“The thousands who stream into [Sherwoood, Ore.] this weekend for the annual Robin Hood Festival, billed as a ‘Renaissance faire,’ will be entering a downtown undergoing another kind of revival. A $6.5 million streetscape project, paid for with urban renewal money, is remaking Old Town into an example of what’s commonly referred to as ‘new [...]
A Look at Mashpee Commons
July 10, 2006“Block by block, year by year, [its developers] expanded and diversified Mashpee Commons, all the while sticking to the idea that people should be able to do things on foot – get to stores, restaurants, movie theaters, doctors, the post office, the public library – a broad range of everyday destinations,” writes New Urban News [...]
Cafe Conundrum: Wi-Fi
July 9, 2006What happens when cafes start offering free wireless Internet access? Does it increase business or attract freeloaders? The Globe has an interesting article on the conundrum, focusing mostly on the establishments’ bottom line. But the piece also mentions in passing what I see as another, early 21st-century dilemma: Do laptop-toting patrons make a cafe seem [...]
