The Art Works design grant program supports projects that further the fields of design: including urban planning and design, housing design, universal design, architecture, landscape architecture, graphic/communication design, product/industrial design, fashion, and interior design. For more information, see http://arts.gov/grants/apply/GAP12/DesignAW.html and http://arts.gov/grants/apply/GAP12/DesignAW2.html.
The NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide is based on the experience of the best cycling cities in the world. The designs in this document were developed by cities for cities, since unique urban streets require innovative solutions. Most of these treatments are not directly referenced in the current versions of the AASHTO Guide to Bikeway Facilities or the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), although many of the elements are found within these documents. The Federal Highway Administration has recently posted information regarding approval status of various bicycle related treatments not covered in the MUTCD, including many of the treatments provided in the NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide. All of the NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide treatments are in use internationally and in many cities around the US.
Find the guide at http://nacto.org/cities-for-cycling/design-guide/
How will high-speed rail change American life in the coming decades?
At this critical moment for American infrastructure, Van Alen Institute calls on the international design community to envision the cultural, environmental and economic impact of a new rail network.
For more information: http://www.vanalen.org/lasr/callfordesignideas
Author: Stephanie Simon
Landscape architect Robert Rock takes pride in talking to his clients to understand just how they’ll be using the green spaces he designs. In his most recent assignment, however, he hit a roadblock.
“You can’t ask elk what they’d like for dinner,” Mr. Rock said ruefully.
A design from the Olin Studio in Philadelphia would cost about $12 million and span a six-lane highway.
Nor can you ask them what would induce them to nibble that dinner while strolling across a lushly planted footbridge spanning a six-lane highway.
Getting elk to cross highways safely—and encouraging lynx, bear, deer and bighorn sheep to follow suit—was the key challenge in an unusual global contest that concluded this month.
The ARC International Wildlife Crossing Infrastructure Design Competition asked engineers, ecologists and landscape architects to come up with an overpass bridge for pedestrians of the furry sort. The goal: to encourage wildlife to roam freely across their habitat—even when that habitat is bisected by a highway.
The five finalists, unveiled last week in Denver, designed multimillion-dollar bridges that aimed to tempt animals across with tasty foliage, green valleys, gentle streams and curved walls to block out noise and vibrations from the traffic below.
Read the full article at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704720804576009684114449902.html
For the first time in history more than half the world’s population is living in towns and cities. We passed this milestone in 2008 and by 2040 two in three people are expected to live in urban environments.
Urbanisation presents us with a wealth of new opportunities and huge challenges. It has the potential to further economic development and innovation, but also threatens to exacerbate key global problems, including resource depletion, climate change, and inequality.
Megacities on the move sets out to find solutions to one of the biggest challenges – how billions of city-dwellers can access what they need without putting intolerable strains on the planet. It focuses on how to achieve sustainable urban mobility, looking at all the ways in which people will access goods, services and information and make contact with each other. It goes beyond transport to consider ICT solutions, innovative urban design and much more.
Forum for the Future, working in partnership with Vodafone, the FIA Foundation and EMBARQ, has produced a practical toolkit to help public bodies, companies and civil society organisations understand and plan for the mobility challenges of the future. It is designed to encourage action now and stimulate innovative products and services.
Read the full article at http://www.forumforthefuture.org/projects/megacities-on-the-move
The objective of this research is to develop a guidebook describing methods, data sources, and procedures for producing travel forecasts for highway project-level analysis. The guidebook should evaluate and expand currently used methods and tools to include appropriate data or information sources and system-level methods (ranging from readily available practices to advanced practices) to address a variety of project development purposes, needs, and impacts. The guidebook is intended to be used by transportation planning, operations, and project development staff to better support planning, design, and operations recommendations.
More information available at http://apps.trb.org/cmsfeed/TRBNetProjectDisplay.asp?ProjectID=2958