Angie Schmitt

Is your city skittish about reducing parking minimums? Here's one way to ease people into the idea that new buildings shouldn't be forced to include lots of parking along with housing, and it comes from Portland -- Maine.

Even if you never set foot on a bus or a train, chances are transit is saving you time and money. The most obvious reason is that transit keeps cars off the road, but the full explanation is both less intuitive and more profound: Transit shrinks distances between destinations, putting everything within closer reach.

The air was noticeably clearer yesterday over the city of Paris, where people walking, biking, skating, and otherwise getting around without a motor took over streets generally packed with cars, including the Champs Elysées. About a third of Paris was free of motorized vehicles from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., except for buses and taxis. Car speeds were capped at 20 kilometers per hour in the rest of the city. Mayor Anne Hidalgo, at the urging of activists, initiated the massive car-free event as a lead-in to the city hosting COP21, the United Nations' upcoming conference on climate change. Paris is plagued by diesel exhaust, and the skies over the city were noticeably bluer yesterday, according to the Guardian. The exhaust cleared. The rumble of traffic was gone. People seemed happier and less stressed. One of the tens of thousands who took to the streets told the Guardian it was "like a headache lifting." Camille Carnoz of the bike activist group Vélorution said she hopes the car-free day leads to permanent changes:

You can tell a lot about a place by its outdoor seating. So says Darin Givens at ATL Urbanist, who compares a sidewalk in Atlanta where cafe seating looks inviting to a place where it essentially fails.

Boulder, Colorado, is considered one of the best cities for biking in the U.S. But the car is still king on Boulder's streets, and designs like road diets and protected on-street bike lanes are still new concepts for people to digest.

Think you've read about every possible NIMBY objection to bike lanes? Think again. These recent comments from a public meeting in San Diego’s affluent Coronado beach community are definitely, um, different.

Like any city, Atlanta needs real bike infrastructure to make cycling an appealing option for most people. But like many other cities, a lot of times Atlanta only seems to be able to muster the will to designate leftover, marginal spaces to cyclists, putting them in potentially dangerous, or at the very least, highly uncomfortable positions.

Today is a very fun day in cities around the U.S., when advocates for better public spaces unleash their imaginations on the dreary places where we normally store cars. Park(ing) Day is "an annual worldwide event where artists, designers and citizens transform metered parking spots into temporary public parks," according to its organizers.

Cleveland is finally installing buffered bike lanes along some major streets, but with the buffer between the bike lane and the curb, not between the bike lane and traffic.

New Census data out this week shows that the bike commute rate in Portland, is higher than ever, exceeding the 7 percent threshold for the first time. Meanwhile, in the tier below Portland, about half a dozen large and mid-sized cities are neck and neck, Tom Fucoloro at Seattle Bike Blog reports: