✊🏙 Cities MUST be for everyone; Uber doesn’t care about transit; Paris’ public housing success story; congestion pricing; greedy oligarchs; Airbnb; & more!

The death of 22-year-old mother Malaysia Goodson is tragic and still makes me want to cry every time I think about it. Malaysia fell down the stairs of a New York City subway station on Monday evening while carrying her one-year-old child in a stroller because the station had no elevator and only had escalators going up.

The lack of accessibility in our cities, and on public transit in particular, is certainly not a new problem, but how it’s not a top concern in 2019 is absolutely beyond my comprehension. Transit, and cities in general, need to be accessible to everyone — mothers, children, people with disabilities, and various other minority groups. Design can’t simply accommodate the most abled and privileged among us, and where older structures don’t meet current standards, they need to be updated. It’s simple and really shouldn’t be a question of funding, especially when so much of the conversation around transit and mobility is about making people freer and expanding their access to the city; that needs to be for everyone.

Read this piece by Michael Gold and Emma G. Fitzsimmons in the New York Times to find out more about Malaysia, who is described as an outgoing person whose “daughter was the light of her life.” If you want to read more about the problem of accessibility on New York City’s subways, Claire Tran looks at the huge number of subway stations without elevators and what the MTA plans to do about it for CityLab, and Alia Wong gets even more in depth on how cities aren’t designed for parents in The Atlantic.

This should be a call to look at the larger inequities in our cities and how to make them work for everyone. Florida is the most dangerous state for pedestrians, but black pedestrians are 72% more likely to die as victims of drivers than white pedestrians. We also talk a lot now about how scooters and dockless bikes can improve mobility options and make streets safer, but I also wrote this week about why we need to address the parking issue for accessibility reasons — and how we might go about doing it.

But what can we do about the larger, structural problem? Allison Arieff suggests we need to get more women and minorities into architecture (and planning), and that a good first step to breaking down that barrier would be to pay them the same as men. Based on her article though, it seems the are many other issues that need to be addressed.

Finally, I want to leave you with this passage from Mimi Sheller’s fantastic 2018 book ‘Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes’. It calls for a rethinking of how we approach not just transportation, but mobility more generally — and it seems to be on sale if you want to pick it up. We must do better and demand better.

Uber made a big deal about adding transit to its app in Denver this week, and I just quickly want to provide you with the rebuttal to the hype that you certainly haven’t seen in most of the media reports that look like little more than a repackaged press release. This move is about PR, data, and monopoly; not about transit. Here’s why:

So, don’t be fooled by Uber’s PR campaign. They don’t really care about promoting transit; they just want to try to fool the public into thinking they do, while sucking up more data in the process. We already have ample experience that private tech monopolies are not in the public good, so why are we helping create another one?

Last week, I placed a strong focus on public housing; in particular, the need to build much more of it to address the housing affordability crises. On Friday, Paris’ government hit 100,000 social housing units built over the past 18 years — about 5,500 units/yr — with more than 20% of residents living in social housing. I couldn’t find a good piece in English summarizing it, so I want to outline a few of the stats from the city’s announcement.

As housing crises cause problems in cities around the world, Paris provides a great example of a concrete way for cities to relieve the rent burden on its residents: significantly increase the construction of public housing. Now.

🏥 Traffic is a time waster and bad for the environment, but it’s also a public health problem that gets underplayed (along with all the other ills of driving)

🛣 Is congestion pricing inherently inequitable? New report argues it could actually be a solution to promote greater transportation equity.

🏘 Yonah Freemark’s new research provides more evidence that upzoning might not increase housing supply while leading to higher prices

🚌 “Free public transportation is the single biggest step we could take toward economic mobility, racial equity, and climate justice.” — Boston city councilor Michelle Wu

💰 One reason for higher housing prices we’re ignoring: oligarchs are buying real estate to clean their dirty money, and bidding up in the process

🇳🇴 Oslo removed 700 on-street parking spaces, invested in transit, added bike lanes, and subsidized e-bike purchases. Public bikeshare use tripled and some transit users switched to bikes, making transit more inviting to drivers.

🛴 After Brisbane’s trial, Benjamin Kaufman & Matthew Burke say scooter services will likely be a monopoly. Shouldn’t the transit agency run it?

🇦🇺 With a state election approaching, the right-wing Coalition hopes a new Sydney metro line (and plans for more) will help them win a third term, but will it be enough when solutions to crowded trains are years away?

🚨 Six years after Hurricane Sandy, NYC public housing still hasn’t been fully repaired and the agency lacks a plan to prepare for the next big storm

🇦🇹 From 1989-2015, walking and cycling grew in many European cities, but transit use only grew significantly in Vienna — and it has lessons to share

🚌 What does into designing textiles for public transit? The London Transport Museum’s new project provides some intriguing insights.

🇬🇧 As British politicians debated Brexit, the UK government released a statement outlining its latest cut to local councils

💸 Wisconsin promised Foxconn $4.5 billion in public subsidies. This week, it said it wouldn’t build the factory, then the chairman talked to Trump; now it will still build a factory, but a smaller one than previously planned.

🏙 Too many cities are expanding out instead of up, which will have negative environmental, social, and economic consequences

🇮🇶 As the concrete barriers finally come down, Baghdad faces many challenges to become a thriving city once again

🐕 In a move to make public spaces more open, Paris will let residents take dogs in many more public parks around the city

👎 New report on Airbnb shows the ones who benefit most “are already the wealthiest, and the whitest,” while rents increase and cities lose tax revenue

☀️ Solar rooftops are becoming more popular, but Black and Hispanic communities are far less likely to be able to install them

🔥 “When, after picking lifestyle over location, you gripe that the location you picked for yourself, with your own free will, is hard on your commute and that’s why we should all help ease your pain, the heart really fails to bleed.” — Brigitte Pellerin

By Paris: “How to Fix the Scooter Parking Problem” (Medium)

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