"Benches are where optimistic visions of civic life meet reality. To remove them, or to curate who gets to sit, is to abandon the work of defining a civic ideal and determining, together, how to live up to it."
NEW: Why benches are slowly disappearing from public spaces — and why we need them back:
“CONSPIRACY: Think all those people getting rich off cars, oil, and long commutes aren’t the real conspiracy?“ “1 hour cities are the conspiracy. 15 minute cities are the truth. Via the Urban Truth Collective.
Do you really think those people and corporations getting rich off cars, oil, and long commutes aren’t the REAL conspiracy?
Have you heard of the “1-Hour City Conspiracy?”
You will.
Stay tuned.
#1HourCityConspiracy #UrbanTruth
"It’s not that the wealthy become evil; it’s that their environment stops teaching them the things that nonwealthy people are forced to learn simply by living in a world that pushes back."
A new investigation from ProPublica and @frontlinepbs.bsky.social examines federal agents’ response to protesters and bystanders at the Trump administration’s immigration sweeps.
“We see, just, use of excessive force after use of excess force,” one expert said.
Book about how engagement metrics and the Internet killed journalism titled “Tragedy of the Comments”
A white man with white hair, barely keeping from falling off an Earth that is *melting*. The man is holding on for dear life to a smokestack belching dirty smoke.
A🧵of cartoons: for #EarthDay #EarthDay2026. 🌏🌍🌎 When you get to the end, click on Read 1 more reply.
If you save a cartoon, keep caption w/ artist's name & handle.
Previous 🧵s under Feeds tab of my profile.
Daniel Garcia, Portugal 🇵🇹
cartoonmovement.com
Crumpled black sedan on a sidewalk with debris scattered about. Firefighters are standing nearby.
oh cool, a car crashed into a building in Davis Square this morning. clearly we need wider streets around here
"It’s not that the wealthy become evil; it’s that their environment stops teaching them the things that nonwealthy people are forced to learn simply by living in a world that pushes back." Article by Noah Hawley.
Book cover: The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War On Democracy by Gil Duran
Fascists hate to be called out as fascists. Too bad.
Coming soon:
The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War On Democracy.
Yes, they are fascists. Yes, they must be crushed.
Please pre-order here: www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Ne...
"There's always going to be debate in city planning. Always. But there's good faith debate, based on disagreements, and then there's deliberate lies and misinformation." Print article ICYMI of @brenttoderian.bsky.social’s ABC News interview on the truth and lies about “15-Minute Cities. #UrbanTruth
Just ten thousand more lanes bro I swear
"Even if every individual self-driven mile is safer, if you have that much more driving, you have more crashes overall." - @davidzipper.bsky.social
A hundred years ago, the U.S. had a nationwide network of short-line railroads that connected most urban and rural communities. By the 1940s, most of it had been dismantled ... by the barons of the auto and oil industries. 😑
"A one-foot [30cm] increase in lane width is associated with a 38.3% increase in the odds of an injury crash"
@brenttoderian.bsky.social @reenamahajan.bsky.social
www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17...
“Safe street projects used a variety of design measures. Most effective was a combination of a reduced road width and vertical treatments—like raised pavements…”
www.transport.wa.gov.au/getmedia/db3...
@reenamahajan.bsky.social @brenttoderian.bsky.social @healthtepi.bsky.social
"Research from 1940 forward has consistently shown crashes increasing as lanes exceed eleven feet [3.35 meters] in width."
@brenttoderian.bsky.social @reenamahajan.bsky.social
"Slow traffic speeds can be obtained by narrowing lanes, creating tighter curves, and reducing or eliminating clear zones. High speeds are a design issue, but low speeds are an enforcement issue. That’s incoherent."
"The relationship between speed and crash frequency depends on road width, junction density, and traffic flow. These are most likely mediating factors in that they both affect the crash frequency directly and by their effect on speed."
@brenttoderian.bsky.social @reenamahajan.bsky.social
"The common design seen on U.S. roadways is based on the concept of “forgiving design,” where engineers create wide roads with high visibility in all directions in the expectation that drivers make occasional mistakes. This extra space is ... signaling to drivers it’s safe to drive at high speeds"
"10% reduction in average traffic speeds reduces affected vehicle travel by 2-5% during the first few years, and up to 7-10% over the long run"
www.vtpi.org/ntsp.pdf
Picture of street filled with people when cars are prohibited, with a prominent sign saying “road closed.” Via Urban Truth Collecrive (Also, it’s a street, not a road)
How come they keep spelling “open” wrong?
Does that street look closed to you? Only if you’re a car… and presumably that’s the real problem. #UrbanTruth
One way Fog acquires its data is by collecting it from apps that resell a user’s location to third-party advertisers or data brokers. Specifically, it follows devices through something known as an advertising ID, a unique number assigned to devices in order to target ad content. These numbers do not contain the name of the phone’s user, but can be traced to homes and workplaces. Just a single query in Fog gives authorities access to a treasure trove of data. There are two types of searches in the database. The first lets an officer look up a specified device, while the second option returns all cellphone location signals in a given area, according to a 2022 investigation from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit focused on digital rights and privacy.
Authoritarianism by Adtech.
‘Simply stop giving millionaires water for literally free’ is one of the most insane sounding but actually serious policy solutions out there
"We have had this bizarre idea in this country that the sum of individual decisions actually adds up to the best possible collective decision."
- Rachel Weinberger
@davidzipper.bsky.social @peternorton.bsky.social @nyc.streetsblog.org @urbantruth.bsky.social
Knowing what makes a city better 🆚
getting people to believe it, support it, act on it
Urban Truth Collective;:
Planner Brent Toderian
+
marketing Tom Flood
+
researcher Grant Ennis
Take on enviro
Of unprecedented noise/disinfo
So truth starrs winning again
🙋🏿🙋🏼♀️🙋🏽♂️inspire city leaders
willing to act
One of the downsides of living in Wales is I can't get involved in this @livingstreets.bsky.social campaign to address pavement parking. But for those of you in England, perhaps take a look? act.livingstreets.org.uk/page/189938/...
@urbantruth.bsky.social @brenttoderian.bsky.social
"It is now over a decade since the label “pink slime journalism” was first applied to the proliferation of low-cost, low-quality local news content. Pink slime producers (such as Metric Media, which operates a network of more than 1,200 websites) have become synonymous with loose ethical standards"
