We hope Fall is off to a good start for you and your family, and you’re ready for cooler weather and all the fun activities the season brings for us.
Upcoming Meeting on Thursday
A reminder that we meet every third Thursday of the month at Stone Creek Coffee in Whitefish Bay, at 7pm. It’s a very informal meeting and we love to have new folks join us with ideas or questions about their place in the North Shore. We usually go to The Argo afterwards and continue the conversation in a much less structured way!
This week we have a pretty light agenda but will have a few updates to share:
Mapping Racism event coming up on the 24th
Progress on the Hampton and Oak Leaf Trail crossing improvements
Discussing impacts of construction to locals and local businesses on Silver Spring, and on Oakland Ave.
MCTS Redesign Proposals
Grand opening of the Silver Spring bike lanes
Walk audit of Silver Spring construction, focusing on accessibility and landscaping
Grants for Oak Leaf Trail and other street improvements
…and always much more!
Mapping Racism & Resistance in Milwaukee County
Come join us for an evening (two options!) to learn about the impacts of redlining in Milwaukee County. Anne Bonds and Derek Handley will discuss the results of their efforts to map every racial covenant that banned the sale of homes to various groups of people until it was made illegal. An RSVP is not required but will help us know how many people to expect.
Oak Leaf Trail and Hampton Ave Crossing
We published our first blog post, which illuminates the issues and possible solutions for the Hampton & Oak Leaf Trail crossing. Take a look, share it with others!
For Your Consideration
Here is a nice school street idea from Seattle DOT. Would you like this near your schools?
A school street utilizes very simple but effective ways to slow drivers, and loudly proclaim that this is a place for children and their families.
Here’s some bike parking that showcases what’s possible when it’s given the same care and consideration that drivers get in a large, well-lit lot that has ample space to safely store your car. This would be useful near our shops, and on a much larger scale, our schools.
Seventeen bikes can be stored in the space of a single car. Bikes are good for business!
From our neighbor to the South, you can see how Milwaukee has started installing bioswales to collect street runoff while also making the streets safer for bicyclists. Over time this should become prolific pollinator habitats, and help keep our cities a bit cooler with the help of the evaporative cooling plants provide.
Milwaukee bike lanes look good while increasing safety.
From our neighbor further to the South, an intersection that features many concepts that keep pedestrians safer by signaling to drivers that this is a shared space, and caution is warranted. It makes use of physical things like brick, posts, and contrasting colors to alert drivers in a way that a few signs hidden behind bushes and parked cars can.
Sheffield and Belden in Chicago. https://bsky.app/profile/jgrantglover.bsky.social/post/3mtmcpdf52c2b
Reading List
Some reading you might find interesting to learn more about what we do and focus on.
🚦Cities can use timing of their traffic lights to slow drivers, and reward those who are patient.
🚧 Schools often need support of their surrounding municipalities to sustainably make streets safer for kids. It is difficult to actually make meaningful progress here without a fully involved municipality!
🌷What Are We Asking the Flowers To Do? - Chuck Marohn - An exploration of using landscaping to cover up the sins of our car-centric towns, or using it to amplify a sense of place.
🌆 The Death and Life of Great American Cities - Jane Jacobs
👷♂️ Confessions of a Recovering Engineer - Chuck Marohn, Strong Towns founder
🛣️ Listen to Harry Grabar, author of Paved Paradise, give a high-level overview from their book. It dives into how our cities are drastically shaped (warped?) by parking, often in ways you’d never expect.
💸 Read about the long history of freeways in our area, and more importantly, the craven political acts required to displace so many people while at the same time spending astronomical amounts of money on one of the least efficient forms of transportation we have.