This ambivalence is evident in the secretary of state’s foreword to the plan. At one point he says, “We must make public transport, cycling and walking the natural first choice for all who can take it”. Yet, elsewhere, he says, “It’s not about stopping people doing things: it’s about doing the same things differently … We will still drive on improved roads, but increasingly in zero emission cars.”

Nicu Calcea @nicucalcea · Jul 12
The traffic that was once flowing through motorways and other major rows is now spilling into your backstreet.

One of the most common questions I get asked is “what are the best cities in the world?” I have a few different answers, but I usually look to shift the conversation to a question I think is more interesting: Which cities out there are doing remarkable things to get much better right now?
Since most of my work around the world advising cities on what I call “advanced urbanism” is in its simplest sense about helping cities get better, inspiring examples of recent successful urban change can be worth their weight in gold.

Brent Toderian is a global thought-leader on cities, an acclaimed city planner and urbanist with Toderian UrbanWorks advising cities and progressive developers all over the world, and the former chief city planner for Vancouver. Follow him on Twitter @BrentToderian.

People > cars
Adam Tranter @adamtranter · Jul 13
What might our cities look like if we prioritised people, not cars? Here’s a visualisation of what Marble Arch, London’s 5-lane mega-roundabout, could look like if we did just that. Visualisation: @jan_kamensky for #ShimanoFutureCities project

Josiah Mortimer
Sadiq Khan has earned a fierce rebuke from a senior Labour colleague over his plans to build a new road tunnel between the Greenwich Peninsula and west Silvertown in East London. Left-wing Newham mayor Rokhsana Fiaz has shared a statement from the project’s most ardent opponents claiming that Mr Khan is ‘lying’ over the impact of the tunnel, which critics say could lead to more traffic on London’s roads at a cost of £2.2bn to Transport for London (TfL).
The Silvertown Tunnel is being designed, built, and maintained under a TfL contract with the Riverlinx consortium, with tunnelling due to start in August. It is meant to slash congestion through the Blackwall Tunnel, with plans to impose a toll on both tunnels when it opens in 2025. The contract for construction was awarded in 2019 but recent months have seen some Labour figures step up their opposition to the scheme over fears it will only encourage more traffic and air pollution.

Milan’s Piazza Aperte (“open squares”) program is big into ping-pong.
Bloomberg Associates
Campaign to restrict car use and you’re dead in the water, politicians once feared. Not so much now, as demonstrated by mayoral elections in London, Paris, Bogotá, and many other world cities, including Milan.
Business executive Giuseppe Sala won 42% of the vote when, in 2016, he became Mayor of Milan, promising to transform Italy’s second most populous city for the better. He took space away from cars and handed it instead to people. During the pandemic, his administration added cycleways to main travel corridors and, through the Piazza Aperte (“open squares”) program, starting in 2018, it created 38 pop-up community plazas.
Sala was re-elected last year, increasing his share of the vote by nearly 20 points. Taming car use is popular, Sala and other mayors are proving.

There’s nothing complicated about the effects of turning crops into biofuel. If food is used to power cars or generate electricity or heat homes, either it must be snatched from human mouths, or ecosystems must be snatched from the planet’s surface, as arable lands expand to accommodate the extra demand. But governments and the industries that they favour obscure this obvious truth. They distract and confuse us about an evidently false solution to climate breakdown.