Jaime Lerner at the World Bank

Former Mayor of Curitiba and Governor of Paraná Jaime Lerner gave the keynote address at Transforming Transportation 2012. He highlighted the use of “urban acupuncture” and “focal interventions,” used in conjunction with the planning process, to catalyze urban improvements. He also cautioned against unsuccessful and disorganized implementations of bus rapid transit, especially those that do not integrate well with the “concept of a city.” Highlights of his dynamic and comedic speech, and the complete set of slides he used, are both embedded below.

I made one of my visits to the Waterfront on a Friday when the world’s largest ocean liner, the Queen Mary 2, was docking in Cape Town. It docked at the adjacent modern port, since it is far too large to access the Victoria and Alfred Basins. As is usually the case, the ship’s hordes of tourists had to make their way from the ship to the shopping on a fleet of tour buses.

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Planning a new street network for Marshall's Creek, PA

Two consulting firms, one focused on urban design and one focused on transportation engineering, made guest appearances in my Cities and Transportation Systems class at UPenn last week.  They each gave informative presentations on what careers in those two fields are like.  After the presentations, they gave us a scenario that the two firms had worked on together: developing new downtown for the bedroom community of Marshall’s Creek, PA.  It was fun to work with a team of City and Regional Planning students to formulate our own plan for the area; it feels like my goal of playing SimCity for a job is one step closer.