Except for New Albany, "Making cities more walkable (means) understanding how other people influence our journeys."

Just try to imagine Team Gahan reading, digesting and acting on these thoughts.

Can't do it, can you?

Maybe after another HWC Engineering study rendered the findings completely unrecognizable ...

Making cities more walkable by understanding how other people influence our journeys, by Ruth Dalton (The Conversation)

Cities around the world are changing to become more “walkable”. As more and more people move to cities, the benefits of encouraging people to walk are clear. Aside from making the urban environment more pleasant, safer and less polluted, improving a city’s walkability can also ease traffic congestion and improve public health.

This is a particular challenge in cities built for cars, so there’s been lots of research to find out what sort of features make a city more attractive to pedestrians, and encourage them to walk further and more often: whether it’s the size of urban blocks, the quality of the pavement, the presence of trees or street furniture or initiatives such as car-free zones.

But while planners and researchers strive to work out what makes urban spaces enticing to pedestrians, they often overlook the fact that people’s decisions about where to walk, and when, are not only determined by the physical qualities of the environment. In fact, new research suggests that these choices are strongly influenced by other people ...

"Why Are States So Red and Blue?"

I'm not sure what this theory says about Indiana, 2008 notwithstanding, although it's easy to explain New Albany as an extension of the antebellum South. Perhaps we have insufficient Great Lakes coastline.

Why Are States So Red and Blue?, by Steven Pinker (New York Times)

Regardless of who wins the presidential election, we already know now how most of the electoral map will be colored, which will be close to the way it has been colored for decades. Broadly speaking, the Southern and Western desert and mountain states will vote for the candidate who endorses an aggressive military, a role for religion in public life, laissez-faire economic policies, private ownership of guns and relaxed conditions for using them, less regulation and taxation, and a valorization of the traditional family.

Northeastern and most coastal states will vote for the candidate who is more closely aligned with international cooperation and engagement, secularism and science, gun control, individual freedom in culture and sexuality, and a greater role for the government in protecting the environment and ensuring economic equality.