Something for CM Aebersold to learn about revitalization -- from a conservative, not us.

Purely accidental first-year councilman David Aebersold famously expounded at depressing length about the weight of his ignorance of the modern world in a September 28 letter to the Courier-Journal.

Today, urban planning is dominated by an anti-auto mentality that overrides common sense. In efforts to discourage driving, planners are willing to accept more congestion – which is what will happen on Spring Street – more air pollution and greater numbers of accidents, a result of changing one-way streets to two-way streets. Traffic speeds are independent of whether the streets are one-way or two-way and can probably be controlled on one-way street through the use of coordinated signals that can be set for almost any desired speed.

What the hell -- not everyone can read and research and learn, and the older you get, the less you care to try, although come to think of it, David's not the only confused Aebersold in town. Jamey doesn't grasp it, either, but what can we expect from jazz musicians (wink wink, nudge nudge)?

I'm not sure what can be done about the syncopation of auto-centrism, but in my usual helpful spirit, here's something that might assist the accidental councilman in comprehending little shards of the reality outside his gated preserve -- and not only that, it's completely safe for him to peruse because the publication is called THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE.

I've highlighted just one pertinent suggestion. You're welcome.

How to Brew a Midwest Downtown Renaissance, by John Burtka III (The American Conservative)

1. Infrastructure. Local government music t invest in downtown roads, streetscapes, placemaking, parks, and trails. If you have the vestiges of 1970s urban planning, such as roads turned into walking plazas or one-way bypasses speeding potential customers around and away from downtown businesses, you must remove these impediments to growth now. Many of these projects can take advantage of federal and state incentives that already exist.

See, that wasn't so bad ... was it?

"Everything they told you about how to live in the world when you were a kid is a lie."

I sit at my desk and rent rooms in France. I walk out the front door and my neighbor subjects me to a racist diatribe. We've come a short way over some mighty long paths.

I don't know, either, but this is an essay worth reading, excerpted below. Thanks to JB for sharing.

Everyone I Know Is Brokenhearted by Josh Ellis (Zen Archery) 

But the reality is that the three generations who ended the 20th century, the Boomers, their Generation X children, and Generation Y, have architected a Western civilization that’s kind of a shit show. Being born in 1978, I fall at either the tail end of Gen X or the beginning of Gen Y, depending on how you look at it. I became an adolescent at the time Nirvana was ushering in a decade of “slacker” ideology, as the pundits liked to put it. But the reality is that I didn’t know a whole lot of actual slackers in the 1990s. I did know a lot of people who found themselves disillusioned with the materialism of the 1980s and what we saw as the failed rhetoric of the Sixties generation, who were all about peace and love right until the time they put on suits and ties and figured out how to divide up the world. I knew a lot of people who weren’t very interested in that path.

The joke, of course, is that every generation kills the thing they love. The hippies became yuppies; Gen X talked a lot about the revolution, and then went and got themselves some venture capital and started laying into place the oversaturated, paranoid world we live in now. A lot of them tried to tell themselves they were still punk as fuck, but it’s hard to morally reconcile the thing where you listen to Fugazi on the way to your job where you help find new ways to trick people into giving up their data to advertisers. Most people don’t even bother. They just compartmentalize.

Someone tell John Rosenbarger that "Modern bike lanes call for modern reference guides."

At the FAN Fair earlier this year, New Albany public works projects supervisor John Rosenbarger crowed unctuously about his shining record of installing bike lanes.

Typically, he did not add that most of them begin and end nowhere, rendering them largely meaningless; he also failed to mention that the most logical place for meaningful bike lanes would be as part of his pet Main Street Deforestation Project -- where none are included. It is to be surmised that Rosenbarger assumed the folks in attendance wouldn't know the difference. Unfortunately, I was there, and in fact, "fail" is the single best word to use in this instance.

The following infographic provides photos. These clearly illustrate that we've done next to nothing when it comes to bike lanes, apart from drawing lines, and failing even then (see: striped buffer). Photo credit is the story link.

14 WAYS TO MAKE BIKE LANES BETTER (THE INFOGRAPHIC), by Michael Andersen (People for Bikes)

Modern bike lanes call for modern reference guides.

With so many different methods being used to physically separate bike and auto traffic, the tradeoffs can seem countless. That's where this infographic comes in. One part inspiration and two parts catalog, it's intended for anyone who wants to quickly get up to speed on the most popular tricks being used by cities around the world to improve bike lanes.

Walkable New Albany now is on Facebook.

I originally predicted it for January, and was only a bit off.

But Walkable New Albany now is on Facebook, thanks primarily to the efforts of the Bookseller, for whom the kudos are reserved.

A walkable city builds community, increases opportunity, and enhances prosperity. Through public policy and private activity, New Albany, Ind. can thrive.

Walkable New Albany is dedicated to the proposition that what the city does to enhance walkability has a positive, multiplier effect on many other aspects of urban quality of life: Personal health, quality of life in our neighborhoods, safer and calmer streets, and independent small business.

Walkable New Albany represents the outgrowth of numerous suggestions offered during last fall's initial two-way street advocacy campaign. If greater citywide walkability is the goal, and we believe it is, then street direction is just one facet. Walkability as a whole embraces numerous themes in a larger context.

Walkable New Albany's timing is impeccable. Jeff Speck will be studying us, and the greater our understanding of walkability, the better chances of his prescriptions being implemented.

Thanks to Randy for getting the feet moving at Walkable New Albany. 240 likes in two days is quite good, and it's a wonderful cross-section of the community. Thank you.