Measured Progress: Bike Lanes on Broad Ripple Ave
Posted by Curt Ailes in Bicycling on Nov 15th, 2011 | 68 comments
Last week, guide lines went down on Broad Ripple Ave between the village and Keystone Avenue. I knew that the thermostriped permanent ones would not be far behind.
Well, the new lines are down and my initial expectations for what the corridor would look like have been exceeded. The new design has caused a small stir in the twittersphere as I noticed some people wondering what the city was thinking of when they designed this. I even received a call from Fox 59 seeking comment on camera. I accepted, but the story was changed and I never got the opportunity to talk about it. Regardless, this tells me...
What kind of city do you want to live in?
Posted by Curt Ailes in Neighborhoods on Nov 14th, 2011 | 39 comments
Residents of Indianapolis, I have a simple question to ask that is rooted in some deep philosophical debates.
What kind of city do you want to live in? Is it the type of city where you get in your car to go get everything? Is it the type of city where you can walk out your front door, and walk across the entire city on foot without ever walking along a street and fearing a car mowing you down because there isn’t a sidewalk? Do you want light rail or would you prefer the bus system to go away completely? Do you value diversity of quality food choice inside the 465 loop vs outside?
These are the...
Think Farm at Service Center Tonight
Posted by Kevin Kastner in Neighborhoods on Nov 11th, 2011 | 0 comments
Tonight at 8 pm is the latest public event from the folks at Big Car gallery.  Urban Indy is a sponsor of the event which features six presentations based around big ideas centered around this year’s theme of the Spirit and Place Festival, which is the body. The event takes place at the Service Center in Lafayette Square. Hope to see some readers...
Franklin Township School Bus Fiasco: The Untold Story
Posted by Kevin Kastner in Neighborhoods on Nov 10th, 2011 | 17 comments
The story of Franklin Township’s new fee for School Buses has struck such a chord with people that it has now reached NPR. The program hits some familiar themes: Budgets are tight, property taxes are capped, and the district is forced to do more with less. However, being an urban design blog, I wish to highlight the fact that the township is built to be poorly equipped to cope with this problem:
The dominant theme of the township is single family homes built on winding streets. The primary mode of travel is the automobile, and walking or biking to school is not an option for most...
Urban Aerial History: The Clean Sweep
Posted by Chris Corr in Neighborhoods on Nov 9th, 2011 | 17 comments
From time to time I like to troll through the city’s aerial photography records and see how the configuration of our city has changed over time. In particular, it’s fascinating and depressing to see the changes that interstate highway construction brought upon our urban neighborhoods. In some cases, the construction bisected once contiguous neighborhoods; in others, construction completely wiped them out. There’s a particular area I’d like to focus on here — a rough rectangle bounded by the Fall Creek on the north, Boulevard Pl. on the east, 21st St. on the south and Dr....
