Posts Tagged ‘Phoenix City Hall’

July 18, 2011

Phoenix’s Need for New Public Squares

by: Will Novak

Tweet Today’s post is by contributing writer Will Novak: Phoenix’s park system is something of an enigma: part of it is breathtakingly wonderful, the other part embarrassing. The City’s desert and mountain preserve system is world class and a jewel all Phoenicians should be proud of.  However, Phoenix’s “traditional” parks and squares are poorly designed and often don’t even exist where you’d expect to find them. Phoenix has four areas that are either urban or semi-urban (Downtown, Midtown, Uptown & Biltmore), and not a single one of them has a well-designed urban park at their heart. In order for each…

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Tweet Believe it or not Phoenix was one of the last major cities in the country to complete its freeway system.  By the 1960s Phoenix still didn’t have many freeways other than the 1-17.  Starting to learn lessons from other parts of the country, especially LA, many in Phoenix weren’t sure that adding freeways would be a good answer to our people-moving dilemma.  “…by the later 1960s, people in many cities were beginning to see that near total reliance on the automobile for transportation imposed significant unanticipated costs.  Many people now regretted the decisions to bulldoze older neighborhoods that resulted…

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January 25, 2011

How Far has Phoenix Transportation Come since 1974?

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Well, not very far.  We may, in fact, have taken a few steps backwards.  While I was doing some research for another article I’m writing, I ran into a very telling story written by Pam Hait called “Transportation” in the August 1974 Phoenix Magazine.  Below are two excerpts from it that I found fascinating: “Bicycle paths also made giant strides as Scottsdale, Tempe and Phoenix all initiated bike-only paths and lanes.  Cities now request that developers build adequate room for bicycle paths into their subdivision plans.  Bikers converged on Phoenix City Hall this year, and made the most of…

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August 24, 2010

Plans for the First Bicycle Boulevard in Phoenix

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Today is a continuation of yesterday’s post featuring an interview with Kerry Wilcoxon, the Traffic Engineer in charge of Safety in Neighborhood Traffic and Joe Perez, the Bicycle Coordinator at the City of Phoenix.  Yesterday’s post was about why Phoenix is so auto-centric and how the Light Rail has effected the urban landscape for bicyclists and pedestrians.  Today’s post is on a plan that Kerry and Joe presented to me that will enable bicycling to be a way to actually travel from destination to destination, instead of being primarily a recreational mode of transportation. Below is the rest of…

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