Dom’s Top Five All-Time Favorite Festive Walks

By Dom Nozzi

Walking, in my opinion, is one of the great pleasures of life. That makes sense, as humans are hard-wired to be a walking species. Indeed, we all know that a person notices more architecture and landscaping and street design – and certainly is better able to engage in neighborly conversation with fellow citizens – when walking on a city street compared to driving a car down that street. Walking, in other words, is more HUMAN than driving.

But I have noticed during these days of pandemic in April 2020, where my partner and I do a lot more walking (in part to escape cabin fever!), that even though I tend to get around my neighborhood streets by bicycle, even bicycle travel is not as able to allow me to “smell the roses,” as they say, as when I walk. On many of my “pandemic neighborhood walks,” I find myself regularly thinking that “I’ve never noticed that before in all of my bicycle rides down this street!”

Walking truly is a way to be most human. Most part of your world. Not to mention a great way to be healthy and happy!

I have started calling my neighborhood walks “Smell the Roses Travel.”

Now that I am enjoying walking more than I have ever done so in the past – and doing a lot more of it each week these days! – I’ve given some thought to what my all-time favorite walks happen to be.

Here are my criteria for a great festive walk.

First, the walk should be vibrant, bustling, festive, and therefore entertaining. On a regular basis.

“Festive” is defined as a street that is full of people happily walking or otherwise socializing. The street is often festooned with colors and lights, and occasionally benefits from live street music and other street performers.

Second, the dimensioning of the street – how wide the street is, and how close buildings are to the street – is human-scaled rather than sprawling car-scaled.

Third, the street is flanked by plenty of retail, culture, services, or civic activity – so that the street is regularly energized and enlivened.

Fourth, the street is convivial and slow-speed. When I walk the street, I am likely to engage in conversation with people along the way, and the street design is such that motorists – if not on a car-free “walking street” — are obligated to drive relatively slowly, quietly, and attentively.

Using the above criteria, the following are my five all-time favorite festive walks.

 

1. Via Pescherie Vecchie in the Quadrilatero neighborhood of town center Bologna, Italy during Christmas season.

 

2. Corso Umberto, Taormina, Italy.

3. The Ortigia/Siracusa outdoor food market on Via Emmanuele de Benedictis in Sicily. A happy, boisterous walk full of delicious, fresh Italian fish and produce.
4. La Passeggiata on Via Maqueda in Palermo, and Mercato di Ballaro outdoor food market in Palermo, Italy.
5. La Ramblas, Barcelona.

 

In sum, as the Italians would say, “Andiamo per fare una passeggatia!” Which in English proclaims “Let’s go for a walk!”

Honorable Mentions

Monopoli Centro Storico (Old Town)

Bari Centro Storico (Old Town)

Via Tribunali in Centro Storico (Old Town) of Naples/Napoli, Italy

Via di Città and the Piazza del Campo outdoor food market in Centro Storico (Old Town) of Siena, Italy

Corso Italia in Centro Storico (Old Town) of Sorrento, Italy

Centro Storico (Old Town) of Venice, Italy

Marktplatz, Centro Storico (Old Town) Aachen, Germany

Bonn Old Town

Copenhagen Old Town

Dusseldorf Old Town

Madrid Old Town

Sevilla Old Town

Toledo Old Town

Valencia Old Town

What Does Our Stimulus Agenda Need to Be To Build a Better Future?

By Dom Nozzi

There is much talk these days about taking advantage of the 2020 pandemic to achieve important societal objectives that have not been achieved despite their importance and despite there being known as problems for decades. The old Chinese adage that pertains to this is that from crisis comes opportunity.

What are some of the most important transportation and land use objectives that we should consider moving forward with, now that there is heightened political will to make important changes?

I would suggest the following.

1. Reform Parking. American cities have far too much free parking. We need to remove a massive amount of free parking (perhaps in part by converting it to housing), a  much higher proportion must be priced, and required minimum parking must be either converted to maximum parking or eliminated entirely.
2. Reform Taxation. Nearly all American cities strongly discourage compact, mixed use, infill development with their tax structure. Instead of strongly discouraging infill (and encouraging surface parking for land speculation) by taxing improvements to land (renovations, infill, etc.), we should be taxing the land. This has been done in Pittsburgh. It is known as a “land value tax” (or “single tax”).
3. Slow Streets. American cities have far too many streets that were built with an excessive design speed (often because the design vehicle was the oversized worst-case-scenario vehicle). While we certainly need to ensure that NEW streets use lower design speeds, new streets are very rare in most cities. The major task for us is to retrofit EXISTING streets for lower speed design. This is crucial for progress in traffic safety, promoting quality compact development, and promoting active transportation. I love the world-wide movement for “slow cities,” by the way, as cities thrive when speeds are slower.
4. Return to the Human Scale. American cities have spent much of the 20^th Century creating over-sized spacing (roads, building setbacks, parking lots). This loss of human scale destroys the ability to create a sense of place. This is an important reason why so many of us love historic old towns around the world.
5. Restore Passenger Rail. If we are to soon see a massive transportation infrastructure stimulus in response to the pandemic, that stimulus needs to include a big expansion in American passenger rail. For the coming decades, the emphasis should be getting the most bang (mileage) for the buck by emphasizing slow-speed rail. High-speed rail is sexy and exciting, but it buys us very little rail mileage because the cost is enormous. Some of that slow-speed rail can later become, incrementally, high-speed.
6. Emphasize Transportation User Fees. We all know that gas tax revenue is not keeping up with needs. Note that I agree with Chuck Marohn that it is fortunate that we have inadequate transportation funding these days because our society continues to emphasize counterproductive car-based infrastructure when we find dollars. But there will come a time when we finally “get it” with regard to how to spend transport dollars. Important, equitable ways to find new funding, besides ramping up parking revenue, is a lot more road tolling or VMT fees (or similar user-based fees). Sales, income, and property taxes are a terribly unfair (and socially undesirable) way to raise transportation dollars.

Let us not squander the opportunity that this pandemic crisis offers to us to dramatically improve our communities.

The time for bold action is now.

Is Congestion a “Disease”?

By Dom Nozzi

A friend sent me an article which made the point that lessons we learn about how infectious diseases spread in a pandemic such as the coronavirus can be applied to cities striving to reduce traffic congestion. I responded as follows.

Like most people, the creators of this analogy between infectious diseases and traffic congestion don’t understand cities or congestion. Congestion in cities is NOT a “disease” that must be “cured.” Congestion is an important SOLUTION for city health. Boulder has spent several decades, like most every other city, in failing to understand this. Reducing congestion is toxic for a city because nearly everything the city or state or federal govt does to reduce congestion (temporarily) is bad for city health. To be healthy, a city must provide ALTERNATIVES to the inevitable congestion for people who don’t want to put up with it.

What are the alternatives?

More street and population and intersection density allows more walking and bicycling and transit travel. Mixing residential with retail, office, culture, and jobs is part of that promotion of alternatives.

In a healthy city, congestion is inevitable. It is a sign of health. Only dying or dead cities do not have congestion.

We have spent over 100 years trying to reduce congestion. Until we realize congestion is our friend and work instead to provide alternatives to congestion, we will continue to fail and continue creating a grim future.

It IS possible to durably reduce congestion in a way that is not unhealthy for a city: toll roads. But doing that is nearly always politically impossible, as NYC has shown.

 

Do Electric Vehicles Solve Most or All Motor Vehicle Problems?

 

By Dom Nozzi

A great many people seem to believe that the widespread use of electric vehicles (EVs) will solve most or all societal problems created by motor vehicles (MVs).

This is not even close to being true.

Air emissions from cars is one of a great many enormous problems motorized vehicles create for society. The excessive reliance on motor vehicles (MVs) — including EV — inevitably consume an enormous amount of space that destroys a sense of place and quality of life, and greatly undermines efforts to promote compact development. MVs also inevitably introduce excessive speeds into our world, which causes a shocking number of travel-related injuries and deaths. MVs inevitably swallow up a massive, financially unsustainable amount of public tax revenue (a massive fraction of that constitute public subsidies). MVs, furthermore, inevitably amplify public health woes (particularly obesity). MVs, in addition, inevitably create a tremendous financial strain for cities and households. MVs establish a downwardly spiraling, self-perpetuating point of no return that nearly all cities have reached. There are a great many other problems that MVs create. In sum, it is time that we stop kidding ourselves that “clean” MV emissions fix most or all societal MV problems.

I believe the “EV Solution” is so commonly expressed because many people seek a “solution” that does not require substantial societal behavior change. Others cannot conceive of a world where they are obligated to drive a car substantially less.

No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

By Dom Nozzi

One of my cousins, on Facebook (FB) in the spring of 2020, responded to a post I had made to FB recently. My post noted that several developed countries in the world had zero people without health insurance, while the US had 30 million without health insurance.

She responded by asking for a “Show of hands – who wants to pay 50% or more of their income in taxes??? Bernie [Sanders] is proposing American taxpayers pay 72% of their income so we can have FREE healthcare- even for ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS, free college, free, free, free- nothing is free – it all gets paid for somewhere…”

I responded to my cousin by saying that with all due respect, my partner and I believe my cousin needs to check her numbers.

I went on.

What you mention sounds like the distorted corrupt corporate media narrative (a media hugely funded by Big Pharma and Insurance companies). Our understanding: What Sanders proposes is that we go back to the Good Old Days of, say, the 1950s for our tax structure. Then, taxes on those making up to about $30K a year would pay, say, 15 percent in taxes. Those making $30-60K a year would pay, say, 30 percent in taxes on the money they make over $30K. Those making over $60K a year would pay, say, 55 percent in taxes on the money they make over $60K.

In other words, lower and middle-income folks would not see much of an increase in taxes.

Putting aside taxes, how about if we build one or two less F-16 fighter jets? How about if we fight one or two less endless wars of aggression (wars, by the way, that create two people who hate the US for every one US hater we kill, which helps induce the endless warfare cycle). How about if we build one or two less aircraft carriers? How about if we widen one or two less highways? Doing these no-brainer things would mean we could have universal health care (like all other developed nations on earth) and free college for all (and build a desperately needed national passenger rail system) without the need to raise taxes.

I agree with you, by the way, that it is unfair to provide free education and free health care to illegal immigrants. Shame on Democrats for not acknowledging that. Shame on Democrats for apparently supporting open borders and no real restrictions on immigration. That is not sustainable nor is it good for the US.

One last thing: I agree with you that nothing is free (someone, somewhere is paying for “free” things). That is why I’m sure you would agree with me that we should eliminate the biggest form of welfare subsidy by far in America: Free parking and toll-free roads. Those “free” parking spaces and “free” roads are being paid by someone. They are not actually free. As someone who has spent 40 years academically and professionally in transportation planning, I can say with certainty that gas taxes pay only a tiny percentage of those road and parking costs. The vast majority of those costs are paid indirectly: We all, for example, pay higher prices for groceries (including those of us who shop by bicycle or bus) to pay for those “free” parking spaces at the supermarket. We all pay higher property and sales taxes to pay for those “free” roads. And we all pay for those “free” parking spaces and “free” roads with enormous externalized costs such as air pollution, degraded public health, unaffordable sprawl development, noise pollution, tens of thousands of annual traffic deaths, strip commercial blight, etc.

In sum, thank you for pointing out that there is no such thing as a free lunch. I agree with you.

To answer your “show of hands” question, I very much DO want what Bernie Sanders proposes. As former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. once said, “I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization.” (and as I pointed out above, the Sanders ideas do not necessarily require that taxes be raised, and if they do, not much at all unless you are quite wealthy).

Oh, and I cannot let this be unsaid: There are HUGE hidden societal costs associated with having roughly 30 million Americans without health care. The numbers I’ve seen put those costs in the trillions of dollars. We cannot afford to have 30 million people without health care.