by Alex Marshall - articles and essays

Talks And Speeches That I've Given:

Land Use: A Search For Common Ground - "The central question to ask is what portion of that budget is being spent on highways on the edges of metropolitan areas. To stop sprawl, simply stop building or widening highways on the fringes of metropolitan areas or within suburban areas that could develop further. Shift that money into mass transit, which would promote a resurgence of inner city neighborhoods and older suburbs. An easy way to stop sprawl would be to half the state's highway budget, and put the savings into mass transit of all forms. Just as highways produce sprawl, mass transit trains, trolleys, buses produce walkeable cities and inner-city revitalization." Click on link for full article.

Wrestling The Beast Called Sprawl - "Whatever their assets or deficiencies aesthetically, the suburbs basically worked until they switched from being a luxury good to a staple. Sprawl was invented when the suburbs, with the deployment of the car and the highway, became an object of mass consumption. The suburbs only delivered the goods when a few people were buying them. When everyone tried to buy a house in the garden, you got a house in the middle of sprawl. When everyone attempts to live like a prince, things get complicated. Suburbia for everyone meant its benefits - isolation, refuge, and proximity to the center - went to no one." Click on link for full article.

Moving Hampton Roads - "How can we think about these projects and others in ways that maximize the wealth of the region and its quality of life? I posit something here. That we in Hampton Roads have tended to think about transportation the wrong way, and that this wrong way of thinking is hurting our living standards, our potential as a region and our quality of life. Like most regions, we have tended to make transportation decisions reactively, in response to traffic jams or the loudest complaints. What we have seldom done is to use transportation the highways, train lines, airports and smaller pieces like streets, bike paths and sidewalks strategically, in order to build a better economy, and a better place to live." Click on link for full article.