Today's Headlines

Thursday’s Headlines Are Living for the City

Suburban retail models are making cities less walkable, while climate change is doing the same in the suburbs.

By Blake Aued

12:01 AM EDT on August 27, 2026

Thursday’s Headlines Are Living for the City

Bring back walking to the corner store. Creative Commons

Angie Schmitt wrote about how the big-box retail model is killing smaller stores and thus walkable neighborhoods, forcing everyone who lives downtown to drive miles to the suburbs just to pick up a tube of lipstick. Sure, Costco is cheaper, but in the long run how much are you saving if you need to buy an SUV to get there? (Love of Place)
Meanwhile, shopping malls are becoming more like downtowns in that they’re starting to charge for parking — which, as Donald Shoup taught us, is never actually free. (USA Today)
Sprawl has been the key to the Sun Belt’s success because cities can keep building more cheap housing without any opposition from existing neighborhoods. Now that temperatures are rising, they have to figure out how to cool down all those asphalt ovens. (We Can Have Nice Things)
This just might be a conflict of interest: More than 300 local governments seeking federal funding to recover from damage caused by climate change hired lobbyists who also work for the fossil fuel industry. (The Guardian)
The Trump administration’s justification for building roads on remote federal lands is to fight forest fires, but bringing more people into those areas is likely to cause more fires. (Heatmap; registration required)
Two programs in California and Denver show that people really like e-bike rebates. (Government Technology)
South Carolina and the Federal Highway Administration are spending $2.7 billion to fix one freeway interchange. (The State)
Seattle’s Sound Transit could use a value capture tool called tax increment financing to pay for the Ballard Link. (The Urbanist)
Bus rapid transit on Maryland Parkway in Las Vegas has cut commuting times by 20 percent. (Sun)
Columbus is still tweaking its bikeshare and e-scooter policies. (Axios)
Wichita is testing a Douglas Avenue road diet for six months. (KAKE)
The Transit Brief takes a look at what Montreal could have built if construction costs in Canada were as low as Europe’s.
Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers are the big winners of Trump’s war on Iran, which has lifted EV sales everywhere but the U.S. (Yale Climate Connection)

Blake Aued

Blake Aued has been doing Streetsblog's daily national news digest for years. He's also an Atlanta Braves fan, which enrages his editor in New York.

Today's Headlines

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