Sprawl

Even though 33 percent of its roads are in "poor" condition, West Virginia spends about 73 percent of its road budget building new roads and adding lanes. Mississippi spends 97 percent of its road money on expansion. Texas, 82 percent.

More disturbing reports from Atlanta's epic frozen traffic jam disaster are coming to light today. It's hard to believe how quickly the situation got out of hand when the region's freeways got hit with a few inches of snow.

This week, Jeff and Tanya take on the Atlanta Braves' terrible, no-good, very bad decision to move their stadium to Cobb County, Georgia. We discuss cities that are (and are not) shaped like wedding cakes, and whether that means you need to smoosh your spouse's face in it. Tanya makes a pedestrian-rights argument against high-heeled shoes (and Jeff abstains from taking sides). We parse the differences between "shared streets" -- without marked-out space for cars, bikes, and people on foot -- and vehicular cycling.

Urban real estate is a hot commodity in Canada. Suburban real estate, not so much. PricewaterhouseCoopers, in coordination with the Urban Land Institute, analyzed urban and suburban properties and found a lot more office space in the central city worth buying or holding than in the burbs [PDF].

The premise behind journalist Charles Montgomery's new book -- Happy City -- is a bold one: That the way we design cities can have a profound impact on well-being and mood -- in essence, personal happiness.

With Terry McAuliffe about to move in to the Virginia governor's mansion, it’s unclear what will become of one of the state’s most contested transportation proposals -- the Bi-County Parkway, a $440 million highway in the outer D.C. suburbs.

Cleveland's metropolitan planning organization was one of those transportation agencies that had never quite gotten over the Eisenhower era. Sure, it threw some money at the transit agency every year. But for the most part, the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA) treated its mission as a simple matter of expanding roads to reduce congestion.