#urbanisme

Photo originale par Steph-Photo

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Plaisir de découvrir ce jour ce recueil qui multiplie les regards poétiques sur la ville sous la plume de nombreux auteurs et auquel j’ai la joie de participer !

Merci à Hélène Lécot, éditrice des Editions du Bunker, pour ce beau projet au cœur de nos vies citadines, d’autant plus précieux que certains poèmes orneront les murs aveugles et silencieux de nos villes.

Une belle TRAM.ES urbaine qui nous mène vers des images multiformes, renouvelées et fortes sur notre quotidien urbain.

Parution le 9 avril 2026 !

This is an excellent article on a sad topic: pedestrian deaths are rising.

QUOTE:

"Nationwide, the suburbanization of poverty in the 21st century has meant that more lower-income Americans who rely on shift work or public transit have moved to communities built around the deadliest kinds of roads: those with multiple lanes and higher speed limits but few crosswalks or sidewalks. The rise in pedestrian fatalities has been most pronounced on these arterials, which can combine highway speeds with the cross traffic of more local roads."

In the suburbs of Atlanta (and other metros) and in the city, these wide arterial roads are deadly for walking. Meanwhile, the most walkable places in the city are increasingly unaffordable.

It's obvious that we need a massive shift on a huge scale when it comes to the walkability of our built environments, and in the equitability of access to pedestrian safety.

Here's a scene from our vacation in Paris last week that caught my eye: even on what's essentially a 'side street' you see stores and a wide (by U.S. standards) sidewalk, and it was safe for me to stand in the small roadway to take a photo because of no speeding cars. Lovely!

Second photo: a grocery store on Pryor Street in Downtown Atlanta, 1927, with streetcar tracks in front. This photo was taken just before the block became 'underground' after viaducts with wide roadways were built.

[Source: GSU Digital Collections]

Atlanta has great urbanism in its DNA. I understand why some locals get upset at comparisons to European cities and I don't enjoy upsetting folks; I hesitate every time I start to poke that bear.

But the truth is that our low-density, car-oriented growth was an intentional choice from the mid 20th Century, influenced by many problematic political/societal issues.