Laura Bliss
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Lewis Joly / AP Self-Driving Scooters Are Coming
Companies hope they’ll keep the sidewalks clear, but there’s plenty of reason for skepticism.
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Indian Space Research Organisation Handout/Reuters Five Stories We’re Watching
Atlantic writers look ahead at India’s moon landing, WeWork’s giant IPO filing, Taylor Swift’s Lover, and more.
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Paul Spella Why Washing Machines Are Learning to Play the Harp
Appliance makers believe more and better chimes, alerts, and jingles make for happier customers. Are they right?
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Ajit Solanki / AP The Streets Are Alive With the Sound of Traffic
City noise is harmful. What’s being done to save urbanites’ ears?
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Dima Gavrysh / AP America’s Cities Can’t Quit Cars
Five years after “Vision Zero” made a splash, ambitious changes have been slow to come.
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Brendan McDermid / Reuters A New, Democratic Tool for Mapping City Streets
SharedStreets offers an open-source solution to help taxis, buses, pedestrians, bikers, and ride-sharing services coexist curbside.
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Elaine Thompson / AP How to Get Fewer People to Commute in Cars
As the example of Seattle shows, it helps when employers try to persuade workers not to drive.
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Geoffroy de Crécy How WeWork Has Perfectly Captured the Millennial Id
The company sells a somewhat uneasy combination of capitalist ambition and cooperative warmth.
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Ted S. Warren / AP Why It's So Hard to Forecast the Flu
Big-data predictions don't always line up with reality.
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Frank Franklin II / AP How Basic Economics Could Solve Manhattan’s Traffic Problems
It's simple: Charge people to bring cars onto city streets during rush hour.
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Chris Helgren / Reuters Cities Have to Get Creative When Uber and Lyft Won't Release Trip Data
Researchers must devise workarounds, sometimes even recording the cost and travel time of their own rides.
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Sidewalk Labs If Google Were Mayor
A sister company of the tech giant wants to help develop—and then collect data on—a waterfront neighborhood in Toronto.
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Mel Evans / AP How Trump's Infrastructure Plan Could Strain America's Cities
A big investment blueprint is expected next month, and it might stretch local governments’ already-stretched budgets.
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Streetfilms Ride-Hailing Apps Are Clogging New York's Streets
The city’s traffic woes owe in part to more people choosing private transit over public.
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Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP The Dispiriting Saga of a Private Cul-de-Sac in the Bay Area
For progressive politics, San Francisco was once a city upon a hill. Now it’s rich people squabbling over one.
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Thomas Peter / Reuters How One Texas City Is Trying to Downsize Mass Transit
For years Arlington was the largest metropolis with no major transportation system. Now, it’s experimenting with microtransit in lieu of more-conventional options.
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Miami-Dade County Buses Have a Branding Problem
A new “trackless train” shows that commuters have a long way to go before embracing a perfectly good form of transit.
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Environmental Communications / LAXART What the Instagram of the 1970s Reveals About Los Angeles
A new retrospective looks at a group of young photographers who infiltrated academic slide libraries with radical images of a changing city.
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Chris Keane / Reuters Could Self-Driving Cars Speed Hurricane Evacuations?
The case for a fully autonomous escape plan
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Susan Walsh / AP The Hidden Epidemic of Teen Hunger
Food insecurity has become normalized among American adolescents—who are also particularly vulnerable to its risks.
