An Experiment in Crowdsourced Mapping

Last week I put together a quick experiment in crowdsourcing recommendations for bike lanes. The website allows you to draw a line for a suggested bike lane, and the results tab creates a heatmap of the cumulative recommendation from all users. In the week since it has gone live, there have been over 800 new…

Peace, Love, and Zoning: One Map to Rule Them All

Last month, the Kansas City Planning and Development Department released the long-awaited draft of the Midtown Plaza Area Plan, which was the culmination of several years of groundbreaking community engagement in the area from 31st Street on the north to 55th Street on the south, State Line to the west, and The Paseo to the…

Cheers and Jeers – Snow Removal Edition

Urban Angle’s Cheers and Jeers is an ongoing look at the best and worst of our urban environment, celebrating those who are making a difference, large or small, and kindly encouraging those who should do better.  Do you have an amazing or terrible or amazingly terrible place to share?  Let us know in the comments,…

Cyclist Perspective on Grand Boulevard Concept

“A Long Road for a Grand Boulevard – Part 2” illustrates how thoughtful design can improve Grand Boulevard for all users. This post highlights a few refinements of this concept from the cyclist perspective. I agree with the overall premise of protected bike lanes and the approach to phasing from paint to full infrastructure.  After all, protected bike lanes…

Cheers and Jeers – Sidewalk Edition

Urban Angle’s Cheers and Jeers is an ongoing look at the best and worst of our urban environment, celebrating those who are making a difference, large or small, and kindly encouraging those who should do better.  Do you have an amazing or terrible or amazingly terrible place to share?  Let us know in the comments,…

Protected Bike Lane Success Stories

The recent post on Grand Boulevard introduces a design concept that includes protected bike lanes.  While Kansas City does not have any examples of protected bike lanes today, they are a commonly used and well-studied design approach.  The silver lining to lagging behind other communities in bicycle infrastructure is that there are case studies from…