Every day at The aerial thread, we collect news about cities and send links to our mailing list. At the end of the week, we take some of the most popular stories and post them on Great Great Washington, a group blog similar to street.mn that focuses on urban issues in the DC area. These are national ties, sometimes entertaining and sometimes absurd, but hopefully useful.

If we had better transit I wouldn’t need this car: When buying a car cuts travel times and opens up access to more than one city, it’s a failure of planners and leaders who could improve the lives of many more people by providing transportation more robust assets, including public transport. Writer Dharna Noor laments the improvements in his mobility that buying a car during the pandemic has created due to poor policy and service. (Dharna Noor | Earthling)

A fairer transport network: The TransitCenter research team used transit service data and location information to develop the Transit Equity Dashboard, a mapping tool that measures how well the transportation networks in six U.S. cities connect people who , through segregation and discrimination, have marginal access to the jobs, services and amenities they need to thrive. Using data from transit agencies and the U.S. Census, the dashboard highlights disparities in access to public transportation. (Ben Fried | Transit center)

The rigidity of behavior change in the event of a pandemic: It’s hard to change human behavior, but a current pandemic-scale disruption has the potential to lead to long-term behavior changes. Using responses from 7,600 surveys, researchers examined whether behavioral changes related to the pandemic such as working, traveling and shopping are likely to persist for years to come and found a propensity for more telecommuting. , less business trips, accelerated growth in online shopping, and increased walking and cycling. (Deborah Salon et al. | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

Net zero could be the wrong target: Electricity production is not determined by the total amount of energy used during the year, but rather by peak demands at certain times of the day. It is for this reason that Net Zero buildings are not the panacea they are often presented with for reducing emissions. They do not withstand power outages, ignore transport energy and use more embodied carbon than less “efficient” buildings. (Lloyd Alter | Hug Tree)

Charlotte gets rid of single-family zoning: In a 6-5 vote, Charlotte City Council adopted its 2040 Comprehensive Plan after four-month long deliberation. The most discussed part of the plan was a change to single-family zoning that would allow more housing units on a single plot. Although controversial during the development process, the plan was eventually adopted and must now be implemented. (Alison Kuznitz | Charlotte Observer)

Quote of the week

“You can’t make your way to a large-scale infrastructure project without community input. You cannot fight your way through the Civil Rights Act. “

Harris County Texas Commissioner Lina Hidalgo in the Houston Chronicle discuss the Federal Highway Administration’s request to TXDOT to stop planning to extend IH-45 through downtown.

This week in podcast, Ben Holland, Senior Associate at the Rocky Mountain Institute join the show to talk about electric vehicles and climate change.

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