Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space

"A community’s physical form, rather than its land uses, is its most intrinsic and enduring characteristic." [Katz, EPA] This blog focuses on place and placemaking and all that makes it work--historic preservation, urban design, transportation, asset-based community development, arts & cultural development, commercial district revitalization, tourism & destination development, and quality of life advocacy--along with doses of civic engagement and good governance watchdogging.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Quote of the day: choice/choice architecture

I am reading City Cycling, the new book on transportational cycling edited by Professor John Pucher of Rutgers and Professor Ralph Buehler of Virginia Tech Alexandria.  So far (I've read 7 chapters), my favorite chapters are "Bicycle Infrastructure for Mass Cycling" and "Cycling Safety."

The chapter on "Cycling Safety," in discussing the difficulties of identifying etiology through observational studies quotes from an article (surprisingly about housing tenure) by Karen Westmont (Urban Affairs Review, 39:4: 522; 2004) where she wrote about selection bias and:

muddling characteristics of the chooser with the benefits of the choice.

This is a real problem when analyzing the impact of sustainable transportation modes, mixed use development, school choice, charter schools, and urban education reform, and other "controversial" initiatives.

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