The Urban Environment

broadway T

I want you to conjure an image in your mind of the white stripes that divide the lanes of traffic going the same direction on a major highway. How long are the stripes and the spaces between them? 

You can spread your arms out to estimate if you want to.

Over the course of many years, a psychology researcher named Dennis Schafer at Ohio State asked students from many different parts of the country this question and the most common response was that the white stripes are two feet long.

Tom Vanderbilt, author of the brilliant book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), reveals the real answer and some of the other perceptual countermeasures that are designed to make you feel comfortable going way faster than your brain can adequately process. 

We also talk about how this design language of exaggerated scale and wide vistas is great for limited access highways, but it’s problematic when these features are grafted onto suburban landscapes where they don’t belong. 

All the music in this episode is courtesy of my favorite new label, the Utah based, Hel Audio. Specifically, we played the bands OK Ikumi and Mooninite. Hel Audio focuses on physical releases of electronic and experimental music. I just bought myself the full Hel Audio catalog on four glorious cassette tapes, along with less glorious but more versatile (and free) digital downloads of the same songs. The tape deck in my twelve-year-old Golf has never been happier. http://www.helaudio.org/


99% Invisible-68- Built for Speed

An oral history of interstates in Louisville. Featuring: Metro Councilman and historian Tom Owen, Professor and historian Carl Kramer and urbanist and writer Branden Klayko.

Produced by Gabe Bullard (@gbullard)
Music by Company Flow and Grapes

The Past and Future of Highways in Louisville

When Eric Molinsky lived in Los Angeles, he kept hearing this story about a bygone transportation system called the Red Car. The Red Car, he was told, had been this amazing network of streetcars that connected the city--until a car company bought it, dismantled it, and forced a dependency on freeways.

But like most legends, the one that Eric heard about the Red Car is not entirely accurate. It's true that Los Angeles did have an extensive mass transit system called the Red Car, which at one time ran on 1,100 miles of track--about 25 percent more more track mileage than New York City has today, a century later.  

But the Red Car wasn't the victim of a conspiracy. The Red Car WAS the conspiracy. 


99% Invisible-70- The Great Red Car Conspiracy

Though its official name is JFK Plaza, the open space near Philadelphia’s City Hall is more commonly known as LOVE Park.  With its sleek granite benches, geometric raised planter beds, and long expanses of pavement, its success as a pedestrian plaza is debatable.  But it turned out to be perfect for skateboarding.  As skateboarding culture grew in the 1990s, LOVE Park became a Mecca of the skating world--even though skateboarding was officially banned there.  

Skateboarder and radio producer Andrew Norton takes us for a ride through the surprising history of LOVE Park, and pulls back the curtain on a decades-old battle over public space in Philadelphia and beyond.


99% Invisible-71- In and Out of LOVE

I liked the audio prompts... "Wait"... "Wait"... "Wait"

The walk sign at MLK and Liberty, Savannah GA

I'm Managing Producer at KUOW Seattle. I listen to a mega-ton of podcasts and when you include hours of music every day, the majority of my waking hours are connected to audio.

The Urban Environment

toddmundt