Alain Bureau

Passion in everything community, small biz, arts & culture, urbanism, environment, govt, law, health, tech, education, food and peoples' stories.

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

1/Here's something a lot of people I talk to don't understand about Japanese urbanism, and why Japanese cities are so special.

[𝚃𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚜 𝙶𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚌𝚘𝚎 🚇 @grescoe]

Watch the clock carefully. You'll find it on platforms in train station in #Switzerland. (This one is in Renans, near #Lausanne.)

See the way it pauses when the second hand is at the top of the dial?
That pause is the secret to the legendary efficiency of Swiss trains.
🇨🇭🚂⏲️🧵

[Adam Bunch @TODreamsProject]

1. Labour Day was inspired by an illegal strike held in Toronto 152 years ago.

Here's my annual thread about the Toronto Printers' Strike & how it changed Canada…

[Alain Bureau @AHBureau]

So basically “Twitter” has turned into a mediocre version of TikTok, Daily Wire and Pornhub.

[Todd Irvine @todd_irvine]

This is how you manage a work zone in the right-of-way to protect cyclists and pedestrians. Nice work @AlterraGroup! (Davenport & Bedford) #bikeTO @MayorOliviaChow

✅ Dedicated space for bikes & pedestrians
✅ Concrete barrier for protection
✅ Signage
✅ Flag person

[alexandra @bigmoodenergy]

if you are into trains, you've probably seen a pic credited "Roger Puta photo", they're everywhere. Roger Puta was one of the most prolific photographers of trains, mass transit, etc. of all time and he died in 1990 at age 46 of AIDS. About Roger Puta:

[The Aesthetic City @Aesthetic_City]

King Charles built a completely new town and it’s MORE than just a normal town...

A thread🧵

[Hunter📈🌈📊 @StatisticUrban]

“The cost of running a city is the linear feet of everything - sewers, roads and when you get more of that, you need more fire stations.”

THIS is why suburbs are actually very bad for a city's finances and it's carbon footprint, as seen in this CO2 emissions map (green is low)

[Alain Bureau @AHBureau]

@Sean_YYZ Made the mistake of saying “not mine, it is a car share” a decade ago: 7 Homeland Security officers and 3 hours of interviews later, we were allowed to proceed…

[M. Nolan Gray 🥑 @mnolangray]

This is one of the most centrally planned environments on Earth. Every one of those chain outlets is a standard copy handed down from corporate, designed to be minimally compliant with extensive regulations, e.g. parking mandates, setbacks, sign rules, height limits, etc.

[McMaster Health Sciences @machealthsci]

Reconciliation is an ongoing process that needs to be incorporated into every day of the year.

Here are 8 ways that non-Indigenous people can engage with the process of reconciliation: https://t.co/vtlehVMMx4

[The Cultural Tutor @culturaltutor]

12 Reasons Why Cities Need More Trees:

1. Temperature Control

One large tree is equivalent to 10 air conditioning units, and the shade they provide can reduce street temperature by more than 30%.

2. Noise Reduction

Trees can reduce loudness by up to 50%. In urban areas filled with the sound of cars, construction, sirens, aeroplanes, and music, trees are essentially the best way to block noise and keep cities — along with the homes and workplaces in them — quieter.

3. Air Purity

Trees remove an astonishing amount of harmful pollutants and toxins from the air. In urban areas air quality is often disastrously bad — with severe consequences for our health. Trees make the air we breathe much cleaner.

4. Oxygen

And, while absorbing all those pollutants, trees also put more oxygen back into the urban environment. Oxygen levels are significantly lower in cities compared to the countryside; trees help to solve that problem.

5. Water Management

Trees do more than just shelter us and our buildings from rain — which is, in fact, extremely important. They also absorb huge quantities of water, reduce run-off, neutralise the severity of flooding, and make flooding more unlikely altogether. Not to forget that their roots absorb pollutants and prevent them from feeding back into a city's water supply.

6. Psychological Health

Studies have proven what we instinctively know to be true: that human beings are significantly happier when surrounded by nature rather than sterile urban environments. Our emotions, behaviour, and thoughts are shaped by the places we spend time — and trees have a profoundly positive effect on our psychology. The consequential benefits of being happier and more peaceful — as individuals and as a society — are immense.

7. Physical Health

Beyond all the other ways in which trees improve air quality and the urban environment, much to the benefit of our health, they also encourage people to go outside. Cycling, running, and walking are all more common in urban areas with plenty of trees. A knock-on effect of people spending more time outdoors is also social integration and stronger communities.

8. Privacy

A simple point, but not inconsequential, is that trees provide privacy.

9. Economics

The total economic benefit of urban trees is hard to calculate. There are costs, of course, including the repair of infrastructure damaged by roots and maintaining the trees themselves. But the total economic benefit — a consequence of everything else in this list and more — far outweighs the expenditure. Trees make cities wealthier.

10. Wildlife

Trees are miniature cities all of their own, serving as a habitat for hundreds of different species, including birds and mammals and insects.

11. Light Pollution

Trees don't only block the light shining down, therefore keeping us and our cities cooler — they also disrupt light shining up, from street lighting, cars, houses, and billboards. Skies are clearer in cities with more trees.

12. Aesthetics

And, finally, trees are beautiful. They break up the potential monotony of urban environments — the sharp geometry, the greyscale roads and buildings, the endless rows of cars — with their trunks, boughs, canopies, and flowers.

Just think: the gold and red of falling leaves in autumn, the white and pink blossom of spring, the vast green canopies of summer, and the branches lined with hoar-frost in winter. Every single tree is a myriad of intricacy and texture, of colour and scent, of dappled light on the pavement, mottled bark, knotted roots, of clustered leaves and delicate petals and stern boughs.

Few streets would not be improved by the kaleidoscopic aesthetic delights of a tree, not to mention the many different species of tree, all over the world, whether willow, oak, lime, cherry, aspen, maple, birch, horse chestnut, dogwood, hornbeam, ash, sycamore... the list goes on.

There are some drawbacks to urban trees, most of them context-specific, and they are not — of course — universally appropriate. But it seems fair to say that many cities would benefit from at least a few more trees here and there.

[Building Culture @Build_Culture]

How does the design of our neighborhoods affect how we live? In homogenous housing communities where every home is within a narrow size and price point, it means every time vou have a substantial life change you have to pick up and move OUT of your neighborhood and community, and into a new one. What does that do to our sense of belonging, community and rootedness? And what about our kids?

New podcast with Ashley Terry @smashleyterry, VP of Development at Wheeler District, a TND near downtown Oklahoma City. Will be out soon!

#buildingculture

[The Aesthetic City @Aesthetic_City]

Now on X: my latest video, about a new city built in Guatemala: Cayalá.

This is the way forward: friendly & beautiful places built for humans, not machines. @elonmusk take note!

Masterplanned by @LeonKrier and designed by Estudio Urbano, Richard Economakis & Marc Landers

[Dr. Jenn Brasch @jennbrasch]

My letter to the editor in today’s @TheSpec. #HamOnt #addiction #recovery.

[Alain Bureau @AHBureau]

Old School is new school?

https://t.co/5WTjIUQhM6

[21st Century City @urbanthoughts11]

This seems like a good and bad idea at the same time https://t.co/CjrG8pk5ix

[cars.destroyed.our.cities @CarsRuinedCity]

Bill Nye on motor vehicles in 1995