City Life

Delivery workers have lost as much as $550 million in tips since Uber and DoorDash changed their apps so that the tip option appears only after customers place their orders, the city's Department of Consumer and Worker Protection charged in a new report.

The findings come as the companies sue the city over a law set to go into effect on Jan. 26 that requires them to offer the option to tip at or before checkout.

New York City's landmark minimum pay law, which guarantees delivery workers $21.44 per hour, went into effect in December 2023. The day the law went into effect, Uber and DoorDash introduced new after-checkout tipping policies in order to hide the higher costs wrought by the new minimum pay standards.

The average tip for a worker making deliveries for UberEats and DoorDash decreased from $3.66 per delivery to 93 cents per delivery in just one week after the companies moved the tipping option, DCWP found. The average UberEats or DoorDash tip has since dropped to just 76 cents per delivery.

But for the apps that kept the tipping option before checkout, like Grubhub, workers earn an average tip of $2.17 per order, according to DCWP's analysis.

“Our report blows the whistle on a massive scheme by Uber and DoorDash to drive down worker pay by more than $550 million. That era has come to an end,” DCWP Commissioner Sam Levine said in a statement. “If these companies do not follow new tipping laws going into effect later this month, they will face significant consequences.”

When Toronto’s streetcars hit a rare open stretch of road, the metallic grind gives way to an airy electric hum, and for a fleeting moment, there is a feeling that one is hurtling along the knife’s edge of the future.

Seconds later, the illusion shatters: the car grinds to a halt, at a stop – or more often, in traffic. As the city slips past the stalled riders, some notice a runner zipping by.

Mac Bauer is fast, but the city’s trams, weighing more than 100,000lbs and travelling at a maximum speed of nearly 45mph, should be far faster than him.

And yet as of late December, in head-to-head races against streetcars, the 32-year-old remains undefeated in his quest to highlight how sluggish the trams, used by 230,000 people daily, truly are.

For more than a century, intercity buses have connected communities in ways no other mode can. They reach small towns, rural areas, and regions untouched by airlines or passenger rail. They serve people from all walks of life, but they are especially vital for millions of Americans earning under $50,000 a year, as well as students, seniors, military personnel, people with disabilities, and travelers priced out of flying or owning a car.

Buses connect nearly 95,000 unique origin-and-destination pairs across the country, far more than any other long-distance mode. Yet they are routinely excluded from transportation planning and policy discussions and are underappreciated in public perception.

What is not widely recognized is that intercity buses are the most cost-effective, least subsidized, and most fuel-efficient mode of long-distance travel.

Like many American communities, Dublin, Ohio, grew from a small rural town in the 19th century into a sprawling suburb in the 20th. Today, it’s embracing a 21st-century development trend: walkability.

An affluent suburb of the Ohio capital, Columbus, Dublin is home to roughly 50,000 people. In recent years, the local government has shepherded the development of a walkable new neighborhood, Bridge Park, and built an attractive pedestrian bridge connecting it to the historic town center. Building on the success of this development, in 2024 the city council announced another ambitious project that will turn a 1980s office park into a walkable district with housing, shops, restaurants, public spaces, and workplaces.

Projects that aim to transform traditional suburban environments are increasingly common in the United States. Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson, architecture professors at Georgia Tech and the City College of New York, respectively, have been writing about similar efforts, which they call suburban retrofits, for almost two decades. In that time, they’ve seen massive growth in both the number of these projects and the level of ambition they display, with innovative strategies taking on issues like public health, aging populations, equity, jobs, and climate change, all while reducing car dependency.

I think I found a rough barometer to measure how upbeat or relaxed a major city is.

Look at the speed of the information scrolling or changing on next stop displays in your modern subway or other transit vehicle. Changing quickly like #NYC is an upbeat city while slow scrolling like #Vancouver is a relaxed city.

Where does your city fit in? #transit #trains #city #Boston #Seattle @citylife

People in mobility advocacy and traffic safety have known this issue for a very long time, and it’s never been popular to say publicly. Nobody wants to bad mouth the fire department. Nobody, myself included, questions the hard work of firefighters, from the volunteers, to the emergency service responders (EMT), to the marshals and chiefs, who save lives every day through rescue and preventative measures.

But this topic needs to be out in the open, because there’s been a hidden conflict going in city halls across the nation between resolving the escalating issue of traffic mortality and fire officials trying to keep streets as wide and open as possible for swift fire response time. Our fire codes regarding street designs is increasingly contradictory to public safety, and enforcement is too arbitrary.

This conflict came to a head in Berkeley, California this week. Our street festivals that have existed for generations in the same places were, out of the blue, canceled by the leadership of our fire department (although by which officials is unclear). One fair, (Telegraph) on a small, one-way street that will be eventually pedestrianized, and the other (Juneteeth) on an 80-foot wide, 6-lane stroad. For months, no explanation was given to the public as to why. Instead, unclear explanations were finally given by city staff, claiming: “unprecedented amount of [high density] housing” warranted wider streets and no street festivals on small streets as part of a “renewed focus” on the state fire code.

Putting aside that dense cities around the world in high-income nations have the liveliest street festivals, this rule was being applied to quadrants of Berkeley largely unchanged with new housing. Moreover, our downtown farmer’s market adjacent to a park had to cut the market in half and maintain a 26-foot wide road space. A bewildered public and city council asked why this was happening. The fire department, through city officials, argued that Appendix D of the state fire code — requiring streets with a building taller than 3 stories to have at least a 26-foot street width of through traffic — mandated this change.

First, Appendix D in the state fire code is an optional code meant to be tailored for jurisdictions’ unique features. A street clearance of that sort exists so that fire trucks can use apparatuses to reach taller buildings and so that space is clear for emergency vehicles to get through streets. The intent is logical, but the U.S. fire code encourages sprawl by discouraging tall buildings and mandating wide roadways in front of each house. Thus, the code has flexibility intended for prewar cities not designed this way. Why was our fire department enforcing this rule for the first time and unilaterally, without any review by our fire and safety commissioners?

A number of [habitability] ordinances or bills have recently passed in states and cities across the U.S., including in Colorado, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis. In Nevada, a habitability law was vetoed by the governor. Habitability can be a slippery concept. There’s a general common sense idea of what makes a dwelling habitable—comfort, safety, utilities—and then there’s the legally enforceable ‘implied warranty of habitability,’ which is the legal term for a landlord’s obligation to make a rental unit livable. The latter varies between municipalities and in some places doesn’t rise to what most would consider a reasonable minimum standard. (The state of Mississippi, for example, doesn’t require landlords to provide heat in the winter or air conditioning in the summer, though they must maintain existing heating and cooling units. Arkansas doesn’t have any implied warranty of habitability at all.) In most municipalities, the implied warranty of habitability requires that units have working heat in the winter, running water, doors and windows that lock, working utilities, and no pests or environmental hazards.

But enforcement is spotty, not only because so many cities and states are cutting budgets to the bone, but also because jurisdiction over habitability can be confusing. Depending on the problem, a tenant might need to call the municipal building code office, or the Department of Health. And tenants who report their landlords over habitability issues are often retaliated against, and face a judicial system tilted heavily in favor of their landlords. “The truth is, we don’t even enforce the minimum housing code we have,” says Todd Swanstrom, a professor of public policy at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Even where existing laws are enforced, those standards have been essentially unchanged since the 1970s—one expert told me that most habitability laws have been essentially copy-and-pasted—and are in dire need of updating.

In the big picture, many of these updated habitability bills fall into two main categories: cooling and mold. As climate change makes summer heat waves hotter and deadlier, air conditioning has become as vital as heat in the winter, but in many places local laws are a tangle of conflicting, inconsistent, and often inadequate regulations. Take the District of Columbia, for example, where landlords aren’t required to provide AC, but are required to maintain any existing AC systems. In nearby Montgomery County, Maryland, landlords are required to provide enough cooling between June 1 and Sept. 30 to keep homes below 80 degrees. Across the line in Virginia, that upper limit is set at 77 degrees, but only for certain types of rentals

The state’s Regional Transportation Authority, which oversees the Chicago Transit Authority, Metra commuter railroad and Pace suburban bus service, projected a $230 million 2026 budget deficit in October. The RTA proposed fare hikes for Metra and CTA to cover the fiscal deficit.

“This bill provides the stable funding and governance reforms needed to protect transit service for the millions who ride CTA, Metra, and Pace—and the thousands of frontline workers who keep our region moving,” RTA said in a statement. “We are continuing to review the bill and will share more in the days ahead, including how this impacts the 2026 budget process.”

The RTA supported governance reforms enacted in the bill, which will transition the authority to the newly created Northern Illinois Transit Authority. The move will help the agency “coordinate service, plan strategically, and better support riders,” the RTA said in a statement.

The legislation increases a purchase tax in the RTA’s six-county region by 0.25 percentage points. It also raises tolls on northern Illinois toll roads by 45 cents, which would go back to the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, not to public transit.

There is a shortage of over 106,000 homes across Colorado, according to a recent study by the Colorado State Demography Office. Nearly 90% of the lowest-income households in the state spend over one-third of their pretax income on rent or mortgage payments. That means they pay more on housing, as a percentage of their income, than is considered affordable.

The cost of providing parking – borne by developers and passed on to residents – helps push prices up. Parking minimums may be mandated by city ordinances or demanded by lenders. Some renters prefer apartments that come with dedicated parking.

Structured parking can cost as much as US$50,000 per parking space, according to Denver’s Community Planning and Development office. Off-street surface parking, though cheaper to construct, requires dedicating valuable urban land to parking lots.

We found that cutting minimum-parking requirements would likely boost housing construction in Denver by about 12.5%, translating into roughly 460 more homes per year.

This is a surprisingly high-impact result for a single, relatively simple policy change. We published our findings as a white paper with the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute in July 2025.

In August 2025, the Denver City Council eliminated parking minimums for new buildings.

TL;DW: In this video, Umut explains the 8 major street patterns used in cities across the globe. From the description, the 8 types are:

• Organic Pattern: The charming chaos, like in Venice, where streets were shaped naturally over time.

• Grid Pattern: The perfect order, like in Manhattan, that makes finding an address child's play.

• Radial Pattern: The star-shaped design, like in Moscow, where all roads lead to the center.

• Irregular Pattern: The rugged and unique structure, like in San Francisco, where geography dictates the rules.

• Loose Grid: The balanced approach, like in Buenos Aires, that combines order with flexibility.

• Suburban Pattern: The sprawling settlements, like in Auckland, where life is designed entirely around the automobile.

• Superblock: Barcelona's idea of taking streets back from cars and giving them to people.

• Linear City: A futuristic vision, like "The Line," built on a single 170 km line.

Yesterday, the Los Angeles City Council Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee approved a motion that could lay the foundation for ending harmful parking requirements for new development.

This could lead to developers right-sizing parking based on what makes sense for a specific project, instead of current one-size-fits-all city codes that apply to both the urban core and far-flung suburbs. Eliminating city parking requirements does not mean that all, or even most, new development will have no parking. It means that parking will be tailored to specific needs for each project.

Many Streetsblog readers know that parking mandates increase housing costs, including rents. Experts term these generally outdated excessive requirements a pseudoscience. Eliminating parking requirements is good for walkability, housing (quantity, affordability, and streamlining approvals), and climate.

First time I've seen the pedestrian crossing button pointing downward

On Granville Bridge with the new bike lanes, crossing is behind me @citylife #vancouver #urbanism #biketooter #city

A city traffic engineer credits the success to lower speed limits and smarter design.

I agree with her, but I wish she would have pushed the driving aspect a bit more.

In the spring of 2020, as the gravity and extent of the pandemic’s disruptions sank in, the chorus began. “New York City is dead forever,” one prominent commentator wrote. “San Francisco is the next Detroit — the handwriting is on the wall,” another declared. Urban office towers stood empty, downtown streets were deserted and doomsday forecasts abounded. With the rise of work-from-home, the cynics insisted, we were witnessing the beginning of the end of America’s dense, vibrant, economically essential cities.

Without a doubt, the pandemic and its aftermath have brought serious challenges to America’s cities. Yet these dramatic exhortations of impending urban doom, so confidently asserted at the time by so many, turned out to be completely wrong.

Five years on, American cities have bounced back dramatically. According to newly released Census data, nearly 95% of America’s largest cities — 68 out of 72 — experienced population growth between July 2023 and June 2024, reversing downward trends from earlier in the decade. Los Angeles added more than 30,000 residents; Chicago gained more than 20,000; Seattle added more than 16,000; and Washington, DC, gained 15,000. Even Detroit — a city that was portrayed as the veritable poster child of urban decline — added more than 6,500 new residents.

New York City led the resurgence, adding more than 85,000 residents — the largest numeric increase nationwide — though the city is still down around 300,000 residents from its pre-pandemic peak.

Let me be clear: I am not arguing that America’s big cities writ large are beyond their many challenges — far from it. Crime may be down, but it is still too high, and urban disorder plagues many cities. Urban schools may be improving, but they still have a long way to go. Downtowns continue to face high office vacancies, and many will never recover. Housing is less affordable than ever, not just for the truly disadvantaged but for the middle and professional classes. Government spending is inefficient and taxes are too high. Families with children continue to decamp to the suburbs, leaving too many cities as playgrounds for the affluent, the young and the childless — and as places for the disadvantaged to find services.

Yet none of this has added up to an irrevocable downward spiral or an urban doom loop.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.nl/post/38407605

Inspired by road safety innovations widely used in the Netherlands, several US cities are installing street crossings that can better protect pedestrians and bicyclists.

As we all know, Mamdani has proposed making New York City’s bus system free. Writer Matt Bruenig makes the case for Mamdani’s free bus idea on the basis that school bus systems and libraries are already free and he asked for a more of an enlightened debate on the utility of bus fares rather than a hyper-charged culture war. Well, I’m here to do that!

I helped start a group called East Bay Transit Riders Union in 2020. Socialists members quickly realized that the organizers were all YIMBY liberals so they made their own socialist version: People’s Transit Alliance (PTA). While EBTRU focused more on technocratic things like bus lanes and service, PTA prioritized organizing with the transit workers union and popularizing free fares. In my article on this divide, I wimped out on taking a direct position, mainly because it felt like a culture war issue and those are boring.

So I’m going to take a position here: free bus fares is not the optimal approach to easing low-income rider burdens, but it’s a well-intended idea and would have mostly positive benefits if implemented. I don’t think Mamdani is actually concerned with the optimal decision for transit agencies but rather the politically optimal decision to build his movement — and that’s not bad.

Trees provide cooling shade that can save lives. They absorb carbon pollution from the air and reduce stormwater runoff and the risk of flooding. Yet many builders perceive them as an obstacle to quickly and efficiently putting up housing.

This tension between development and tree preservation is at a tipping point in Seattle, where a new state law is requiring more housing density but not more trees.

One solution is to find ways to build density with trees. The Bryant Heights development in northeast Seattle is an example of this. It's an extra-large city block that features a mix of modern apartments, town houses, single-family homes and retail. Architects Ray and Mary Johnston worked with the developer to place 86 housing units where once there were four. They also saved trees.

This is likely to be the bright spot for the day.

BCU Labs is excited to unveil our Bike Stress Map. This is a tool that helps viewers to better understand how people riding bikes or other personal mobility devices likely experience stress caused by automobile traffic while traveling through the city.

With this stress map, we aim to:

• Help provide the vocabulary to communicate your experience biking in Boston
• Show people alternative routes that may be lower-stress
• Highlight gaps in the network that could be candidates for improvements

The Bike Stress Map is our first project, rating every street in Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, and Brookline based on how comfortable it is to ride a bike on.