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Infrastructure in Andalusia
In February 2026, I visited Seville, Córdoba, Ronda, Málaga, and Granada, and found myself exploring the infrastructure most people ignore: aboveground and underground waste containers, collection trucks, street sweepers, bus lanes & small buses, bike lanes & bike storage lockers, rail stations, and bus stations. Andalusia is full of spectacular historic places, but what also…
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Bangkok in Layers
I traveled to Thailand in 2024 and I was inspired by Bangkok’s transit network. It moves millions of people every day across a metropolitan region of 15+ million residents. It does so through a collection of overlapping systems that have accumulated over time rather than through a single, unified plan. In that sense, Bangkok feels…
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Xiamen BRT
I had the chance to visit Xiamen in October 2025. China continues to inspire and impress me on every visit, not because everything is perfect, but because the pace, ambition, and willingness to build infrastructure at scale are impossible to ignore. Xiamen is a coastal city of about five million people in Fujian Province. Before…
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Tri-State Trillions
$1.2 trillion dollars for US infrastructure. How do you wrap your head around such a large number? (Believe it or not, it’s not even close to the amount spent by the U.S. government in Afghanistan and Iraq, but it is around the size of the NYC metropolitan region’s GDP.) The NYC region will hopefully be…
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Urban Legends
NYC has plenty of urban legends, many of which are literally urban legends. Perhaps this article will finally put an end to these largely untrue “myths” about the city’s built environment! NYC is fully “built-up”. The New York metropolitan region is populated by more than 20 million people. Approximately 70% of the world’s countries have…
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Planning Beyond Boundaries
The New York region functions more inefficiently due to its municipal and state boundaries. The Northeastern megalopolis is home to more than 50 million people and 20 percent of America’s GDP, centered around New York. Seventy percent of Manhattan employees commute from outside the borough. The region historically was entirely within New Netherland, but the British split up…
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Cost
In around the same time it takes me to travel from D.C. to Boston on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor (NEC), I was whisked from Guangzhou to Luoyang, one of China’s ancient capital cities – roughly the distance from Dallas to Chicago (or double the mileage on the NEC) in a little over 7 hours by rail.…
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Governance
The region’s fragmented governance can complicate growth, infrastructure investment, and regional coordination. The MTA is a New York State public authority with a governance and financing structure distinct from ordinary state agencies. State law gives it certain powers and exemptions, the scope of which depends on the particular activity involved. The MTA is allowed to…
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Speed
Our commutes need to be sped up to improve our quality of life and public health. Not only would it allow us to be more efficient, and allow our cities to be more sustainable, but it could even help increase social capital, giving us more time for family, friends, and neighbors. NYC has the highest…
Region NYC explores transportation, infrastructure, and more – in New York, and cities around the world.
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