Zachary Lamb

San Francisco is losing its best piece of art Just go.

Just go.

Applications are due next Sunday October 5th for the @cplusc.bsky.social Housing Policy Manager role, spread the word!

The US DOT is on an all-out campaign to defund city-designed projects that prioritize pedestrians and bikers.

To explain why it was cancelling a San Diego project, the US DOT complained that it “appears to reduce lane capacity and [has] a road diet that is hostile to motor vehicles."

Apply to help make your house safer from earthquakes | City of Berkeley Apply by Oct. 1 to enter a randomized lottery and potentially qualify for a home retrofit grant of up to $3,000 – or $10,000 for lower income households.  Owners of older, wood-framed homes in Berkeley can apply online to qualify for grants to strengthen their homes’ resiliency to major earthquakes.Owners of these homes – wood-framed, pre-1980 homes with a raised foundation or crawl space under the home – would receive up to $3,000 for this work. Households making less than $89,040 per year can receive $7,000 more.Rental property owners of homes with four units or less can also qualify. These owners, who do not need to live in one of the units to qualify, can apply to retrofit up to five qualifying rental properties.

Owners of older, wood-framed homes in Berkeley can apply online to qualify for grants to strengthen their homes’ resiliency to major earthquakes.

Apply by October 1 to enter the Earthquake Brace + Bolt program lottery. 🏡💪

Learn more: berkeleyca.gov/commu...
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Berkeley police: Driver arrested after striking 3 people The suspect attempted to flee after abandoning his car near Emerson Elementary and trying to carjack someone, according to police.

A driver struck three people during the morning commute in Berkeley on Tuesday, sending all three to the hospital, authorities say. He then abandoned his car near Emerson Elementary and tried to carjack someone, according to police.

The Equitably Resilient City: Solidarities and Struggles in the Face of Climate Crisis Twelve global planning and urban design interventions—and what they reveal about equity-centered urban resilience in the face of climate change.Hillside fa

The book is still - and will remain! - open access.
direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon...

The Equitably Resilient City: Solidarities and Struggles in the Face of Climate Crisis Published in Journal of the American Planning Association (Ahead of Print, 2025)

Thanks to JAPA and Dr. Renia Ehrenfeucht for the thoughtful review of 'The Equitably Resilient City: Solidarities and Struggles in the Face of Climate Crisis'.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
The review is open access for the next few weeks.

If you have a caffeine/coffee addiction, try to break it before you go. Headaches etc setting in on day 2 of a retreat can be really really rough. Otherwise, enjoy!

My kids' school wants everyone to fill out this application. "Is your child enrolled in Berkely Unified School District?" Options: "Forks" or "No".... Ummm "Forks" I guess.

Law Firm Pressures Brown University to Erase Research on Anti-Wind Groups

My lab's been attacked by an anti-wind group and their lawyers. They threatened the science funding of my whole university, to shut me and my undergraduate research assistants up.

NYT just covered it. 1/n

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/c...

Study: Fire Departments and Street Safety - Streetsblog San Francisco The Center for Bicyclist and Pedestrian Safety and UC Berkeley's planning department research why fire departments and street safety advocates sometimes clash

It was great to share this new research on street safety and fire/EMS response on this week's CPBS webinar. Thanks to @streetsblogsf.bsky.social for getting the word out!

Study: Fire Departments and Street Safety - sf.streetsblog.org/2025/08/20/s...

Countrywide natural experiment links built environment to physical activity - Nature By analysing the smartphone data of 2,112,288 participants, in particular observing and comparing the activity of the same individual in two different environments, we find that increases in the walka...

Seminal paper published by Althoff et al. in Nature last week.

"...moving from a less walkable (25th percentile) city to a more walkable city (75th percentile) increased walking by 1,100 daily steps, on average."

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Op-ed: Berkeley Bike Plan draft falls short. Speak up this week Give Berkeley Bike Plan input at public meetings Tuesday and Thursday. You can also send written comments by Sept. 26.

OP-ED: Berkeley has released a draft of its long-awaited Bike Plan update. In some ways, Walk Bike Berkeley argues, the plan is a step backward, making it harder to deliver local bicycle improvements. But it's not too late to weigh in.

Give input to increase bicyclist safety Join an Aug. 19 virtual workshop to learn more and give input. Send email comments by Sep. 26. Let us know in a virtual workshop or via email how to make it safer to bike in Berkeley and strengthen ou...

Give your input to the City of Berkeley to increase bicyclist safety!

Attend the virtual workshop on 8/19, 5:30 - 6:30 PM. Register in advance for the Zoom meeting for chance to win a $25 gift card! tinyurl.com/5xhdht8u

You can also email your comments to bicycleplan@berkeleyca.gov by 9/26.

Thank you @mayoradenaishii.bsky.social and @berkeleyca.gov for taking this on and promoting it. It means a huge amount to me.

Assistant Professor - Design & Urban Transformation – City and Regional Planning University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!

*JOB ALERT*
Urban design / planning scholars:
The Department of City and Regional Planning (DCRP) at UC Berkeley is hiring a tenure-track faculty position in “Design and Urban Transformation.”

aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05040

Berkeley’s vacant Oxford Elementary site is for sale for $3M Students were moved from the school in 2020 due to earthquake concerns. The property, in North Berkeley, has been publicly owned for over a century.

“Positioned for a subdivision into multiple single-family residential parcels, one large single-family property"

Not good. Rezone. Retain ownership. Lease to a developer for med/high density housing.

Berkeley’s vacant Oxford Elementary site is for sale for $3M www.berkeleyside.org/2025/08/06/b...

UC Berkeley Job Announcement:
SafeTREC _ Traffic Safety Data Analyst
See jobs.berkeley.edu(link is external), job #79736.

Access the full job description for the Traffic Safety Data Analyst (6256U), #79736(link is external)

Excited to have an article on housing, finance, and climate change in this special issue. It was a fun and wide-ranging conversation with @ianguelovski.bsky.social @lindashi.bsky.social, @savannahcox.bsky.social, and others.

It was a great and wide rangking conversation with:
@c40cities.bsky.social @lindashi.bsky.social @savannahcox.bsky.social @ianguelovski.bsky.social & other brilliant folks I can't find on here!

Very happy that this article on housing, finance, & climate change is up & available open access:
utppublishing.com/doi/10.3138/...

...and RADICALLY expand resident ownership.

I'd much rather see strategies that recognize the real benefits of mobile home parks and encourage new park development while allow parks to evolve, including integrating non-residential uses and diverse housing forms/densities.

An Unexpected Idea for Preserving America’s Mobile Homes Op-ed: A landscape historian argues that the preservation field can play a role in protecting manufactured housing by listing it in the National Register of Historic Places.

Using the existing historic preservation tools to protect mobile home parks is an interesting & provocative idea, but - as this piece recognizes - would be overly rigid and wouldn't ultimately serve residents well in most contexts.
nextcity.org/urbanist-new...

Gutting research and data gathering institutions may reverse decades of "knowing better," but people are almost certainly going to keep "losing even more" with climate change unless/until we get serious about adaptation planning.

As Gilbert White said over 20 years ago, we keep "knowing better and losing even more."

No doubt "more data" could be useful, but the headlines here make clear that - in TX (and all over the US!) - THE BIGGEST PROBLEM IS NOT A LACK OF DATA. It is a lack of political will and policy tools to make and enforce smart land use and building rules.

Thanks to the folks at UAR Remixed for putting together this great interview about the book.
It was super fun to reflect on the collaboration, research, and writing process!

Help improve mobility by foot, bike, or bus on Telegraph | City of Berkeley Give input at June 25 meeting or use online survey by July 3 to give input on priorities and concept designs. Use an online workshop or survey to let us know how to improve safety for pedestrians and cyclists who use Telegraph Avenue while improving bus speed and reliability.The City is also seeking to integrate better truck and delivery loading zones on this section of Telegraph Avenue, which stretches from Dwight Way to Woolsey Street at the Oakland border. Options include bus-only lanes and bus stop improvements, physically protected and separated bike lanes, crosswalks, curb management, and other improvements.

Fill out before the end of today! Use an online survey to let us know how to improve safety for pedestrians and cyclists who use Telegraph Avenue while improving bus speed and reliability. 🚴🚶👩‍🦼🚌

Community message: berkeleyca.gov/commu...

Online survey: communityfeedback.op...