Mike Gordon sent me a link to a recent piece on BBC Newsnight called Where the car is not king.  It has a short print version and a 14-minute video extolling the virtues of transit and urban planning as practiced in Portland, Oregon.

The amazing part about this piece is the “reporter” — Sayeeda Warsi who is the vice-chair of the Conservative Party, those folks who will take over whenever Labour manages to lose an election in the UK.

One intriguing reference that isn’t fully explained deals with “public-private partnerships”.  Over here, the 3P approach usually means that the public pays for an asset, the private sector is subsidised to run it, and they may even get to keep it.  In Portland, the partnership works like this:  the public sector builds the transit infrastructure and expects the private sector to build development in a form that supports a transit-bike-pedestrian-skateboard lifestyle.  The public infrastructure creates the environment in which the private sector can build saleable developments.

The print version of the article is here and you can link from there to the video.  This was posted on August 15.