Ian Sacs

<p> The beauty of street paint is that it costs next to nothing and it can have a huge effect in a very short period of time.  Anyone watching how New York City Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan transforms public streets into public spaces with paint, planters, seating, and signs knows how the installation of these materials overnight works like magic. </p>

<p> As a young kid, skirting aimlessly throughout my suburban municipality from one car-optimized shopping center to the next on my bicycle in search of stimulation (and perhaps trouble), I vividly recall - though I likely didn&#39;t describe it as - the internal conflict between interesting commercial destinations on the inside, and the banal, cruel approach to these places on the outside.  Although the primitive human desires of my psyche subconsciously longed for a central place to congregate with other lost children of the suburbs, I never had a downtown; I never had a community center.  In this vacuum, I compensated with all that was available. </p>

<p> As if all this inclement weather hasn&#39;t been hassle enough for those of us who cherish our cars, I practically careened into another tragic loss for the rightfully auto-minded recently in Hoboken, New Jersey.  It seems the needs of lofty pedestrians <em>et.al.</em> have once again been imprudently prioritized over us drivers in a result that is sure to make your muffler ratlle: a one-block segment of an historic belgian block street has been closed off to the ideal form of personal mobility (read: car) so that silly people with nothing better to do than run around frivolously in streets have another place off the sidewalk to inconvenience the driving majority of our great nation.

<p> Very snowy holiday greetings from Finland, everyone!  While here visiting my in-laws and friends, I wanted to take a quick moment and share an interesting observation about the way Finns handle the incessant layers of snow that blanket their chilly winter country.  It seems that aside from limited access highways and some primary arterials, the Finnish standard for snow treatment is to plow to a reasonable depth, but not worry too much about an inch or two of snow base layer covering streets.  Some streets get sand treatment as well, but salt is used very, very sparingly. </p>

<p> New Jersey&#39;s prized gateway communities along Long Beach Island - South Jersey&#39;s extra-special vacation spot better known to the planning community for its prescient example as human habitation threatened by natural erosion in Ian McHarg&#39;s planning tome “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Design-Nature-Wiley-Sustainable/dp/047111460X">Design with Nature</a>” - are facing an entirely man-made threat in the form of ill-conceived plans to effectively double the roadway “capacity” of the one and only bridge connecting this 18 mile barrier island to the mainland.  If NJDOT is left to its own devices, and <a href="http://www.app.com/article/20091117/NEWS/911170348/1070/NEWS02">local community officials rush them along</a>, a proposed new bridge will have the complete opposi