Find out if you can meet all your needs within a 15-minute bike ride of your house. In a “15-minute city,” it’s possible to meet your basic needs within a 15-minute walk or bike ride. Instead of sitting in traffic during a rush-hour commute, you can work at home or walk to an office nearby. You can walk to get groceries, go to the doctor, take your kids to school, or run any other everyday errand. Housing is affordable, so a barista could live in a walkable neighborhood as easily as a lawyer. It’s a concept championed by the mayor of Paris and, more recently, pitched by a global network of cities as a tool for helping urban areas recover from the pandemic—and improve sustainability and health as people start to get more exercise while conducting their day-to-day activities. Read Full Story

“We will need many more Londoners to walk and cycle to make this work.” Before the pandemic, roughly two million people rode London’s subway system every day, often packed on crowded cars at rush hour. As the city tries to figure out how workers can safely commute when more businesses reopen, it wants people to avoid public transit when possible—but not to switch to driving. To help make it easier to bike and walk to work, the city is creating a massive car-free zone in the center of the city. Read Full Story

What sort of future do we want? The pandemic recovery plans lawmakers are creating now will decide. It’s 2030. You live in a 15-minute city and bike to work on a network of bike paths; most of the vehicles that are still on the road, from delivery trucks to school buses, are electric, running on wind and solar power from a revamped power grid. Formerly redlined neighborhoods have been planted with trees, equipped with electric carsharing, and covered in solar panels. When you want to take a quick trip to another city, you ride on an electric high-speed train. Read Full Story

Starting at $500, these bikes will get you on the road (or trail) in no time These days, biking is an unsung hero for those trying to get some low-impact exercise, fresh air, and the hell away from Ubers and public transit. FC reported earlier this month that biking has ballooned in cities across the world. In Bogata, car lanes have been shut down to give cyclists more space. In Philadelphia, bike traffic increased so steeply in some areas that the city temporarily closed a stretch of a major street to cars. The use of bike-share programs doubled in London, and New York saw a sharp uptick as well. Biking is becoming an increasingly accessible outlet for recreationalists and commuters alike. And it just might stay that way. So if you’re in the market for a two-wheeled ride or the bells and whistles that go along with it, we’ve rounded …

Continued ambitious climate action by U.S. entities could reduce emissions up to 37% by 2030. Despite the brief respite from emissions caused by COVID-19 lockdowns, it hasn’t been clear whether the pandemic will actually set the world on course to a more climate-friendly future. There’s the issue of disposable personal protective equipment polluting the oceans , the rise in single-use plastics amid coronavirus fears, and the concern that car traffic will increase as people avoid public transit. More broadly, there’s the risk that policy leaders will double down on fossil fuels as part of our economic recovery, rather than divest from them. Read Full Story

Posted by MiriamEllis “My business makes local deliveries, but doesn’t have a storefront. How do I handle listings management?” “I work from home. How should I be doing local SEO?” “Are there any tips for doing local SEO for clients like NerdWallet or Credit Karma that serve all customers virtually?” Queries like these about doing local SEO for businesses with nuanced, hidden, or no physical locations and with varied models of customer fulfillment are AMA FAQs and perennial topics on marketing fora. Attendees at the recent Moz Webinar on The ROI of Local SEO repeatedly asked about this subject. Business owners and marketers who haven’t serendipitously discovered Google’s various guidelines are left wondering how to promote non-brick-and-mortar brands. Even where there’s awareness that such guidance exists, Google is continually evolving its stance. It’s easy to make mistakes, overlook updates, and miss out on opportunities. The great news is, there are …

It’s a hazmat suit for the urban commuter. And even though it’s just a concept, it can’t be realized soon enough. More than 83,000 people in 56 countries across the globe have contracted coronavirus. The World Health Organization has updated its global risk assessment of the virus from “high” to “ very high .” Thousands of people have died, while major industries have been disrupted in the virus’s wake. And in China, where coronavirus struck first, major city centers have become ghost towns as both public fears and government quarantines keep people at home. Read Full Story

It’s inspired by abalone shells and grapefruit peels, and while it could have a wide variety of practical applications, bike locks might be where it makes its first appearance. Bike locks don’t work well: More than two million bikes are stolen each year in North America alone. Even when a lock might slow down a thief, it’s fairly easy to finish the job in a crowded city, even with lots of people paying attention, as these old viral videos repeatedly demonstrated . But a new material—the first artificial material that can’t be cut—may change that. Read Full Story

Part of reallocating police budgets could involve taking the bias out of traffic stops and instead doing real work to change our streets. In New York City, police issue more criminal summonses for cycling on the sidewalk in Black and Latino neighborhoods than in white ones. Those neighborhoods, it turns out, tend to lack protected bike lanes, and research has shown that when a protected bike lane is available, the prevalence of sidewalk cycling plummets by as much as 94%. What if the money spent on that sort of policing was used instead to build safe bicycling infrastructure, so people didn’t feel like it was necessary to ride on the sidewalk in the first place? Read Full Story

Dance, from the founders of SoundCloud, is giving Berliners their own e-bike for $82 a month. We’re in the midst of an e-bike boom, particularly in Europe. More than 3 million electric bikes were sold across the EU in 2019 . Even during the pandemic, when overall VC funding is down , e-bike manufacturers have raised millions to capitalize on the growing demand for electric bikes. But one company, called Dance , isn’t betting on a future where everyone buys an e-bike. It’s offering an e-bike subscription service, instead. Read Full Story