A Metro train at the potential River Terrace station. Photo by David Alpert.

Conserbanism: A recent panel on transportation and energy featured conservatives and liberals who all agree on transit and compact development. For the conservatives, global warming isn’t the reason; while painting urbanism as an environmental issue is a powerful argument, it shouldn’t be the only one. Via Ryan Avent.

Imagining River Terrace: Imagine, DC imagines the new mixed-use community that could exist on the PEPCO site north of River Terrance on the banks of the Anacostia. It’s a great spot for a new station to serve a new neighborhood, especially if we ever build the separate Blue Line.

A meeting of giants: Robert Caro, author of the definitive biography of Robert Moses, spoke recently about his one meeting with Jane Jacobs. “It turns out we each had a question that we wanted to ask the other,” said Caro. “Jane wanted to ask me what it was like to meet him. I wanted to ask her what it was like to beat him.” Via Richard Layman.

Is walk-“ability” enough? Ryan Avent summarizes an interesting blog debate over neighborhood design between Atrios and Kevin Drum. If you segregate residential uses from commercial uses and provide ample parking, but locate them in close enough proximity that people can walk and include nice sidewalks, will people walk? Drum does but none of his neighbors do. (Columbia, MD is similar.) Once we’ve put huge sunk costs into devoting most of the land to cars and foregoing all alternatives, the marginal cost of one more car trip to the store is small, and therefore people drive.