What I remember most about CNU 17

*The tours. Boulder's success in building a prosperous, pedestrian-friendly downtown and its utter failure in promoting affordable housing. Stapleton's success in creating a kid-friendly environment that is more pedestrian-friendly than the typical suburb - combined with its (hopefully temporary) inadequacies in creating mixed use. The time off I took to ride on the light rail line.

*The view of the mountains from Denver.

*Jim Kunstler's speech- not so much the focus on energy scarcity (some of which I've heard before) but his explosion of the myth that decreasing family size automatically means smaller living spaces and/or less sprawl. (He pointed out that household sizes have been decreasing for most of the past century with little beneficial effect).

*The idea of using highway funding as well as transit funding to promote compact development.

*New research on the safety impacts of cul-de-sac dominated-streets (brief summary: cul-de-sacs not as safe as you think).

*Billy Hattaway explaining that the most dangerous streets combine high speed and heavy traffic- a precise description of suburban arterials.

For more detail go to my personal blog (http://lewyn.tripod.com/blog)