Walkable West Palm Beach Blog - Thanks for the mention!

One of my bi-weekly, thrice-weekly blogs to read is Walkable West Palm Beach (WWPB).  It's fun to go through their archives. Recently, I read this gem on WWPB about Donald Shoup, the author of “The High Cost of Free Parking”. You see folks, your free parking in downtown Lake Worth comes at a very high price. Free is not free. Just because you're not paying to park doesn't mean somebody else isn't picking up the tab. Here is the video I did last year when Dr. Shoup was in Delray Beach.

If you're like me and know who Jeff Speck is, desire a walkable/bikeable city, and think FDOT's 12' wide car lanes are a crime against humanity than I would strongly suggest you go to the WWPB blog. Here's the series of videos which I took last May when Mr. Speck gave his initial report to the West Palm Beach City Commission.

Just the other day when I visited WWPB, its author Jesse Bailey, was promoting my podcast from last December with Joe Minicozzi. Some of you old-timers in West Palm Beach will remember Mr. Minicozzi. 

Mr. Bailey did an excellent job of highlighting the topics Mr. Minicozzi and yours truly discussed:

• How the Convention Center could have been better designed to show respect for the adjacent Grandview Heights neighborhood
• Imagine getting off the plane at PBI and taking a ferry directly from PBI Airport to the convention center and downtown. It could have happened, if not for the county crushing the plan
• The economic harm of arbitrarily giving away development rights, and the need for a consistent, non-political framework to guide development decisions
• Chapel by the Lake site
• Why the focus on density and height is misplaced. It’s about design.
• How our downtown areas and urban places are our true economic engines, bringing in a tax yield that is orders of magnitude higher than suburban sprawl or big box development

Our Lake Worth downtown and our Lake Worth Park of Commerce are indeed "economic engines". 

Soon I hope to have Mr. Bailey as a guest on my podcast, High Noon in Lake Worth. High on my list of topics to discuss with Mr. Bailey are "one-way pairs" like our Lake Worth Lake and Lucerne Avenues. 

I appreciate Mr. Bailey promoting my podcast with Mr. Minicozzi and hope our talk added positively to the debate.  Be sure to visit his blog. As usual, you will discover that our two cities have more in common than we know.