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Most American cities have street networks that are engineered for us to comfortably drive much too fast for our surroundings. Even our old, pre-automobile cities have been upgraded to make dangerous driving habits easy. Transportation professionals are allowed to use good judgment when deciding how to design city streets, but they often need to be reminded, especially in cities where the state department of transportation has authority. Its not enough for you as a good urbanist to tell an engineer to make better choices. After all, theyre not a malicious bunch trying to wreck society. Theyre conforming to the long-established rules of the industry. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"","headline":"Urbanism Speakeasy","description":"Join Andy Boenau as he explores ideas that the infrastructure status quo would rather keep quiet. To learn more, visit urbanismspeakeasy.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.urbanismspeakeasy.com\/","colorTheme":"green","redirectUrl":""}} The AASHTO Green Book is the go-to excuse that professionals use for street design that prioritizes vehicle speed and throughput at the expense of safety. (It costs a fortune, so find a library copy.) The costs of speed AASHTO says what many experts avoid admitting: Speed reduces the visual field, restricts peripheral vision, and limits the time available for drivers to receive and process information. The faster you drive, the less you see. And when you finally do see someone headed into your path, its too late to stop in time. The go with the flow justification for driving 40 mph around schools, homes, and storefronts causes preventable crashes, injuries, and fatalities. Engineers who read the Green Book will find this reminder about using judgment that goes beyond tables or graphs (emphasis mine): Design speed is a selected speed used to determine the various geometric design features of the roadway. The selected design speed should be a logical one with respect to the anticipated operating speed, topography, the adjacent land use, and the functional classification of the highway. In selection of design speed, every effort should be made to attain a desired combination of safety, mobility, and efficiency within the constraints of environmental quality, economics, aesthetics, and social or political impacts. Its still a highway-minded narrative, but theres flexibility in the language. So when professional engineers blame AASHTO for not implementing traffic calming measures, you know better. AASHTO expects licensed professionals to be conscientious problem solvers, not automated copy/pasters. A smarter approach Heres a two-step suggestion for having more productive conversations with the planners and engineers responsible for your areas street design: (1) Use plain language to talk about context, and (2) Share specific engineering methods that are approved by the status quo. Talking about context A house limits your ability to run. You walk from the bedroom to the kitchen. Guests visit, and they walk around and sit down. An open field gives you space to go as fast as your body motor allows. Friends and strangers can run with you, or in different directions. Some streets need to be engineered for slow driving. Some parts of the neighborhood are intended to be a living room, not an open field. Offering industry-approved options Its worth having some basic understanding of traffic calming techniques that are considered acceptable by status quo design guides, such as the AASHTO Green Book. Here are some notes to help get you started. Narrow lanes. 10-ft instead of 12-ft, even on the busy streets. Restriping is cheap and effective. Fewer lanes (road diet). Safer for people behind the wheel and people walking. Wide sidewalks. Most standard sidewalks arent even wide enough for two people to comfortably pass each other. Textured stripes / rumble strips. Used to transition from high-speed to low-speed areas. Textured pavement. Cobblestones arent your only option in the 21st century. Diverters. Popular on bike boulevards to prevent drivers from going straight across an intersection. Midblock crossings. Break up super blocks with flashing beacons for pedestrians. On-street parking. But it better be replacing car storage, not adding more! Chicanes. The S-curve feel that makes driving slightly uncomfortable. Trees. Along the sides and in the center of traffic circles and roundabouts. Roundabouts. Or traffic circles, depending on the type of intersection. Bumpouts / chokers. Theyll show tire marks from all the rubs, but thats progress. Use at intersections or midblock. Tight corners. 90 degrees if you please. No swooping curves. Street furniture. Benches, lights, trash cans, restaurant signs, bike racks, etc. Raised intersection. Pricey but effective way to put pedestrians on a pedestal. Raised crosswalk. Like a speed hump wide enough for people to walk across. If youre interested in going deeper, here are a few transportation resources to get you familiar with traffic calming. FHWA AASHTO ITE NACTO Global Designing Cities Initiative The bottom line: slower is safer. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"","headline":"Urbanism Speakeasy","description":"Join Andy Boenau as he explores ideas that the infrastructure status quo would rather keep quiet. To learn more, visit urbanismspeakeasy.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.urbanismspeakeasy.com\/","colorTheme":"green","redirectUrl":""}}
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Last week, Disney briefed the press on how it’s bringing the entire Hulu catalog into its Disney+ app, with a dedicated tab for accessing Hulu’s more adult-oriented fare. But despite all the headlines you might’ve seen about the Hulu app shutting down, Disney says it’s not happening anytime soon, if at all. According to Disney, the company has no timeline for getting rid of the dedicated Hulu app, and will continue to sell stand-alone Hulu subscriptions. The company still sees Hulu as an important part of its streaming strategy, serving as a catchall for content that doesn’t fall under tentpole Disney brands such as Star Wars and Marvel. Outside of the United States, Disney is even ditching the Star brand that it used for this type of content as it tries to make Hulu a recognizable brand globally. Jason Wong, Disney’s senior vice president of product management, tells Fast Company that Disney does want to shift Hulu subscribers over to its unified app. Both services are still growing and have a combined 183 million subscribers. A decision to wind down the stand-alone Hulu app, though, will depend on how customers respond to the Disney+ push. “Our strategy is to build up the Disney+ application and make it a great place for both Disney+ and Hulu users. If you want to consume Hulu on the stand-alone Hulu app, you can continue to do that,” Wong says. Hulu plus Disney+ Hulu launched in 2007 as a joint venture between NBC and Fox, with a focus on streaming network TV shows. Disney became Hulu’s majority owner after acquiring 21st Century Fox in 2019, and it bought out the remaining 33% stake from Comcast (which owns NBCUniversal) for $438.7 million in June. This gave Disney full ownership of a service with more than 55.5 million subscribers. (Disney+ has 57.8 million subscribers in the U.S. and Canada, and 127.8 million globally.) Disney is now positioning Hulu as its brand for general entertainment, in contrast to the more family-friendly propertiesDisney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographicthat fall under the Disney+ banner. That covers originals from Hulu and FX, next-day network shows from ABC and Fox, and licensed content from other networks. [Image: Courtesy of Disney] Still, Disney CEO Bob Iger has been talked up the value of having both services in a single app, and last week the company previewed what that app will look like. In the coming weeks, some Disney+ users will start seeing distinct Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN tabs at the top of the app, along with a “For You” tab with recommendations spanning all three. This helps serve Disney’s goal of getting customers to pay for more than just one of its three services. Wong says customers will see tabs even for the services they’re not paying for, and the app will offer samplings of content from each. “It’s to give people a bit of a taste as to what the breadth of our catalog offers, and encourages you to upsell into a bundle that makes sense for you,” he says. The new tabs aren’t just about upselling, though. Wong says Disney’s also been refining its recommendation algorithms in the For You tab and wants to emphasize them more. This will help Disney make “bolder” recommendations knowing that users can always click into the offerings from each service individually. “Now, if you know you’re in the mood for general entertainment or sports, it’s just one click up, two clicks over to Hulu, or three clicks over to ESPN, and it’s really fast,” he says. What happens to Hulu from here? Regardless of which app people use to access Hulu, Disney is adamant that it’s not going away as a distinct brand. If anything, it’s becoming more prominent. Last week, Disney ditched its Star brand for general entertainment outside of the United States. Its replacement? Hulu. Disney had launched Star as its international entertainment brand in 2021, two years after taking over Star India and Fox’s Asia Pacific operations as part of its 21st Century Fox acquisition. It may be less attached to the brand after selling its majority stake in Star India for less than it expected as part of a plan to merge the business with Reliance-backed Viacom18. The brand shift will require plenty of customer education from Disney. But Wong says this solves the problem of having fragmented marketing in different parts of the world. “It’s going to strengthen and make it easier for us to talk about a unified app experience when we’re not talking about Disney+ and Star in some countries, and Disney+ and Hulu in the U.S,” he says. As for Hulu in the United States, Wong acknowledges that having a single application may be more efficient for Disney in the long run, both from a technical and marketing standpoint. Still, it’s a long way from making that happen. For one thing, Disney acknowledges that its work on tying Hulu and ESPN into the Disney+ app is incomplete. It has not yet demonstrated how it’ll integrate Hulu + Live TV, its $83 per month cable replacement service with features like DVR and a grid-based channel guide, though Wong says all of that will be coming to the Disney+ app eventually. The company also plans to iterate on its initial redesign based early customer feedback. “What you see today is definitely not what all of us will be seeing even three or four months from now,” Wong says. As it builds more features into the Disney+ app and starts nudging people to switch, it will start looking at how much time people spend in the app, how easily they can find what they want, and whether they continue to dip into the stand-alone Hulu app. The goal is for Hulu subscribers to prefer using the Disney+ app, but Wong says data from users will determine when that might happen. “If, ultimately, our products make it hard for someone who just loves Hulu to get to Hulu content, we’ve faled,” he says.
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“Tron: Ares” powered up the box office grid in the top spot this weekend, but Disney’s third entry in the sci-fi franchise fell short of expectations.Despite some favorable reviews including a three-out-of-four-star one from The Associated Press the new “Tron” film starring Jared Leto, Greta Lee and Jeff Bridges earned $33.5 million, according to Comscore estimates on Sunday. The big-budget project, reported to cost around $150 million, arrived 15 years after “Tron: Legacy” opened to $44 million before grossing more than $400 million globally.The latest chapter follows a battle between two powerful technology firms, Emcom and Dillinger, who face off against the same artificial intelligence barrier. Both can generate physical creations using laser-based 3D printers but each creation lasts only 29 minutes before collapsing into ash.“Tron: Ares” was packed with action and nostalgia, but it wasn’t enough to draw big numbers across more than 4,000 theaters.“It’s been tough for that franchise to gain traction for it to become a big mega franchise,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. He noted that the original “Tron” movie in 1982 initially struggled at the box office, but it ultimately grew a cult following.Dergarabedian said the international numbers could play a key role toward the film’s profitability.“It still topped the box office,” he said. “It picked a solid release date. All eyes are on a big Disney film that is a huge brand, known and has been around for decades.”It wasn’t the only new release that struggled to connect.“Roofman,” which starred Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst in the blue-collar dramedy about a construction worker trying to rebuild his life, opened in second place with a modest $8 million debut.Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” came in third with $6.6 million. “Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie” held steady in fourth place with $3.3 million. The Netflix and DreamWorks family release based on the popular preschool series continues to perform well with younger audiences in its third weekend.In fifth, “Soul on Fire” debuted with $3 million. The faith-based drama tells the true story of burn survivor and motivational speaker John O’Leary, featuring performances from Joel Courtney, William H. Macy and John Corbett.“The Conjuring: Last Rites” followed with $2.9 million, marking another steady entry in Warner Bros.’ long-running horror franchise.In seventh, “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle” brought in $2.2 million, continuing the anime franchise’s strong theatrical momentum worldwide.“The Smashing Machine,” starring Dwayne Johnson as UFC legend Mark Kerr, added $1.7 million in eighth place.Rounding out the top 10 were “The Strangers: Chapter 2” with $1.5 million and “Good Boy” with $1.3 million.After a couple big weekends last month, the box office has taken a hit in October a month that Dergarabedian calls a bridge month between summer and holiday movie seasons. He said this month is perfect for films like “The Smashing Machine” and “After the Hunt,” which releases Oct. 17, to shine in their own way.“If you’re a movie fan, particularly in the indie, art house, award season types of film, this is a great month,” he said. “Moviegoers should embrace the eclectic offerings out there on the big screen.” Top 10 movies by domestic box office With final domestic figures being released Monday, this list factors in the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore: “Tron: Ares” $33.5 million “Roofman,” $8 million. “One Battle After Another,” $6.6 million. “Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie,” $3.3 million. “Soul on Fire,” $3 million. “The Conjuring: Last Rites,” $2.9 million. “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle,” $2.2 million. “The Smashing Machine,” $1.7 million. “The Strangers: Chapter 2,” $1.5 million. “Good Boy,” $1.3 million. Jonathan Landrum Jr., AP Entertainment Writer
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