The proliferation of streetcar projects in US cities is one of the most significant transportation developments of recent years, yet little is known about the factors that contribute to streetcar ridership or whether these factors differ from those related to light rail transit use. This study uses multivariate models to examine differences in the factors related to average weekday station boardings on a set of US streetcar and light rail systems. While there are some similarities with respect to population levels and proximity to special generators for ridership on each mode, the results also point to important differences in the role that service characteristics, socioeconomic factors, and land use factors have on station-level ridership. The set of factors associated with light rail boardings suggest light rail’s use by a more utilitarian rider market, while those factors associated with modern streetcars suggest greater use by individuals trying to reach tourism and special activity centre-related destinations. These findings suggest that the modes are not substitutes for one another and that cities should carefully consider the decision to select one mode or the other for implementation.

Urban sustainability discourse promotes the increased use of green infrastructure (GI) because of its contribution of important ecosystem services to city dwellers. Under this vision, all urban green spaces, including those at the household scale, are valued for their potential contributions to a city's social-ecological functioning and associated benefits for human well-being. Understanding how urban residential green spaces have evolved can help improve sustainable urban planning and design, but it requires examining urban processes occurring at multiple scales. The interaction between social structures and ecological structures within the subtropical city of San Juan, the capital and the largest city of Puerto Rico, has been an important focus of study of the San Juan ULTRA (Urban Long-Term Research Area) network, advancing understanding of the city's vulnerabilities and potential adaptive capacity. Here we provide a synthesis of several social-ecological processes driving residential yard dynamics in the city of San Juan, Puerto Rico, through the evaluation of empirical findings related to yard management decisions, yard area, and yard services. We emphasize the role of factors occurring at the household scale. Results are discussed within the context of shrinking cities using an integrated, multi-scalar, social-ecological systems framework, and consider the implications of household green infrastructure for advancing urban sustainability theory.

This study examined the transit performance of streetcars in five U.S. cities: Little Rock, Arkansas; Memphis, Tennessee; Portland, Oregon; Seattle, Washington; and Tampa, Florida. The study documented strong and weak performing streetcars and identified the factors that might explain variation in streetcar performance. Portland emerged with the highest ridership and was the most productive and second-most cost-effective streetcar city. Portland's stronger transit performance was attributed to its local setting and to its planning and operating decisions, which emphasized the streetcar's role as a transportation investment and development tool. This approach contrasted with the other cities, where development and tourism objectives were the dominant factors in streetcar decision making.

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Streetcars have returned to many cities in the United States, and dozens of cities are contemplating making their own streetcar investments. Yet most streetcars carry relatively few riders per unit of service at a relatively high cost per ride. The streetcar’s poor transportation performance thus raises questions about the purpose of these investments. From a case study of five cities, the authors seek to better understand the streetcar’s appeal in the face of the mode’s poor transportation performance. The authors draw on interviews with developers, business leaders, local officials, transit planners, streetcar advocates, and other key respondents, as well as on documentary sources, and find that private actors with business and development interests in downtown and nearby areas are the main drivers behind the streetcar resurgence. These actors operate within growth-oriented public–private coalitions (growth machines) and typically regard streetcars as economic development, image-making, and tourism promotion tools rather than transportation investments. Rent-seeking behavior underlies growth machine dynamics, and thus streetcar projects remain appealing to these actors, despite the streetcar’s weak transportation performance. The focus on nontransportation goals as primary streetcar objectives affects local decision making and likely leads to the streetcar’s underperformance as a mode of transit.