Seattle has recently seen and speculated: Transportation behavior changed by necessity (and consequent “community-building” often occured) during the city’s 2008 snow and Summer 2007 “freeway fright” construction.

For those weeks of necessity, we lived in an auto-limited world.

And just last week, by the way, we saw how Nord Alley can work.

Fast forward and head north from Nord Alley.

In the March 6 Vancouver Sun, Public Affairs consultant Bob Ransford reports on lessons learned from the Winter Olympic city’s experiments with pedestrian space and alternate forms of transportation, and the so-called “Vancouverism” branch of urbanism: