micro urban

The dangers of faster and larger vehicles to pedestrians

2011-05-11T13:21:00.000-04:00

The chart at the right sums up the issue of speed. (A screen grab from this video.)

More on speed here: 20's Plenty for Us
This is UK group dedicated to lowering town and city speed limits to 20mph. Good video on their homepage.

Study: SUV's 3.6 times as likely to kill a pedestrian as a passenger vehicle.

A Selective Summary of The Death and Life

2011-04-28T11:22:00.000-04:00

Later this year marks the 50th anniversary of The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs, published in 1961. And this May 4 marks what would be Jacobs's 95th birthday, which numerous cities will commemorate with Jane's Walks, including one in my own town. This has prompted me to look over the book again, and offer up a brief, selective summary.

Part I: The Peculiar Nature of Cities
A very anecdotal look at neighborhoods, parks, sidewalks with observations on the "ballet" of lively city life. Lays a lot of the groundwork for the rest of the book, but may not be so insightful to someone who's lived in a healthy urban environment before.

Part II: The Conditions for City Diversity
Four conditions are necessary for healthy, vibrant cities. These don't guarantee vigor and diversity of uses for an area, but vigor and diversity can't happen without them.

1 Mixed primary uses
A district must serve more than 1 primary uses (preferably more than 2), whose people use the same streets and facilities and different times of the day. There's economic efficiency in this re-use, which doesn't occur in a pure office district where people only go out during lunch hour, or a pure residential area where facilities are only used after 6pm.

2 Small blocks
Small blocks ensure that people traveling from point A to B have more paths to get there, encouraging more exploration. Businesses and neighbors on adjacent blocks are much more accessible than they would be on very long blocks. Drawings of Manhattan blocks on the west side illustrate how traffic is pushed off side streets and onto the avenues. In Rockefeller Center, the blocks have been shortened, allowing for more circulation.

3 Aged buildings
Buildings should vary in age and condition, including "plain, ordinary, low-value old buildings." The high cost of new buildings precludes a lot of businesses necessary to a healthy mix. (Studios, neighborhood bars, unusual restaurants, etc.) New ideas need old buildings. A large swatch developed at once is poor at creating diverse business, culture, and population. It decays as one over time, until it's deemed obsolete and the cycle is started again. A mixture of buildings is something a city can only inherit and sustain over the years.

4 Concentration
Despite density having a bad name among urban planners at the time, Jacobs gives examples in many cities of the most vital areas being far denser than the slums. High density often confused with overcrowding. How dense is appropriate? Under 6 dwellings per acre can make out well in suburbs. ~10-20 per acre makes a semi-suburb, which can work on the periphery (until it gets swallowed by a growing city.) 20+ per acre you can start getting city problems, but not the benefits. Around 100+ (depending on other factors) you start to get liveliness, safety, convenience, and interest. (Numbers rough-- numerical answer means less than a functional answer.)

Jacobs closes part two by countering some common myths about diversity: that it is ugly, invites ruinous uses, etc.

Part III: Forces of decline and regeneration

Self-destruction. How a successful district can naturally get killed by its own success, as the most lucrative primary use can crowd everything else out.

Border vacuums
She goes into great detail on how borders can hurt a district or city, especially the adjoining areas. The borders can be the canonical railroad tracks, the Cross-Bronx expressway being constructed, industrial sites, academic institutions, long empty blocks, or even large parks. Anything that disrupts the flow of people and makes them less inclined to keep walking. Some borders are necessary, but other city elements should be used to create lively, mixed territories, not unnecessary additional borders.

"Slum" clearance. Yep, a huge mistake. Caused more problems than it solved.

Gradual money vs cataclysmic money. Helping a district improve and evolve vs upending everything and creating more long-term problems.

Part IV: Different Tactics

Subsidizing dwellings. Instead of the government acting as builder and landlord.

Attrition of automobiles
Jacobs describes how we've gutted our cities to accommodate the automobile, but she goes to great pains to not vilify it. (Many pages devoted to how it's superior to the horse-and-buggy.) Should have replaced 6 horses with 1 car, instead of 1 horse with 6 cars. Discusses Ped/Auto separation schemes and their issues. Better just to reduce the dominance of cars and gradually reverse the cumulative effects of widened streets, increased parking, new expressways, etc., each step of which made sense on its own, but created a positive feedback loop with more cars and more gutting of the city.

When Washington Sq was closed to auto traffic in 1958, dire projections on increased congestion nearby proved false. Counts actually decreased slightly. There is no absolute, immutable number of drivers; they vary in response to other factors. Attrition of automobiles can occur by a gradual process of making conditions less convenient for cars. Widen sidewalks, increase ped crossings, reduce parking, make shorter blocks and thus have more crossings. (Today we might add curb extensions and gratuitous turns, lower speed limits, increase gas taxes.)

Visual order
"A city cannot be a work of art." The Radiant City, City Beautiful, etc. movements were "architectural design cults, rather than cults of social reform." A visual order can be established without complete control of the field of vision. To mitigate the inhuman-scale endless avenue effect of grids, introduce some irregular intersecting streets, but don't create dead-ends to foot traffic. Large buildings like Grand Central can be placed in some intersections; landmarks give orientation clues.

Salvaging housing projects
Remove the borders and reunite the project lands with the city. Place new streets and street-level buildings running through the empty spaces in projects. Introduce other uses besides residential to add diversity. Over the long term, look to disassemble them.

Governing and planning districts. Add a little more horizontal district administration, to give people a more local, accessible leverage point.

Non-review of Green Metropolis by David Owen

2011-04-19T13:19:00.001-04:00

In honor of Earth Day I guess.

For a book whose premises I agree with, this was one tough read. I could only bear to skim it. Perhaps the biggest problem is that the main premise is old and obvious now--any environmentally conscious urbanist has known for decades that urban living is more green than suburban or rural living. So I offer just a quick chapter-by-chapter summary with a couple random comments.

More like Manhattan
Yeah, Manhattan is a much more energy efficient place to live than anywhere in the US. People who think it's an ecological disaster are failing to look at its per capita impact. Duh. Most Manhattanites I knew 20 years ago realized this.

Liquid Civilization
Yep, oil is bad. But come on, the concept of peak oil production may have some truth to it, but taking "Peak Oil" seriously as some sort of impending doom is ridiculous. More oddly, the author states that the 2008 price run-up on gas was purely due to speculation, clearly not true. We'll have the same prices this summer--global demand is the root. (Isn't that part of the peak oil gloom and doom?)

There and Back
Now we're getting somewhere. Some good points about the absurdity of auto-dependent lives. Improving MPG efficiency matters less than the accelerating sprawl. Zoning laws still largely encourage sprawl and undermine the communities they try to preserve. We should treat Manhattan as a model, not the exception.

Interesting note on Theodore Kheel, who first noted in 1955 that the auto was lowering NYC transit numbers, creating congestion and frustrating both drivers and transit riders. Under Mayor Lindsay, in 1969, he proposed tolls on the bridges to reduce congestion and pay for transit. Thwarted by Moses, and most of the US still reluctant to have "rubber pay for rails".

Traffic jams are beneficial environmentally, if they reduce the willingness of drivers to drive. Good discussion of congestion pricing, plus the need for properly priced parking. Though, Owen writes against charging trucks more in congestion pricing, which I disagree with. It doesn't matter that pedestrians need trucks to bring them goods, being against a higher toll is akin to arguing for subsidizing gas for trucks. The trucks use more of the public resource (roads) than cars so should be priced accordingly, and such charges won't pose a threat to delivering essential goods. The price is still very low relative to the value of the goods and services they bring--the charge may just help nudge them toward being a little more efficient.

Side note: At the end of the day, I think most drivers in small cities enjoy bitching about traffic. It makes them feel like they're in the big leagues.

The Great Outdoors
Lots of good Jacobsian observations. Good criticisms of Central Park, as hugely disruptive to the flow of the city, creating massive borders to the neighborhoods around it. I used to promote (rather tongue in cheek) building in the park to get a rise out of people and to encourage them to think about some of the problems it creates. Washington Square park much more valuable use of land.

Perceived distance and borders more important than actual distance. Like the author, I now use the car in cases I would find ridiculous in my more urban past (driving half a mile to the post office because it's raining.) This isn't just because driving is easier now, it's because walking is a lot less pleasant.

Suburbanites don't actually spend more time outdoors. Notes how people complain about having to park half a block away from their destination. (Another side note: people in small cities love to bitch about parking too.)

"Environmentalists have tended to think of themselves mainly as defenders of what's left, rather than as shapers of what lies ahead." Amen.

Embodied Efficiency
Get this: skyscrapers are actually very efficient. Again, Duh. And, LEED is kinda stupid. (See the chart here, which sums things up nicely:
http://www.microurban.org/2011/03/epa-study-urban-more-green-than-green.html.) Maybe some good background info in this chapter, but getting bored.

On this topic, I believe the elevator is the greatest and most overlooked mass transit tool ever. Maybe after the staircase.

The Shape of Things to Come
China, China. Dubai, Dubai. Snooze, snooze. Ok, back on track:

When affluent Americans think about "going green," they tend to focus on enhancements to their own consumption rather than subtractions from it: buying a new, more fuel-efficient car (rather than driving less or taking the bus), building a new kitchen full of eco-friendly gadgets and exotic building materials (rather than deciding not to add yet another underused room to their house), replacing their old windows with high-tech new ones (rather than caulking air leaks, drawing the curtains during the day, and turning the air-conditioning down or off), and eating better-tasting chickens, tomatoes, and eggs.

Good point, these aren't just "enhancements", they're increases to consumption. Damn yuppie bastards.

Still, I can't understand why this guy still lives in exurbia, and yeah, I can't recommend the book. I do hope it finds an audience who will find all this novel and enlightening--I'm sure there's a huge potential market still. And I hope that smaller cities, despite their many differences with Manhattan, accept a lot of the positives of Manhattan, especially its density and its transit-/walking-/biking-orientation.

Neighborhood Elementary Schools

2011-04-11T16:14:00.001-04:00

(Re-post from the Scrantonite.)

Handsome late 1800s stone and brick school on Oram, in the heart of a neighborhood it serves. Sadly, one of two neighborhood schools being killed to create the inaccessible monstrosity pictured below.

The new school is inaccessible enough by car, at the far end of a disconnected, small residential street, and its design is extremely unapproachable by foot. Wouldn't want neighbors interacting, or parents having the odd chance to discuss the quality of their kids education. That'd be kinda threatening.

The kicker is that some wanted to name the new school after Jane Jacobs. Oy.

Maps of neighborhood census data

2011-03-31T11:39:00.000-04:00

The New York Times has some great maps of the 2010 census data, allowing you to see tract by tract how the population has changed in any city. http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/map

Related, I've used the data to make a spreadsheet of the growth and decline of neighborhoods and sections of Scranton, PA, which has finally leveled off after seven or 8 decades of decline. Interesting to see where the growth is that has offset the declines elsewhere. Basically boils down to intra-city sprawl, the UofS, and Latinos..

Scranton Neighborhood Populations

EPA Study: Urban more green than "Green"

2011-03-22T09:53:00.001-04:00

In short, living in a transit-oriented, multi-family home--even w/o green construction & green autos (A)-- is much more energy efficient than a conventional single-family house with all the green trappings (B).

via treehugger:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/02/location-efficiency-as-important-as-energy-efficiency.php

Picking redevelopment wisely: Lack of leverage at the Scranton Lace site

2011-03-09T10:36:00.000-05:00

The Scranton Times reported on a $4.5M grant to begin plans to redevelop the Scranton Lace site into artists lofts and studios. The Lace Works is an immense collection of contiguous 3- and 4-story buildings near the river, with a tall clock tower. You can see an aerial view of the site here.

There's a lot to like about this news, and you can appreciate the vision:

restoring a historic site with some beautiful industrial buildings
creating a artists colony -- what's not to like about artists
re-inhabiting a desolate stretch of the city
the site abuts the river, where the new hiking+biking trail is coming in

But there are a few big problems. First, is the scale of this site. There just aren't enough artists in the world who'd want to move to Scranton to fill this in. Even if it were opened up beyond artists, there just aren't enough people who'd want to live in this spot to fill a tenth of it in. The project calls for live/work spaces for 30 artists to start, which makes sense, but the whole site will still feel like a dead factory with 30 artists. It'll likely feel empty and dilapidated for hundreds of years unless huge amounts of cash are poured in, or something dramatic changes to quadruple the population of the city.

Most importantly, though, the site sits in a serious no-man's land. There's nothing in the surrounding blocks; it's an empty neighborhood beyond walking distance from downtown. There's one restaurant right across the river, and a dreary, uninviting suburban-style shopping center 5 blocks away, plus a few active industrial buildings amid a lot of rubble and ruin. There are few services and very little existing urban fabric here, so there's little leverage to be gained.

Proponents claim that each dollar would generate $8 of economic impact. We're dubious, but if that were true, it'd be easy to see how a better a location would mean $80 of economic impact per dollar spent. If it were closer to downtown, and/or in a neighborhood with an active commercial stretch, this would benefit the residents of the redeveloped site and the local businesses. There just isn't enough business going around to create a whole new set of services around the Lace Works, and even if there were, it would have some cannibalizing effect on other existing businesses elsewhere. That's the reality of a region with stagnant population numbers.

Location is key to using redevelopment funds wisely. Perhaps the spotty nature of state and federal grants makes it difficult to always consolidate such efforts and to leverage other redevelopment and existing infrastructure. But we do our cause a disservice in the long run by inefficient investment. A smaller project, downtown or nearby (say Pine Brook, South Side, West Side, or the The Hill) would be a cheaper proof of concept, would be a better location for artists, and could leverage each dollar spent into much more economic activity.

If the money's there specifically for this project, I probably wouldn't turn it down. And from a preservationist standpoint, I'd love to see the Lace Works preserved. But, an artist colony in that location is a poor investment.

The effectiveness of Buy Local campaigns

2011-02-10T12:54:00.000-05:00

Some evidence that they do work.

More here:
http://www.newrules.org/retail/news/survey-finds-buy-local-message-benefitting-independent-businesses

Links: holistic change vs blight removal, some good Street Films, walkability in an emergency

2011-01-26T12:11:00.000-05:00

The Bright Side of Blight
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/opinion/25lind.html?_r=1
Odd title given the content, but sound thinking. "But this scattershot approach has failed to create the kind of holistic change needed in this neighborhood — or its counterparts in St. Louis, Cleveland, Detroit and Baltimore." or Camden or Reading or Bridgeport...

"Land-based strategies that try to reinvent this vacant lot or that blighted ground do little to stem the larger social trends that created the spatial problem in the first place." Gives pause to thinking about spatial fixes--focusing solely on the physical structure of a city is at times merely treating the symptoms. But spatial thinking can also be used to re-align your investments and to restructure what you do have and can control economically, at the neighborhood and city levels.

Video: English towns slowing down traffic
http://www.streetfilms.org/no-need-for-speed-20s-plenty-for-us/#more-48003
An interesting stat they cite: hitting a pedestrian at 40mph = 85% chance of death, at 20mph = 5%.

Video: Revitalizing communities with parks
http://vimeo.com/17640426

Video: Revisiting Donald Appleyard's Liveable Streets
http://vimeo.com/16399180
Visualize how automobile traffic kills the social capital of neighborhoods.

Importance of walkable destinations in an emergency
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/the_importance_of_walkable_des.html
I've always felt uneasy about the idea of living anywhere where I couldn't walk to get basic provisions. And I'm always surprised when other people don't share this neurosis.

City briefs: Dollar value of walkability, Economics of bike infrastructure, PGH bikes, case for high speed rail

2011-01-20T23:30:00.000-05:00

Economic Analysis of Walkability
http://www.ceosforcities.org/files/WalkingTheWalk_CEOsforCities.pdf
Each WalkScore point can add $1,000s in value of a house in some cities, even after factoring out other variables. Even in our auto-centric country, demand for walkable urbanism is under-met.

Bike / Ped Infrastructure Creates More Jobs than Autos

http://sustainablecitiescollective.com/thecityfix/19778/new-report-biking-builds-jobs

http://fastlane.dot.gov/2011/01/new-data-adds-job-creation-to-the-many-benefits-of-bicycle-infrastructure.html

Not just healthier, better for the environment, more energy efficient, and cheaper to build. Now bike and pedestrian infrastructure creates more jobs per dollar too.

Video on Pittsburgh's biking culture.
http://www.streetfilms.org/journey-to-pittsburgh-to-walk-bike/
A little bigger than our 50-250,000 definition of small city (and with infrastructure for a what was once 600,000 people), but interesting to see.

A New Blueprint America Story on High Speed Rail
http://fastlane.dot.gov/2011/01/new-video-report-makes-the-case-for-investing-in-american-passenger-rail.html
Some making a case for the investment in the face of opposition to the spending. The example subjects live in smaller cities and periodically commute ~100 miles to larger cities.

Economy growing faster than Vehicle Miles Traveled
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/growing-without-driving/
Some good news. After decades of rising in tandem, the last 15 years see GDP and VMT diverging.

Are regional inequities in federal spending pushing people West and South?

2011-01-12T14:29:00.001-05:00

We've known for a long time that certain states get far more in federal expenditures than they pay in taxes. I was curious if these inequities were helping push people out of the Northeast and Midwest, and into the South and West, where the latest census data shows the largest growth again.

Unfortunately we can't create an alternate universe and change only these ratios and see what happens. But the data could clue us in to any correlation. Generally Western and Southern States are higher on the list of dollars received per dollar given, and states in these regions are also generally the fastest growing. However, on the state by state level, the correlation between this ratio and population growth is murkier, with some very high-growth, low-spending ratio states. Barring large numbers of interstate commuters, the correlation between spending inequities and migration looks fairly week.

See the chart here, (note the census region and population growth columns) --
https://sites.google.com/a/kamali.net/images/home/fed-spending-per-revenue-by-state

The spending inequities may still be a small contributing factor, as the weighted average in population growth for above $1 may be higher than growth for below $1. (Hope to do deeper analysis at some point.) And many of these states high on the list might have lower or even negative growth without them. Other contributing factors could still involve taxes and subsidies, and perhaps these inequities should be reduced in fairness. But looking at this chart, the inequities themselves don't appear to be the direct driving factor in the push South and West.

What's not at all murky is a fact that others have noted before: "Red" states overwhelmingly get more in federal expenditures than they pay in taxes, while the opposite is largely true for "Blue" states. (Note the last two columns.) So, paradoxically the states that are ostensibly for "smaller government" gain the most from federal spending.

Review: The Option of Urbanism by Christopher Leinberger

2011-01-04T10:05:00.000-05:00

I read The Option of Urbanism over the holidays, a rarity that I manage to get through even a short book in a few days lately. I had been trying to read Kotkin's Next 100 Million for a couple months, but had only gotten about half way through. I was happy to set Kotkin's book further aside for this, and some of the flaws I saw in Kotkin will help illustrate what I liked about Leinberger.

Kotkin exhibits seriously selective policy-blindness, focusing for example on some failed subsidized high-density projects while not addressing the larger subsidies and policy decisions that doom many such projects. He has some major anti-urban assumptions, that people generally want the suburban lifestyle and their choices seemingly aren't affected at all by domestic policy.

Plus, Kotkin has some occasionally bizarre points, such as downtowns being merely an industrial era anomaly, or suburban space being why American birthrates are higher than European ones. (Data suggests it's largely economic, and birthrates in many countries tick up again once per capita GDP reach American levels or higher.) And, he makes points about cul-de-sacs being "safer" (from crime) without addressing the causality of this, or the bigger picture of safety when you factor in the dangers of added time in the car.

So, no surprise that an urbanist blogger would put down the Kotkin book to read through Leinberger's book instead. But, it's not purely because I agree with the conclusions. Leinberger is much fairer to the other side, making pains to point out that there was no conspiracy leading to suburbanization. To Lenberger, we were as a country strongly wooed by the vision of Futurama at the 1940 World's Fair, the first really new development scheme since people first started building towns thousands of years before.

Walkable Urbanism vs Drivable Sub-urbanism

Before Futurama, town and city development followed the model of walkable urbanism-- amenities were within walking distance of the home. Even when trains and trolleys came about, they led people from work to their compact neighborhoods. This contrasts with drivable sub-urbanism (perhaps more appropriately called car-dependent sub-urbanism), introduced by Futurama and various visionaries like Le Corbusier.

He sees walkable vs drivable divide as better to study than "urban" vs "suburban", which someone like Kotkin uses to tout that nearly all growth over the next 40 years will be "suburban". A lot of this suburban growth will continually sprawl further out, but some will be denser and truly more urban than sub-urban. E.g. somewhere like Reston, VA is more "urban" than somewhere like the San Fernando Valley in the city of Los Angeles. Plus, many small cities may be ambiguous as to whether they're "urban" or "suburban" when they're near a larger city, so walkable urbanism and drivable sub-urbanism are a better way to analyze the built environment and demographics.

To Leinberger, drivable sub-urbanism has an average floor-area ratios (FARs) below 0.3, whereas walkable urbanism occurs at FARs above 0.8. The area in between doesn't really fit either mode well, seemingly destined to move to one of the stable states. (My own neighborhood falls into that dreaded in-between zone.) He estimates that at most 15-20% of current building stock in the U.S. would count as walkable urbanism.

Subsidies, Public Policy, and Development Funding

"From one perspective, any domestic policy engages in social engineering."

Leinberger gives huge credit to the emotional allure of Futurama, but continues to give a broadly detailed look at how the pendulum swung so far from walkable urbanism to drivable sub-urbanism, starting with government subsidies. These subsidies include direct subsidies of highways and roads, and indirect subsidies like intervention in the middle east. If foreign intervention were reflected in the price of gasoline, it would be $1.40 more per gallon. There are local subsidies too, like rules to charge the same amount for sewage infrastructure regardless of whether it's run another 20 feet or another 200 feet.

He also dives into local zoning laws, and how they've helped stymie walkable urbanism. He gives the example of Santa Fe, NM, whose vibrant downtown, if destroyed, couldn't be rebuilt under current zoning laws.

Finally he looks at the financial instruments that have arisen to fund development projects. Wall St. likes larger investments ($50M +) and commoditizing them to be able to compare apples to apples. So, the standard real estate project types (19 of them) are predominantly the cookie cutter suburban variety (a few each for office, residential, retail, etc.)

The Favored Quarter and Consequences of Drivable Sub-urban Growth

The new highways and people's new found freedom behind the wheel led to a "favored quarter" in metro areas--literally a one-quarter pie slice of land radiating out from the center, where the wealthiest ended up moving. The big box stores, high-end malls, and ultimately the edge cities ended up following. Thus the job growth in the metro area shifted to the favored quarter, leading to more policies and development favoring this quarter. This has accelerated the process pushed the development further and further out, expanding the land area of metros geometrically relative to population growth. This took the new jobs further out and away from the poor, increasing consequences like car dependence and social segregation.

Leinberger also rightly raises the many environmental and health effects, plus some economic effects. He does note that the safety from crime of suburban living is offset by the increased danger from driving, but this point is perhaps glossed over too quickly. When you factor in life-changing injuries--not just deaths--car dependency must come out even worse. Add to this illness from air pollution and lack of exercise, and the conventional safety argument is thoroughly backwards.

Moving Forward

Leinberger gives some reasons for hope, perhaps most significantly changing market sentiment. From the premium that walkable urban housing can charge, we can conclude that demand is not being met. He cites consumer research that says roughly equal numbers of people want walkable urban housing as want drivable sub-urban, with another roughly equal number on the fence. Further, the standard real estate product types that Wall St invests in are changing to incorporate some more walkable urban types, and the development industry is gradually learning how to do urban and mixed use projects.

And finally, there's a strong network effect in walkable urbanism's favor--more development makes existing development more useful, desirable, and valuable. Contrast this with drivable sub-urbanism, where added development increases traffic, decreases quality of life, and is greeted with NIMBYism.

Further Thoughts

The Option of Urbanism closes with some unintended consequences of walkable urbanism. All of these points, though, equate walkable urbanism with gentrification. There are some drawbacks to gentrification of course, but gentrification doesn't have to arise hand-in-hand with walkable urbanism.

It's also not clear why FAR, i.e. building density, is a better measure of walkable urbanism than population density, which will also factor in how much space is given to streets. Having a family of 4 in a 1000sf apartment is more conducive to walkable urbanism than a single squatter in a giant warehouse. Another alternative measure might be a floor-area to lot-width ratio. You could have a very walkable urban main street even if the lots go back far. Granted, these measures would have their own flaws in some scenarios.

Leinberger brings up Jane Jacobs at one point, but doesn't raise some of her key conditions for a healthy city: having narrow lot widths and a variety of ages of buildings. Narrow lots provide lots of different buildings and businesses to be seen on even a short walk, making the walk more interesting. The variety of ages allows multiple uses and income-levels in an area. As older buildings fall down the market, they can be used by lower-margin but necessary businesses, or for lower income tenants. Both of these Jacobsian conditions for a healthy city would be better met by much smaller, single-lot development, allowing cities or neighborhoods to grow organically over time.

I was left wrestling with whether such organic, varied blocks are possible now, given the drive toward mega-funded, large, disposable buildings, which take up whole blocks if not multiple blocks. Without the variety of ages and narrow facades, new development will have a Disney-like sameness to it and won't be nearly as interesting to walk around. Plus, it won't serve a variety of uses and economic classes, and entire blocks will slide down market together ending up as a giant undesirable eyesore in 20 years.

A last critique, the book is a little too kind to New Urbanism. While most of us would agree that New Urbanism i's still way better than typical sprawl, old urbanism is far better than new. There's a lot to be said about how our tax/subsidies, domestic policy, and very local funding for schools and services encourages not just intra-metropolitan but inter-metropolitan migration, pushing the upward and downward spirals that have raised newer, sprawling cities and razed older, denser cities. While there have been some economic and social factors at play as well, leveling the playing field may do a lot to preserve and restore older walkable cities which New Urbanism attempts to copy.

But these are rather small complaints for a 176-page book that succinctly and otherwise quite thoroughly explains how we arrived at extreme car dependence, and points to many of the ways out of this mess. Well worth a read.

More on size and the metabolism rate of cities

2010-12-21T09:13:00.000-05:00

Recently posted about the debate about how much size matters vs connectedness.

The NY Times Magazine has an article on Geoffrey West's models of urban economies of scale. Good for him for doing the math, if no one really had before. But, yeah, hate to agree with Joel Kotkin on much, but it does come out seeming quite simplistic.

Also, the dire environmental predictions later in the article equate economic output with resource consumption and energy use. This is likely a sublinear relationship itself, and could become much more so, with, say, a well designed carbon tax.

Briefs

2010-12-09T14:45:00.001-05:00

US redirecting High Speed Rail money from OH and WI
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-09/u-s-to-take-1-2-billion-in-high-speed-rail-funds-from-ohio-wisconsin.html?cmpid=yhoo
Presumably in wake of anti-rail politicians winning elections there. Sending it to states "eager" to build high speed rail-- perhaps the northeast will get more than its original pittance.

Redefining "Smart Growth"
http://sustainablecitiescollective.com/kaidbenfield/18308/its-time-update-definition-smart-growth?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Sustainable+Cities+Collective+%28all+posts%29&utm_content=Twitter
Lot's of interesting points brought up, though wonder if broader aims are too broad, and trying to make urban planning a panacea for everything. E.g. if it's better leaving things like access to healthy food to agricultural/health groups and the market. If the zoning is right, and other tax/subsidy/education programs enable or promote healthy food, the market should make them available locally.

PBS Video: How the high cost of transportation can ruin the American Dream
http://www.transitmiami.com/2010/12/05/how-high-the-high-cost-of-transportation-can-ruin-the-american-dream/
A bit on factoring the cost of transportation into housing. On average, families spend 52% of their post-tax income on housing+transportation. (Btw, surprised that Phoenix has any light rail line..)

Gas solidly above $3 per gallon again here in PA.. Hope it stays there--long term, lots of good can come from this.

I Wish This Was
http://iwishthiswas.com/
An awesome idea for re-imagining spaces and buildings. (Though it should maybe be "I Wish This Were" using the rare subjunctive case in English.;) I actually know a city with lots of available spaces (vacant, condemned, demolished) that would be a fun use of such stickers..

A few links: Cycling faster than driving. Lively downtowns. Density.

2010-12-03T13:14:00.000-05:00

New study shows urban cycling faster than driving:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/12/urban-cycling-faster-than-driving.ph
From Lyon. The same is probably true for short trips (under one or two miles) in small cities, when you factor in parking.

Insights into a Lively Downtown (video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsrqBHEOT0k
Case study of Ann Arbor. A vibrant downtown is "a beautiful mess". University towns are a special, advantaged breed, and a lot of the points may seem obvious, but an interesting watch.

At NYC density, entire planet's population would fit into texas.
http://urbanomnibus.net/2010/07/this-land-is-our-land/
Interesting thought experiment, though doesn't really address agriculture and other space consuming human activities. At Manhattan's density, the world would almost fit into New Mexico.

Walkscore Heat Maps available for small US Cities

2010-11-22T21:14:00.000-05:00

Sweet, these walkability maps had previously only been available for large cities, now 2500 US cities are covered. (Including my hometown pictured below.) And annoyingly, the ads by Google are showing lots of car ads..

http://blog.walkscore.com/2010/11/2500-cities-6000-neighborhoods/

How much does size matter?

2010-09-20T10:44:00.000-04:00

A hope of this blog is that small American cities have a future, and it will brighten over the next quarter century the way large cities' futures have brightened over the last quarter century.

Sustainable Cities has a recent post on the question of how much size matters--vs networks--for a city's success. It's spurred by this post, which argues that regional and global economic connections matter much more than a city's girth. (Though they're not saying that size doesn't matter at all.)

I largely agree with the argument, and personally I wouldn't have considered leaving a large city before the internets gave me a lifeline for work and culture. But the caveats are still important. Size still matters for a lot of things, e.g. if you want a major sports team, a garment district, an aquarium, or a world-class museum, and there are certainly economies of scale of services and infrastructure. However many of these economies of scale become achievable at relatively small sizes (e.g. basic services like sanitation, fire, police) and simply via density (i.e. becomes cheaper to maintain less infrastructure per capita.)

A side note, these economies of scale can inversely become death spirals for depopulating cities trying to maintain their existing services and infrastructure on a shrinking tax base.

More reading, point:
http://www.newgeography.com/content/001759-cities-size-does-not-matter-much-anymore

Counter-point:
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_living_city/P1/

A little tangential, but still interesting on cities vs broader regions:
http://burghdiaspora.blogspot.com/2010/09/divided-michigan.html

Metro w/ highest density of the "Creative Class" -- Trenton, NJ

2010-09-17T09:35:00.000-04:00

This one small city has a lot going for it:

50-60 miles from both New York and Philadelphia
Extremely frequent train service via Amtrak, NJ Transit, Septa
A non-cyclical base economy from NJ government

And now, supposedly it's the center of the most creative American metro area:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/09/creative-class-density/62571/

Yet, the city itself has the reputation of a total crap hole. With all these assets, this city should be a booming example of small-city living. Maybe it's as simple as not blockading its train station from its downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods?

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=trenton,+nj&sll=41.414947,-75.677272&sspn=0.016269,0.013797&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Trenton,+Mercer,+New+Jersey&ll=40.218225,-74.754131&spn=0.008283,0.010986&t=h&z=17

Rochester Dispatch 2: The last city Wegmans

2010-07-19T19:03:00.000-04:00

I'm conflicted about Wegmans. They have great foods, have an upmarket feel, and somehow are cheaper than most other grocers. But, their stores are way too big for a quick grocery run, and they exist primarily in far-flung suburban areas, where I hate spending my money.

Apparently there's only one Wegmans grocery store left in the city that gave it birth, Rochester, NY. The store is at the far edge of one of the few thriving residential+retail sections left in the city, where the company wants to expand it by tearing down the whole block it shares with some much older buildings, making room for a gigantic new store. Wegmans needs variances from the city to bypass the zoning laws that would prohibit their plan.

The Wegmans expansion has some pluses for the neighborhood, mostly in residents never needing to drive out to the larger store in Pittsford again, and in creating some jobs easily accessible to city workers. Plus, some complain that the current market is too crowded and there isn't enough parking.

I'll admit I'm biased--I like the scale of the current store. I greatly appreciate a good grocery that I can run into and out of in 5 minutes. I've only been in this store a handful of times, but have never seen it so crowded that it's been difficult to navigate. And, if parking becomes a problem, maybe that'll get more people from nearby to walk or bike--or for other more convenient stores to open up right near where they live. So, I'm not convinced about the negatives of the current store.

More importantly, the expansion plans would be a bad thing for the city long-term. In 20 years, if the city has turned around, having that big block-sized, monolithic building will be more of a barrier than a boon--even if Wegmans is thriving. It's not going to help spur retail around it, as these mega-groceries are self-contained and inward-focused. They're kinda like casinos, in how they try to trap you into their maze in a timeless haze, and to deplete you of your cash. Apparently, in true casino fashion, the design doesn't even include windows on the East Ave side.

The new store would have a massive parking lot to the West, creating a big barrier between it and said thriving neighborhood. Also, the sides facing North (University Ave) and East (Winton Ave) are really ugly--giant blank walls. For Winton especially that seems much worse than the bank building that was just knocked down, creating an added barrier from the neighborhood to the north, across the railroad tracks. The best side of the building by far faces the parking lot, leaving nothing but windowless faux facades, blank walls, and massive asphalt expanses to stick out their tongues at the surrounding city.

City councils in struggling cities sure seem short-sighted in favoring "big projects" rather than laying the economic and urban planning groundwork for growth. In the interest of appearing pro-job creation and getting a photo opp at a ground-breaking, they'll bend over for large companies that promise jobs. Otherwise without the subsidies/variances/etc, or so the threats go, the jobs would go to the suburbs. Cities should give up trying to compete on the suburbs' terms. Forget about luring big box stores, mega groceries, office parks etc. Instead, stick to what cities do well: mixed use, smaller storefronts, pedestrian- and bike-friendly street design, organic growth, preserving history, etc.

Whether historic or not, some of those existing buildings are interesting, and they feel like authentic city buildings. Leveling them for something sparkling and new may seem like a good idea, but the faux-facades won't fool anyone, and the block-size scale will become a major issue. Today's massive, gleaming project is tomorrow's massive, dated eyesore--way worse than a block with buildings of different ages and states of repair.

On this note, the other thing to consider is: what if Wegmans pulls out of the city altogether in 10 or 15 years, taking a tax write-down and abandoning the space. If so, Rochester will be left with a massive, aging retail space that will be nearly impossible to fill, much harder than a handful of smaller buildings / storefronts. And some great old buildings will have been lost to boot.

If Wegmans could incorporate these old buildings more organically--the way markets in some cities expand into multiple storefronts--that would probably be the best thing. But it'd be more difficult than razing them, and runs counter to the way such suburb-focused corporations think.

Screenshot from Bing Maps. Sketches published in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.

Rochester, NY Dispatch: tearing down the Inner Loop

2010-07-19T14:14:00.001-04:00

From the Democrat and Chronicle, a movement is afoot to tear down Rochester's Inner Loop. File the loop under misguided central-city highway projects of the 60s, before most people realized how highways could destroy neighborhoods and cities. Tearing this down (or filling it in to be more precise) seems like a no brainer.

In my visits to Rochester the loop (see map) always struck me as a rather useless highway; I can't see how it could save anyone more than a couple of minutes, And such expressways create huge barriers to pedestrian traffic and commerce, and they disrupt the overall urban fabric. Nearby neighborhoods, like Park or Monroe Aves., are really cut off from downtown, and vice versa, with the highway being the major factor. This dead zone hurts both downtown and the nearby neighborhoods.

The project may have made a little more sense when people thought the city was growing. (though even by 1960, it was starting to shrink.) Now having lost 38% of its peak population of 1950, the effects of this barrier have been disastrous, amplifying the downward spiral of the downtown and nearby neighborhoods by choking downtown off. Unlike it's bigger neighbor Buffalo (down 53% and counting) however, Rochester seems about ready to bottom out, at around 200,000 people. More sensible, cohesive planning like this highway removal will further stabilize the city and create some desirable pockets with potential for growth.

The removal should really be coupled with an extension of Park Avenue so that it leads all the way into downtown. East Ave is the closest access path, but it's on an inhuman to ostentatious scale. Continuing Park Ave, the most thriving residential/retail corridor of the city, would be good for neighborhood residents, giving an easier, better walk to offices downtown. And, it'd be good for downtown, as there'd be a more natural flow between the two areas. Eventually a real continuum between the two may form, with people living/working/shopping in the current dead zone.

I hope the state approves the project.

Jan Gehl's 10 Principles for livable transportation

2010-06-28T14:54:00.001-04:00

Gehl--a Danish urban planner, and apparently part of the reason why Copenhagen is an awesome city--leads the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), which has an exhibit that just started in NYC. He issued a report on the 10 key principles:

Press release for the report on PRNewswire

In a concise, vibrant and accessible format, the booklet promises to be a "must read" for all those involved in city design and urban planning, and forms the backbone of the ITDP exhibition "Our Cities Ourselves," which opens on June 24 at New York's Center for Architecture, before traveling to China, Brazil, Mexico and beyond.

...

What are the ten principles of sustainable transport?

Walk the walk: Create great pedestrian environments.

Powered by people: Create a great environment for bicycles and other non-motorized vehicles.

Get on the bus: Provide great, cost-effective public transport.

Cruise control: Provide access for clean passenger vehicles at safe speeds and in significantly reduced numbers.

Deliver the goods: Service the city in the cleanest and safest manner.

Mix it up: Mix people and activities, buildings and spaces.

Fill it in: Build dense, people and transit oriented urban districts that are desirable.

Get real: Preserve and enhance the local, natural, cultural, social and historical assets.

Connect the blocks: Make walking trips more direct, interesting and productive with small-size, permeable buildings and blocks.

Make it last: Build for the long term. Sustainable cities bridge generations. They are memorable, malleable, built from quality materials, and well maintained.

Missing explicitly, especially for small cities, some Jacobsian rules: small blocks, small lots, and street-facing buildings (as opposed to parking lots).

WNYC covered the exhibit here:

http://culture.wnyc.org/articles/features/2010/jun/12/urban-planning-brooklyn-bridge-michael-sorkin/

I can't find the actual report that the press release announces, and the ITDP's site doesn't have any news since June 14. (I personally would update my own blog before sending something to PRNewswire..:)

Via Sustainable Cities: http://tinyurl.com/29fzzsz

Cul de sacs + 10 other things that make you fat

2010-06-24T17:27:00.001-04:00

On treehugger:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/06/cul-de-sacs-make-you-fat.php

A vision for a sustainable, livable Dubuque (Iowa)

2010-06-21T17:22:00.002-04:00

NewsHour had a report Thursday on Dubuque, IA, and its mayor's vision for a sustainable, livable community. The most livable city in America according to the US Council of Mayors...?

How'd they do it:

started by getting community input
attracted federal and state grants
"complete streets" plan for a walkable city, with bike lanes and public transit
revitalized riverfront, museums, etc
rehabilitated downtown with mixed-use conversions

Only time will tell if these efforts were truly successful. And, though they call it a rust-belt city, its population decline is pretty trivial. So, it's probably easier done here than in a place that's, say, reeling from losing half its peak population. But there still may be lessons for other cities to learn.

Here's an overview of the story:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/dubuque-smart-city/overview/1039/
And, here's the video:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/video/module_byid.html?s=news01n40b6qeed

Public Space & Hanging Out

2010-06-07T22:45:00.000-04:00

This land is my land, it isn't your land.
You better get off it, before I shoot your head off.

--My brother c. 1980

I want to interpret this as some prescient statement about the changing national psyche, from communal purpose and sharing to selfishness and fear. But, it probably wasn't anything more than just a big brother taunting a little brother into his room to justify some pummeling. Whatever the case, it does feel like public space has decreased over the past few decades.

Recently, a friend of mine noted semi-seriously that "hanging out is an urban thing," which was similarly prescient and got me thinking a lot about the need for public space for a real urban experience. Cafes where one can linger, playgrounds, public plazas, public benches, etc. can all play a part. Public space is one of the important pieces of planning a vibrant city--probably less important than the street grid, zoning, or lot size--but it is important.

These hanging out spaces don't have to be a grand, expensive effort, as illustrated by this article we recently linked to on intersections in Portland, OR. Beautiful Landscaping, fanciful fountains, and cobblestone paths may be nice, but they're not necessary. A couple benches, a little community garden, a swingset, or even a few small boulders could provide a sense of space and encourage hanging out. Accessibility is more important than size or other features--cities should strive to provide somewhere to park ourselves every couple of blocks, right on the most heavily used routes.

If they're reasonably inviting and very accessible, people might start lingering, interacting, spurring some community. I know we're all scared of vagrants/druggies/teenagers/etc, but that fear is only a recipe for a downward spiral to zero public space and zero (non-commercial) interactions with other citizens.

22 Cities may start new street car systems

2010-06-03T11:56:00.000-04:00

in the next couple of years. And, not just large cities:
http://www.newurbannews.com/15.3/streetcars.html

Found via:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=22-citi es-that-may-have-new-streetc-2010-04