New Urbanism Essentials

[longshoreman26 1]

I found the following info on wikipedia and believe it is very useful for SC4 proponents of NEW URBANISM.  Please accept my apology if I'm duplicating another post.

 

Defining elements

The heart of new urbanism is in the design of neighborhoods, which can be defined by 13 elements, according to town planners

[longshoreman26 1]

I would love to hear some opinions of readers on New Urbanism, its effects, its positives, its negatives, and how you implement into SC4.

[jmjselect 0]

I haven't used new urbaism in sc4 but experience it first hand.

I used to live in niceville,fl(near destin/ft.walton) and that's just down the road from seaside.  I used to go there every other week or 2

It's nice, it has that small town feel and the people are really nice.

but I wish there was more variety in the look of the arcitecture(cosmetics), yeah there was variations of all the buildings but those variations weren't all that different, however the layouts of the house's were cool.

the center was nice as well, there was a huge grass court type thing with businesses and restaruants flanking it.  then across the road, that wen't thru town, was the beach.

all and all it's very nice and would probaly be a very nice place to live, but I'm a private person I'd rather live on a couple of acres off the beaten path.

[Odainsaker 2,133]

You can also call it "traditional urbanism," for the principles are not new inventions, but a restoration of historically sound planning ideas foolishly ignored by the wasteful car-oriented developments of modern post-war suburban sprawl.  Andres Duany, though he teaches and practices in Miami, does public lectures and seminars in cities throughout the country, often using a set of images that are utterly convincing.  Try to catch one if you can, or check your public access channels to see if they broadcast its recordings.

Theoretically, you could do New Urbanist planning using buildings dressed in any style of architecture. New Urbanist planning is not so much about individual buildings or their styles, but arranging those buildings into a sensible and humane neighborhood that functions as a real community. The design concepts may determine the building's type, size, footprint, and setback/build-to lines, but fixing cosmetic style is not really critical. Obviously, we do not see many Modernist houses or mixed-style newer nighborhoods in North America, and most new ones have that clap-board New England look, but that is driven more by the requirements of the residential real estate market and construction industry, which have found that simplified pastiche images of "traditional styles" sell best for their purposes, and are most efficient to construct en masse as the industry is already geared to create them. Furthermore, many suburbs, both new and old, tend to set overly limiting rules and legally-binding covenants that fix a very narrow range of allowable appearances (right down to the colors of paint trim a home owner can use). These rules and convenants are really a superficial way of trying to maintain the image of a homogenous community, when in truth they are more about maintaining false fronts for what are really dysfunctional anti-social communities. The ideal New Urbanist community would not need to be so explicit in setting cosmetic building style, while the typical sprawl suburb almost always uses the same basic housing plans with the same limited menu of color options or pastiche purchaseable feature upgrades. Forced homogeneity of appeareances, which is really about forcing the homogeneity of the social class, race, and status of the people in such a place, is an issue peculiar to residential suburbia and of which New Urbanism is trying to move away from. Unfortunately, I am not yet too familiar with any old sprawl suburb or traditionalist New Urbanist neighborhood that has successfully freed itself from forced style and its attendant social homogeneity.

I would criticize current popular modes of New Urbanism, however, for its tendency to create new suburbs or new towns. They may be prettier and better-functioning home-town suburbs than the usual car-oriented sprawl, but they are still more of the same dispersion of residents outward away from the city center. Simply put, it is easier to construct a new town from scratch rather than to try and rework an existing area into a new better pattern with new infill and restored connections. Many of the earlier projects of the movement were still experiments with only the tentative interest of unconvinced developers. But that is already changing, and it way past time we looked back to poor current designs of our cities, for the principles of New Urbanism, with its focus on connections, mixed-use, real public place, work just as well in a dense urban context as they do in the suburbs. This puts New Urbanism into the deeply complicated urban social issues of neighborhood revitalization, gentrification, and public housing, but New Urbanism offers the best options and tools to make it work.

[Jasoncw 11,839]

Yeah, a lot of new urbanist neighborhoods are more like mixed use, open air malls.

I don't think there should be new suburbs (notice how none of these places are new cities, they're just suburbs of existing ones) untill all of the existing ones are filled up.

[funkalunatic 0]

Urbanism is all fine and dandy, but I've got some beefs with the list.

1. You don't need a "center" to have an aesthetic sense of place, and just because there's a physically identifiable center to a community doesn't necessarily mean anything positive. Functionally speaking, a center is not essential for transit either.

3. I'm not convinced that diversity of housing styles is necessary for an economically diverse community. In fact, while it may help get the rich and the poor side by side, it may keep them segregated in terms of community. Similar housing types may render economic status less visible, and keep it from hindering a sense of community.

5. Communities are organisms that must be allowed to grow themselves. The implication that restriction is the rule and that only certain things should be "permitted" in a list of fundamentals suggests a short-sighted theory with limited applications. Why must there be a garage-like shed specifically in the back of a house? It's ridiculous.

9. Another item that might be suited for some applications, but certainly not all, or even most.

11. This is just car hate. I like to work on my car in front of my house and say hi to my neighbor (edit - this is in my fantasy where I have a house and a car that I work on). Driving a car shouldn't be like going to the bathroom. My biggest beef with designing living spaces these days is a lack of honesty. The new 5-story condos accross the street from my apartment would have you think that they are some kind of urban, rising straight up right near the street, the design would play down the fact that there's a big old parking lot in the middle of the block, and in the first story of the building itself. All sorts of facadical features that probably looked really nifty and sophisticated in AutoCAD vie for your attention so you don't notice that you're just looking at a big piece of concrete dressed up to look like a yuppie dollhouse. Give me brutalism to that any day.

/end rant

[confused04 14]

I know this is kinda old but I found an excellent documentary that explains America's current situation, the (in my opinion) hope for American Cities with the rise of New Urbanism /Traditional Urbanism (call it romanticizing of the pre WWII if you wish), and even give you cultural insights to America.

Inner City Blues Documentary

It is FREE to watch by the makers and it even briefly mentions Minneapolis . I agree whole heartedly with this documentary and I have even seen the revitalization of Minneapolis over parking lots, which kinda makes me crint at your #11 assessment funkalunatic. New Urbanism significantly decreases visible parking areas... I have no problem with that. I've seen this in many cities now and I'm convinced that if American cities have any hope in creating a decent urban feel and create efficient spending practices, new urbanism is the way to go. As a tax paper and an urban dweller, I loathe the fact that my tax dollars are going to building roads more than 50 miles away. Current state budgets essentially subsidize people to move further away. If those people had to pay the true cost of moving to the suburbs, every city in America would be much denser. But... anyway, enjoy the documentary and cringe at how racist we once were. The only significant downside to new urbanism is gentrification but I'm sure we can work out a solution.

[Duke87 1,070]

Well, allow me to off my comments an criticism item by item

Originally posted by: longshoreman26 The neighborhood has a discernible center. This is often a square or a green and sometimes a busy or memorable street corner. A transit stop would be located at this center. quote>

It's not really necessary for all neighborhoods to have a single defining center. Places that are more prominent than other, certainly, but the entire neighboorhood need not revolve around one spot. As for putting a transit stop at said prominent points, they do make optimal places to put transit stops, but depending on things like the geography, it may not always be practical to hit them all. After all, a subway line tends to serve things better if it heads on a somewhat direct route to/from the city center rather than zigzagging to try and hit all the prominent points. You need not hit them all precisely, getting close is good enough for most such points (depending on just how prominent they really are). There are other concerns, too. If running a train line to a town center means routing it through wetlands, you're going to want that train line to avoid that town center so as to not trample on the environment. Similar can sometimes be said if it means running the line past somewhere where it would have a huge NIMBY effect.

Most of the dwellings are within a five-minute walk of the center, an average of roughly 2,000 feet. quote>

Er, 2000 feet in five minutes is just over 4.5 mph. That's more of a five minute jog. But you've got something in that an urban neighborhood needs to be rather dense and compact, not sprawled and spread out.

There are a variety of dwelling types—usually houses, rowhouses and apartments—so that younger and older people, singles and families, the poor and the wealthy may find places to live.quote>

This is one of those utopian ideals which isn't going to fly in the real world. Do you really think a corporate CEO is going to want to have working class families as neighbors (or vice versa, for that matter)? Of course not. This is why you naturally have good neighborhoods and bad neighborhoods; high class neighborhoods and low class neighborhoods- similar people will tend to want to stick together and not want to mix with people too dissimilar to them.

At the edge of the neighborhood, there are shops and offices of sufficiently varied types to supply the weekly needs of a household.quote>

The edge of the neighborhood? That seams rather backwards. Usually shops and whatnot go in the center while the residential areas surround them.

A small ancillary building or garage apartment is permitted within the backyard of each house. It may be used as a rental unit or place to work (for example, office or craft workshop).quote>

Not all parcels of land are going to have sufficient space for such a thing. This is more of a suburban thing than an urban thing, really. Of course, permitting one and saying there should be one are two different things- it's fine and dandy to permit one, but that doesn't mean that hiving one will be practical, or that people will want one.

An elementary school is close enough so that most children can walk from their home.quote>

Ah, yes. If only. See, in the real world,<

[krbe 193]

Originally posted by: Duke87 And even then, I'd argue that anyone should be allowed to build whatever the hell they want to on their property so long as it's safe and isn't a nuisance to those nearby. Want to put up a 60 story tower in a neighborhood full of nothing but row houses? Go ahead. Your property, your call. No stupid zoning regulations should stop you. Just make sure the building meets the code.quote>

A sixty-story building in your backyard would generally be considered a nuisance to those nearby in a row-house neighbourhood.

[confused04 14]

Originally posted by: krbe

Originally posted by: Duke87 And even then, I'd argue that anyone should be allowed to build whatever the hell they want to on their property so long as it's safe and isn't a nuisance to those nearby. Want to put up a 60 story tower in a neighborhood full of nothing but row houses? Go ahead. Your property, your call. No stupid zoning regulations should stop you. Just make sure the building meets the code.quote>

A sixty-story building in your backyard would generally be considered a nuisance to those nearby in a row-house neighbourhood.quote>

I don't think New-Urbanists would support that kinda errant construction. There are zoning restrictions in both Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon despite instituting New Urbanism concepts. I'm sure they'd rather place a park to separate the 60 story building AT WORST, if they even allow it. Minneapolis restricts buildings by the river and in the North Loop to match the neighborhood.

[Duke87 1,070]

Originally posted by: confused04

Originally posted by: krbe

Originally posted by: Duke87 And even then, I'd argue that anyone should be allowed to build whatever the hell they want to on their property so long as it's safe and isn't a nuisance to those nearby. Want to put up a 60 story tower in a neighborhood full of nothing but row houses? Go ahead. Your property, your call. No stupid zoning regulations should stop you. Just make sure the building meets the code.quote>

A sixty-story building in your backyard would generally be considered a nuisance to those nearby in a row-house neighbourhood.quote>

I don't think New-Urbanists would support that kinda errant construction. There are zoning restrictions in both Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon despite instituting New Urbanism concepts. I'm sure they'd rather place a park to separate the 60 story building AT WORST, if they even allow it. Minneapolis restricts buildings by the river and in the North Loop to match the neighborhood.quote>

Yeah, see, I never said I was a new urbanist. What I am is a libertarian. Or in other words, you have the right to do with your property as you see fit.

And when I say "so long as it's not a nuisance" I mean from a strictly functional and practical standpoint. If the neighbors don't like it, or if it doesn't look nice (that's subjective, anyway), that doesn't define it as a nuisance. It's only defined as a nuisance if it's actually physically detrimental to things in the area. For instance, if there is insufficient transportation that it causes traffic jams, then it's a nuisance. If you have a factory spewing noxious fumes, then it's a nuisance. It's presence bothers the neighbors- that's not a nuisance. You have every right to do as you see fit on your property, and if the neighbors don't like it, well tough for them. They're not the boss of you.

All that said though, what developer is really going to want to build a 60 story building in a low rise neighborhood? Not too many, so this isn't really that much of an issue.

[hamsterTK 93]

Personally I like the idea of planning in a way that is more human scaled.

As for the basic tenets I think it all comes down to context. Some facets of New Urbanism may work in some cases and prove to be unworkable in others. That's just how it is and a failure for one particular ideal of NU shouldn't mean than the basic concept isn't viable.

And when I say "so long as it's not a nuisance" I mean from a strictly functional and practical standpoint. If the neighbors don't like it, or if it doesn't look nice (that's subjective, anyway), that doesn't define it as a nuisancequote>

So what if it decreases property values? what do you say to that? Not that I personally agree that this issue should be the most important factor but regrettably is probably the most widespread justification for land-use regulations specifically in suburban areas. Like what Odainsaker said, covenants exist a lot of times that limits what you can do from the get go even if you own the property for the very reason of making sure the development stays valuable.

Anyways, might interest you to know there is a fight currently over this very thing in Houston, which is very lassiez faire about development. A tall condo tower is going up in a low rise and WEALTHY neigborhood. Funny how many of those around the fight want the tower gone but in other situations would be apprehensive of zoning.

A connected network... like a grid? That's actually standard practice in basically every American city already and pretty much always has been. It's European cities that have no rhyme or reason to their street layout because there's just about zero planning involved, things basically just develop chaotically.quote>

Uhh...where are these cities where the Grid is still strictly followed? besides places where it's done as a smart growth/NU thing. Since the postwar era how prevalent has been in the greater part of the US? It's one thing for a city to grow organically and another when suburbs PURPOSELY limit connectivity. There is a sentiment against anything that makes it easy to get around. Part of it of course is due to outdated views on crime prevention but that's a real joke when you realize some of the worst hoods in america today are decayed inner ring burbs.

Maybe it's stupid to assume people will walk everywhere. But I think it's stupid that in my own life I have to drive almost a mile to access a strip shopping center that practically backs up to my neigbors yard.

.

[Odainsaker 2,133]

Uh, this is going to be a long one as I have lots to touch upon.   I don't usually like quotes within quotes within quotes, but this is the clearest way given how involving my topics will ramble:

Originally posted by: longshoreman26 The neighborhood has a discernible center. This is often a square or a green and sometimes a busy or memorable street corner. A transit stop would be located at this center. quote>

It's not really necessary for all neighborhoods to have a single defining center. Places that are more prominent than other, certainly, but the entire neighboorhood need not revolve around one spot. As for putting a transit stop at said prominent points, they do make optimal places to put transit stops, but depending on things like the geography, it may not always be practical to hit them all. After all, a subway line tends to serve things better if it heads on a somewhat direct route to/from the city center rather than zigzagging to try and hit all the prominent points. You need not hit them all precisely, getting close is good enough for most such points (depending on just how prominent they really are). There are other concerns, too. If running a train line to a town center means routing it through wetlands, you're going to want that train line to avoid that town center so as to not trample on the environment. Similar can sometimes be said if it means running the line past somewhere where it would have a huge NIMBY effect.quote>

Well, transit can be a bus.  The greater vision is to coordinate the devlopment of dense centers such that an overall sensible transit plan can be made.  Small nodal neighborhood centers within central walking distance of its community with a regular bus route to greater community "town" squares with light rail transit to large major nodal centers in the satellite cores where heavier transit exists to other major nodal satellite cores or directly to downtown.  As few or as many steps as necessary.  Even if they have to change systems, it is still possible for a pedestrian to go from one neighborhood to any other across the city without requiring the use or ownership of a personal automobile.  I know too many bus routes that connect one commerical strip to another, but as they do not necessarily connect neighborhoods to one another, they fail as effective mass transit because the coverage is haphazard.  The whole web has to hang together as a system, or it won't catch the flies.  Of course, the density, layout, and mixed demographics is important, as the current existing highway suburb of bounded, isolated, and homogenous income pods solely revolving around the automobile pysically does not support this model.  New Urbanism wants this changed.

Wetlands, challenging geography, and nimby cries are transit planning issues regardless if new urbanist models are used or not.  I would argue that if you are building dense communities among wetlands, then we are already engaging in poor planning.

There is another purpose the method, and that is to create a "community" by creating a identifiable focal point.  Telling someone, "I live in the Broadacres West suburban development," doesn't convey the same message as saying, "I live near Saint Paul's Square."  One is a vague geographic area typically identified by homogenous class and income, the other is a specific identifiable place.  The community identity becomes one of place and the people in it, rather than one of overall class and those excluded from it.  If a neighborhood can create a positive community sense among its residents and patrons, so much is possible.

[krbe 193]

Originally posted by: Duke87It's only defined as a nuisance if it's actually physically detrimental to things in the area. For instance, if there is insufficient transportation that it causes traffic jams, then it's a nuisance.quote>

The excessive traffic such a tower would bring is a nuisance in itself; it's going to have a bad health effect and land value would be going down. Just the precense of a tower would probably have a bad effect.

[Mulefisk 15]

The problem with many New urbanist development projects today is that they follow the same growth model as normal suburban development. 

The thing is, in any region you will have a number of arterial roads that meet and intersect at several points. Historiacally, at these intersections settlements would form in order to accomodate people doing trade. These settlements would grow bigger and bigger until eventually reaching city size. For example, just look at any major city in your region, and how it is geographically placed in relation to the area around it. This is really the basic necessity for a city to form. It should be a place where people from outlying areas conveniently can meet and do trade.

All cities built before 1950 in the US are based on this model. They have evolved naturally because there was a need for their existence. What New Urbanism tries to do, is to take this ideal picture we have of older cities, and try to recreate this image without knowledge of the context which led to their creation. The result is neighborhoods that look like old american small towns, except they're placed far far away from any important intersection. The city you're left with is simply a bad recreation of an original, on the same line as the pyramid recreation in Las Vegas. Yes it looks like the pyramids but, well, it's not.

It doesn't really matter how you space out your neighborhood, or how cozy it looks, as long as it's in the wrong place. New Urbanism is, and will remain a nostalgic pipe dream as long as the people who endorse it fail to realize the mechanics behind a real city.

[Duke87 1,070]

Originally posted by: Odainsaker

Which is the argument for ending the discriminatory pattern of laying out suburban neighborhoods designed to encapsulate homogenous incomes and lifestyles.  Too many bubble neighborhoods of us-versus-them.  And as income and class is the now sanitized way of discrimination, where the different demographic groups are generally already fixed into their income caste due to a past history now declared null, income discrimination naturally yields to unspoken race discrimination by default, even when racism is not intended.  The solution is to allow for a mixing of the income patterns, and the way to do that is to mix the available housing types immediately available in a given location, so as to reintegrate income depressed ghettos and barrios into the normative community.  By carefully integrating the incomes, you will begin to naturally start the integration of the races and ethnicities.  By showing that different people can live normally among each other and that communites do not need to be homogenous to be safe, we can put paranoid white suburban flight into its overdue coffin.  We will no be able to do this so long as our housing patterns continue to physically encourage rigid separation by class.quote>

See, the trouble is that this seperation is not just an issue of urban/suburban planning- it's also an issue of human nature. Birds of a feather want to flock together, and birds not of a feather don't want to mix. The result is that hight class people don't want to live near lower class people, so if you start plopping higher end developments in  poor neighborhoods, one of two things happens: either nobody of higher class wants to live there and you have trouble renting it out, or the higher class people flock there, more higher class developments get built, and all the lower class people who currently live there get driven away because land values go up and they can no longer afford things. Either way, it's no good. You need neighborhoods that are almost all poor because poor people often will not be able to afford neighborhoods where higher class people live.

Not really.  Older American networks are like this, but typical suburban ones are not.  Discriminatory pod planning tries to isolate neighborhoods and limit access between each different pods.  Then cul-de-sacs became the rage, which offered the appearance of a tight community with controlled access.  Instead, we got costly spagetti networks and locked patches full of dead ends, all within a bounded pod development with limited ways in or out.  The result is that the corner store may physically be within short walking distance or even just behind the backfence, but because of the walled-off arrangements of streets and properties, it is necessary to use a car to drive out of the neighborhood pod and onto an arterial connecting to the commercial pod in order to get back around to the store.  Or if you now you neighborhood really well, you know where the broken slats in the fenceline are and can sneak across through the back of people's homes and businesses.  This is stupid planning that deliberately puts people into cars and fills up arterial roads for short needless car trips, and the underlying rationale to create neighborhoods by limiting access and homogenization fails anyway.quote>

The trouble here is that people like living on dead ends and cul-de-sacs vecause it means the streets will be quiet. If the street goes through, sure it shortens trip lengths, but it also then means that people who don't live there will use it as a through street- bringing more traffic, which the residents don't w

[TRNSTN 0]

I don't know about North American cities, but from what I've seen of Asian cities, mixed use development works quite well. I guess New Urbanism is applied only to North American Cities just because of the way they are and the ideal that is presented.

The New Urbanism rules that apply make every city or town to-be sound like small town America. Is this compatible with large modern cities?

[Micah 16]

Mixed-use development is, in fact, in North American cities and works well. Throughout Houston, there are mixed use projects featuring 40-50 story buildings with office, residental, and retail in one. There's even a building called The Mix which holds retail and office in one.

[screamingman12 30]

Originally posted by: Duke87

Well, this is, of course, easy to say in hindsight. But we've already done a lot with the suburban sprawl model- to the point where eliminating "car territory" would require razing all those suburbs and forcing all the people who live in them to crowd into denser concentrations so they can all be in "pedestrian territory". And, of course, nobody's going to that. We already made the choice to build lots of suburbs- and now we have to live with it. We can't unmake that choice. We can avoid building further that way, but places which already are designed that way are going to stay that way- and so we're going to have to accommodate them one way or another.

quote>

Who says that we can't reverse it? It's not a hard thing to do, it just takes time and dedication. You reverse suburbanism by undoing what created it, re-develop urban centers that have been neglected. People will move back into them, and presto, suburbs are gone! This is the main goal of the Portland Streetcar project, to remake urban areas and make them more friendly and livable, not sure about you, but I think it works quite well.

The only 'problem' is that this would have to be done on a huge scale. No matter, Chicago, LA and New York all at one point had streetcar systems over 1,000 miles in legnth. If politicians care, they will pass laws to rebuild these systems, and if people care, they will vote them the money to make it happen. The ulitmate foe of suburbia is rail transit, by making this mainstream, you can remake urban centers en-masse, and when people don't need cars, they won't own them. It is possible to do, but it will take time, effort and money, but if it is sucessful the results are unimaginable.

[hamsterTK 93]

redevelopment of blighted inner ring suburbs is already happening in many cities.

It can go about by demolishing obsolete shopping centers and apartment complexes and replacing them with infill. Then the surrounding residential streets get new street treatments and passages/trails can be cut through to connect things for pedestrians. Then some sort of transit can but in to take stress of the roads.

The former is a natural thing and is done by private developers and will happen regardless because close in living will always be desirable in a healthy urban city. The latter is a city responsibility and is necessary though or else traffic and unfriendly street enviroments can emerge.

I mean isn't this basically what planning is?

[Duke87 1,070]

Originally posted by: screamingman12Who says that we can't reverse it? It's not a hard thing to do, it just takes time and dedication. You reverse suburbanism by undoing what created it, re-develop urban centers that have been neglected. People will move back into them, and presto, suburbs are gone! This is the main goal of the Portland Streetcar project, to remake urban areas and make them more friendly and livable, not sure about you, but I think it works quite well.

The only 'problem' is that this would have to be done on a huge scale. quote>

Yes, and the scale is what kills it. Big things never happen in America anymore because some group is bound to oppose them if they're proposed, and likely knock them down. Not to mention that when the cost is found out, people will put their tail between their legs and run.

No matter, Chicago, LA and New York all at one point had streetcar systems over 1,000 miles in legnth. If politicians care, they will pass laws to rebuild these systems, and if people care, they will vote them the money to make it happen.quote>

Oy. Here we go again with the streetcars thing. We've already established in previous discussions that putting streetcars back in Manhattan would be a horrible idea. For smaller cities and outlying areas, though, it's more practical (look at Denver).

The ulitmate foe of suburbia is rail transit, by making this mainstream, you can remake urban centers en-masse, and when people don't need cars, they won't own them. It is possible to do, but it will take time, effort and money, but if it is sucessful the results are unimaginable.quote>

Well, rail transit being convenient certainly cuts down on car usage, but it really doesn't do much towards preventing sprawl. In fact, it encourages it. Northern Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens were mostly farms toward the end of the 19th century. What enabled them to develop into what the are today is, that's right, rail transit (specifically the subway). Still, the sprawl that develops from rail is denser than the sprawl that develops from highways, so in that respect it is helpful.

So, my prescription for New York is reasonable congestion pricing combined with more and better subways. See, subways run below the street. They don't get in the way of and interfere with surface car and pedestrian traffic!

[Mulefisk 15]

Originally posted by: screamingman12 Who says that we can't reverse it? It's not a hard thing to do, it just takes time and dedication. You reverse suburbanism by undoing what created it, re-develop urban centers that have been neglected. People will move back into them, and presto, suburbs are gone! This is the main goal of the Portland Streetcar project, to remake urban areas and make them more friendly and livable, not sure about you, but I think it works quite well.

quote>

 

Erm.. So the suburbs are just going to magically disappear? People won't stop living in suburbs.

Realistically, if the city centres are taken over by rich people, the suburbs will be inhabited by poor people.

[TRNSTN 0]

Realistically, if the city centres are taken over by rich people, the suburbs will be inhabited by poor people.quote>

 

I agree with you; If cities are devloped or revamped successfully property values do go up and that's where you get luxury condos and penthouses for the rich. Things get way too expensive to live downtown so the suburbs are the cheaper alternative, sprawl or not. 

That possibly means that city centres are very desirable and it's not that people don't want to live in them, it's that they can't afford it. Would new urbanism be a viable solution for large numbers of people and also allowing he poor to actually inhabit cities? American cities seem to have the opposite effect where the inner city is seen as the ghetto part of town whereas the suburbs are for the middle-class rich. 

I'll use my hometown region as an exmale. In recent years Toronto's seen it's downtown proerpty values sky rocket, people and businesses have decided to relocate, but there a lot of luxury condos being built downtown for the rich. Meanwhile in surrounding areas, Markham is a prime example, where property taxes and values are much lower, businesses relocate and their workers have no choice but to also. The suburban sprawl comes with it, because it's possible to build larger houses (thus sprawl) and sell them for a lot cheaper which is what's happening.

[hamsterTK 93]

I agree things are changing like that, downtowns and urban areas becoming desirable again. Blasts the old "sprawl is what everyone wants" anti-urban rhetoric out of the water. Take that Joel Kotkin...

Infill is the future. But then I wonder how the social upheaval gentrification can cause might affect popular attitudes and planning philosophy way down the line.

[screamingman12 30]

Originally posted by: Duke87

Originally posted by: screamingman12Who says that we can't reverse it? It's not a hard thing to do, it just takes time and dedication. You reverse suburbanism by undoing what created it, re-develop urban centers that have been neglected. People will move back into them, and presto, suburbs are gone! This is the main goal of the Portland Streetcar project, to remake urban areas and make them more friendly and livable, not sure about you, but I think it works quite well.

quote>

The only 'problem' is that this would have to be done on a huge scale.

Yes, and the scale is what kills it. Big things never happen in America anymore because some group is bound to oppose them if they're proposed, and likely knock them down. Not to mention that when the cost is found out, people will put their tail between their legs and run.

quote>

Then you make the opposition sound so rediculously incorrect (which they are) that no one will listen to them...

No matter, Chicago, LA and New York all at one point had streetcar systems over 1,000 miles in legnth. If politicians care, they will pass laws to rebuild these systems, and if people care, they will vote them the money to make it happen. quote>

Ok. Here we go again with the streetcars thing. We've already established in previous discussions that putting streetcars back in Manhattan would be a horrible idea. For smaller cities and outlying areas, though, it's more practical (look at Denver).

quote>

I never said where they would go. Put them wherever you want, they will still have mostly the same results, but if you are implying that the size of the city will doom them, then I ask you why is Chicago considering building a streetcar line along the Navy Peir/Ogden Ave/Carroll Ave corridor? Why have the streetcars of San Francisco and the light rail systems of Los Angeles been so sucessful? Why are the streetcar circulator projects in DC and LA gaining momentum? Why is the Queens light rail line being planned? As for the money, these systems cost relatively little compared to what they give. Portland's system cost $52 million, but has generated nearly $2 billion in economic development.

The ulitmate foe of suburbia is rail transit, by making this mainstream, you can remake urban centers en-masse, and when people don't need cars, they won't own them. It is possible to do, but it will take time, effort and money, but if it is sucessful the results are unimaginable.quote>

Well, rail transit being convenient certainly cuts down on car usage, but it really doesn't do much towards preventing sprawl. In fact, it encourages it. Northern Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens were mostly farms toward the end of the 19th century. What enabled them to develop into what the are today is, that's right, rail transit (specifically the subway). Still, the sprawl that develops from rail is denser than the sprawl that develops from highways, so in that respect it is helpful.

So, my prescription for New York is reasonable congestion pricing combined with more and better subways. See, subways run below the street. They don't get in the way of and interfere with surface car and pedestrian traffic!quote>

Yes, but they cost much more to construct, take longer, and are much more expensive. As for sprawl, they do generate it, but in a much more organized and friendly manner than the all-out chaos of freeway inspired sprawl.

The entire concept rests on taking the automobile out of the equation. It can be done, many corporate interests don't want it to be done, but a day will come when the city of Los An

[Duke87 1,070]

Originally posted by: screamingman12a day will come when the city of Los Angeles will be rid of urban freeways.quote>

Let's hope not. After all, no matter how many mass transit options you have and how many people use it, getting rid of freeways means decreasing the capacity to move people around, and you don't want to do that unless the means of movement is getting in the way of something- which freeways don't. Just cover them over and build stuff over them if you find them unsightly. No need to rip them up. Besides, you never know, some unforeseen radical change in circumstances could come about that makes those freeways all of a sudden real attractive again. You know, "don't burn your bridges behind you"? Yeah.

[Tarkus 6,931]

 

Originally posted by: screamingman12Who says that we can't reverse it? It's not a hard thing to do, it just takes time and dedication. You reverse suburbanism by undoing what created it, re-develop urban centers that have been neglected. quote>

I have one really good question for you, screamingman12.  Why? 

Why do you want to reverse it?  Why do we need dense urban centers?  These may seem like silly questions to ask, but all things considered, I think they are valid and pertinent to the entire debate.

I think the necessity for large urban centers has effectively been challenged by technological developments, such as the automobile and telecommunications.  They have made decentralization possible.  In effect, in most situations now, it is no longer necessary for people to live in a centralized environment, such as a large city.  As technology develops further, even further decentralization will be possible.  The fact that we're able to have this conversation despite the fact that many of us live several thousands of miles apart and on different continents is a testament to this very fact.

The fact that New Urbanists/Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) proponents are scared of cars seems to suggest to me that this movement is wholly reactionary.  It has one foot deeply planted in Neo-Luddism.  By taking the car out of the equation, one would effectively be curtailing mobility back to 19th Century levels.  One would effectively be exclusively reliant on modes of transportation which are severely limited in where they go, and when they leave/arrive.  Again, I must ask, why?

And the fact of the matter is, alternative fuels and forms of propulsion for automobiles are in the works, which are far less damaging to the environment.  Once these technologies are implemented, there really will be no real legitimate reason to "hate" cars anymore, as many NU/TOD enthusiasts seem to do. 

Another thing which I believe needs to be discussed is why so many urban planners are in favor of these sorts of schemes--tax base.  Higher Densities=More Taxes=More Units to sell=More Money for cities, planners and developers. 

I have lived in the suburbs/outskirts of Portland, Oregon for most of my life--I'm currently about 100 miles south of Portland.  I went to PSU for a year, during which I commuted via the MAX Blue Line, and for part of the year by the Portland Streetcar.  Sure, the trains look nice, and it's fun to ride them every once and awhile, I'll admit.  I used to be a proponent of them, even.

But in many ways, they're completely ineffective, particularly the Streetcar.  It's subject to the laws of traffic and stops every couple of blocks, but that's not the worst of it.  It's also severely underpowered and gets stuck on miniscule hills, like right before the 11th and Taylor stop, where it waits for 15 minutes to get enough "oomph" to make it up a half block to the station.  I'm sorry, but that's just pathetic.  I could walk to PSU faster (and eventually, upon giving up on the Streetcar, did--it cut 20-30 minutes out of my commute).  Much of the Streetcar line is also completely fareless (in the Fareless Square area), and as a result, it has to be subsidized in this area, either advertising (which is limited) or by the city (and the taxpayers).  I suspect if it did have a fare all the way across the line, very few would be riding it at all.  Some Streetcar proponents have even gone on record saying that the Streetcar is really just a "walk extender", to trick people into walking farther (without riding it). 

I should also point out that while the MAX line does reach 55mph on parts of the line, its average speed is only 18

[Mulefisk 15]

Originally posted by: Tarkus And by the way, the densest city in Oregon is not Portland--it's the western suburb of Beaverton. I also love how New Urbanists always cite LA as being a bad example of "low density suburban sprawl".  The problem with LA is that it has too high of a density across the entire Metro area.  If you were to take the entire NYC Metro Area (including Long Island and NJ), it is actually lower than that of the LA Metro Area (which is the densest Metro Area in the entire US).  This is proof that high density does not work.  quote>

 

The problem with LA is that it is nearly completely car oriented. That's why it is so criticized. 

If you're going to compare LA to NYC to make a point, you should only use Manhattan as an example. LA is evenly dense all across, while NYC is only dense in Manhattan. Manhattan is incredibly dense and works incredibly well. If all of LA was as dense as manhattan, with a fully developed transit system, it too would work like manhattan. 

You say that this is proof that high density doesn't work. Are you really saying that London, New York, Hong Kong, Chicago, Paris, and Toky don't work? And that suburban cities, like those found in the US midwest work better? Is houston really a better working and more efficient city than Tokyo? I read today in an interview with Norman Foster that the energy consumption per capita in Detroit is 10 times higher than in Copenhagen, Dennmark, which has the same population, except in a much smaller area. Where do you think the quality of life is higher? Downtown Copenhagen, or downtown Detroit? 

Originally posted by: Tarkus The point is, if you want to live in a dense city environment, go right ahead.  But not everyone wants to, and forcing them to play the "urban preservation" game is not going to make anyone happy, especially if you're plopping it into an existing suburban or rural area.  The fact of the matter is, high-density urbanism is old news.  It may be hard to accept, but times change.  Going into denial and ranting about cars, throwing up a bunch of faux-Brownstones and light rail lines is not going to change that.  As Mulefisk mentioned, there has to be a reason for dense urban areas to exist.  Not just because someone said they should.quote>

 

You make some good points, but who says New Urbanism has to be a bunch of faux brown-stones in the middle of nowhere? Fair enough, much of it is today, and I agree with you, that's incredibly rediculous. However, the point of my post was that New Urbanism is a good philosophy as long as it's in the right place. 

High density saves energy, and that's a very real problem today that needs to be adressed. By condensing cities you eliminate the need for short-distance transportation, thus saving energy. People who advocate new urbanism aren't just part of a reactionary movement trying to steal suburbs and cars from hard working americans. Suburbs and cars won't go away, but they are not a sustainable basis for city living in the future. 

If you want to see a (pretty) good New Urbanist project, take a look at this:

http://www.fosterandpartners.com/Projects/1515/Default.aspx

It's a city that produces more energy than it consumes. It will have 90,000 inhabitants once it's finished. The goal is that half of these people will work in the city.

This is a high-density city, how will it be inefficient?

[Tarkus 6,931]

Originally posted by: Mulefisk

The problem with LA is that it is nearly completely car oriented. That's why it is so criticized. quote>

That makes sense.  However, if vehicles were to be converted to an alternative (and renewable) fuel/propulsion source, I really don't see why car-orientation would be an issue anymore.  If the freeway system were upgraded, it would help alleviate the congestion issue as well.

Are you really saying that London, New York, Hong Kong, Chicago, Paris, and Toky don't work? And that suburban cities, like those found in the US midwest work better? Is houston really a better working and more efficient city than Tokyo? quote>

I'll admit I did make a little bit of a sweeping generalization.  I'm not sure that I can really fairly and conclusively say that those cities don't work, as I've only quickly passed through two of them (Chicago and Houston).  But I can say with absolute certainty that I do not believe that Seattle, Washington DC or Baltimore even come remotely close to working.  (I don't think LA works either.)  Portland used to work alright until Metro came into existence (1992) and stuffed things up, and ODOT decided to lie down and play dead.

And to be completely honest, I'm generally not fond of dense cities with large populations in the first place.  It would be extremely difficult to convince me that any city larger than 250,000 works, though that's a matter of personal taste.  (I kind of fit the Frank Lloyd Wright bent.)

The town I currently live in (Eugene, Oregon) has about 150,000 (around 200,000 if you count Springfield, the town glued onto its eastern edge).  And I really don't think it works, for a variety of reasons I won't get into now--I'm only living here for educational purposes, and once I'm done, I intend to leave. 

If a city has any sort of truly significant transportation congestion/bottleneck ( jammed freeways/surface streets), or extreme blight, it fails in my book.  I find that just about every city ever built is deficient on some level, large or small.  Call me a perfectionist.

High density saves energy, and that's a very real problem today that needs to be adressed. By condensing cities you eliminate the need for short-distance transportation, thus saving energy. People who advocate new urbanism aren't just part of a reactionary movement trying to steal suburbs and cars from hard working americans. Suburbs and cars won't go away, but they are not a sustainable basis for city living in the future. quote>

That's also a good point.  However, if the energy source is renewable and inexpensive, I don't think short-distance transportation is really an issue. 

And with regards to the Masdar project, it is a rather interesting idea, and I have to applaud the energy production end of things--however, I do have doubts about Personal Rapid Transit (PRT). 

I will also point out that I am not opposed to walking either.  It is, in effect, an "independent" mode of transportation (just like cars, and unlike mass transit, which is "dependent".)  A bit slow at times, but it works.   And to be honest, I feel much more comfortable walking in suburban areas (provided they have sidewalks) than I do in supposedly "pedestrian friendly" areas.  Walkable communities my . . .     Honestly, when I'm in a crosswalk, and a motorist is waiting for me to cross, I will often run, so as to minimize delays for both myself and any motorists.  Really.   

[TRNSTN 0]

Portland used to work alright until Metro came into existence (1992) and stuffed things up, and ODOT decided to lie down and play dead.quote>

Just because mass transit is ineffective in one place, doesn't mean it doesn't work elsewhere. It just means it was badly planned and probably had stupid lobby groups and opposition in the first place to make it so crappy. Once again to cite Tokyo as an example as before, millions of people depend on the mass transit there and it is effective because of its large spread, efficient practical spacing of stations, high density and accessible locations (means stations are actually used) and cheap fares. It is a subway system so it doesn't need to be interrupted by normal traffic congestion or weather conditions as street-top systems do.

On the other hand you have Curitiba, Brazil, which has implemented a very effective bus rapid transit system that totally connects the city and it's outer lying regions. living, working and playing all have access to the mass transit system, so it's fast and thus effective.

And to be completely honest, I'm generally not fond of dense cities with large populations in the first place.  It would be extremely difficult to convince me that any city larger than 250,000 works, though that's a matter of personal taste.  (I kind of fit the Frank Lloyd Wright bent.)quote>

Mass transit seems so inefficient is because of the way they are planned. You go around the world just outside of North America and you see wonderful mass transit systems, because most cities developed from non-car centric planing practices. Everything was pedestrian oriented so you get the close convenience of walkability to where you want to go or a bus/subway stop. You can see that in a lot of the downtowns in North American cities who had longer periods of establishment before the car-era, i.e New York, Montreal. All these cities work and their populations are in the millions.

The only reason streetcar systems were torn up was because GM and other car companies through tactful business moves bought up the rail companies and took them out completely, lobbied for more roads and suburban development and sold their wonderful cars to everyone. (from the documentary The end of Suburbia: http://www.endofsuburbia.com/)

However, if the energy source is renewable and inexpensive, I don't think short-distance transportation is really an issue.  quote>

As much as we would like to think renewable corn fuel and the promised hydrogen economy will save the day, what percentage of today's fuel is actually renewable? Sure there are pilot projects for hydrogen cars but it's so small scale it's hard to see any real impact, but it's a test and I approve of something like that, it's the effort that counts. Nonetheless we are still majorly a oil-based economy, how do you think the renewable fuel is shipped around? In tankers most likely probably not running on the fuel they are carrying. They need to ship this fuel further and further out because the suburbs stretch for miles, and by then it renders the renewable fuel useless because of all the pollution and energy it has already taken to produce it and transport/ distribute it. There's also the land and water, energy used to produce the corn just for the fuel, whereas millions of people go hungry around the world. Growing fuel is a great idea but it's also inefficient on its own, at least the corn-based ethanol the States is talking about, it doesn't give enough energy per unit of corn (bushel?) to really make it worth while unless it depends on subsidies from the government, and in a capitalistic and free market society what are subsidies eh?

I will also point out that I am not o