New Urbanism vs urban sprawl

[Fires_Of_Industry 0]

personly I'd have to say New Urbanism is the better of the two , but with cities at there curent level of delvement it's too much of change to be applied. also New Urbanism forgets that the automobile is a status symbol and the switch to ped centric systems would fail form lack of public supports.

[DuskTrooper 314]

I'd go with a hybrid.

[Mulefisk 15]

Date: 12/16/2004 10:03:38 PM
Author: Fires_Of_Industry
personly I'd have to say New Urbanism is the better of the two , but with cities at there curent level of delvement it's too much of change to be applied. also New Urbanism forgets that the automobile is a status symbol and the switch to ped centric systems would fail form lack of public supports.

quote>

While New Urbanism may be pedestrian-centric, people are still allowed to drive their cars. You say that pedestrian-centric development would fail from lack of public support; The reason people living in recently built suburban areas today generally drive is because they are simply not given a choice. They have to travel far to get to work, and public transport is usually lacking. Now, if you put a person in an enviroment where his place of work lies a block down from where he lives, do you think he'd drive? Probably not. It's exactly those values that New Urbanism promotes, and if all cities were built like this, the automobile would eventually become unecessary.

[Alkaola 18]

i like the 'downtown' effect , like american cities , thats just beautiful , amsterdam is totally mixed ,same as other european cities

but i like CBD also , and if it's a coastal city the skyscrapers have to be near the coast

[DuskTrooper 314]

The thing is, many people like to drive no matter what. You cannot force walking on them. Some people like living in the suburbs, while some like living in a walkable urban enviornment. IMO, a well done hybrid is best, where there is a sizable urban core, with walkability, and suburbs with mass transit and other methods of transit, where there are places where you can walk or drive to take care of business (shopping, appointments, etc) , such as a walkable shopping arcade accessible via walking paths, etc. Suburbs should also diversify their choice of housing, and maybe even go slightly taller to save land (3-4 story single family homes on narrower lots, with decent, but not oversized backyards, and many parks in the vicinity, along with townhomes, midrise conds,and apartments, etc.).

[kmannkoopa 0]

As someone from the Northeast (Syracuse, NY) who spends a week or so in Houston every year, so I see sprawl but live in balanced dvelopment. Like most here, I have a problem with sprawl, for instance two of my family members live in the Houston City Limits -- 70 miles apart! 70 miles from my home will take you to one larger city (Rochester), and three smaller ones.

Yet, new urbanism is also a bunch of malarky. I was recently in Salt Lake City, where I saw some of their most recent attempts at new urbanism. It is just a place that you can walk around in if you live in the area, but otherwise you have to drive there. Sure it was a mix of commercial and residential, but there was no place to buy groceries! This is likely because the owner's of the area have to artifically attract people from outside the urban area to shop, and grocery stores are unnatractive (not to mention low margin and cannot afford high rental costs). And because supermarkets are located out in the suburbs (or outer city), you have to drive to get there.

New York is not a good city to replicate unless you have the people to support it. Houston may have the population, but Salt Lake City does not. Also, because all of this new urbanism development costs so much, even many middle class cannot afford to live there. As can be shown in SimCity, a ciy cannot thrive with only middle and upper classes. This is the primary reason why New Urbanism is doomed to failure.

What we need is to go back to the old pre-World War II planning. Housing everywhere, and then commercial on major streets and especially at the major intersections. Queens, NY is the best example in the country of development this way. It is entirely possible to still have large tracts of land availiable to live on, I am located within the city limits and still have just under one acre (a typical suburban lot), the house right behind me sits on two acres. More importantly, I am part of a neighborhood. I know a large number of the people on my block (notice that it is a block, not a subdivision). The larger neigborhood rallies around the elementary school (to which everyone is less than 2 miles from), and I can say I grew up in a community.

(Note that my entire neigborhood is what would be light residential, there are only one or two apatment buildings in my whole neighborhood, and they are senior assisted living buildings.)

Finally, and this is my pet peeve, we need to stop putting up so many fences! In Houston, rare is the building without a fence around it. Every house is surrounded by fence, usually in the form of a wood privacy type. Flying from Houston to Albany, NY, I was astonished at all the fences I saw when I was taking off, and relieved at all the fences I didn't see when I was landing.

Sprawl will continue into the future. The key to stopping this does not lie in new urbanism, it lies in making real neigborhoods, and making people feel more at home. Even though I am in a city, we don't lock our doors, we don't feel a need to, we are in a community.

[LBraden 14]

I am A Brit and find that making

QUOTES HERE

I'd go with a hybrid.

 

i like the 'downtown' effect , like american cities , thats just beautiful , amsterdam is totally mixed ,same as other european cities 

but i like CBD also , and if it's a coastal city the skyscrapers have to be near the coast
END QUOTES

I make cities like this manly, as that I use the Grid pattern, but we I use some of the silly road layouts of the UK, and recently I have started to mix my city layout (I will post the name of the Geog model when I remember it) as that large cities are hard a making based off the single use areas

[wolverine 12]

I really don't like sprawl, personally becuase I live not far from Detroit in which the suburbs killed the city. Please don't contradict me on that point, nearly everyone in Michigan knows this. But I think new urbanism is great because it is taking us back to creating downtowns and walkwable enviroments instead of big box shopping with huge sprawling parking lots -- which I consider to be boring and ugly.

DT, you are right, people can choose to drive and live where they want, but the government (or at least state goernments are trying to change that). In Oakland County, Michigan's sprawliest county, they are going to create a gas tax which would deter people from driving their cars. Many people would think that is unfair because what about the people that need to drive all the way to work? Well, take the bus, or other mass transit!! Keep in mind, this tax only happens in certain areas where mass transit is available. The tax will also encourage poeple to live near business centers which will in turn build up density.

A big blow against sprawl in Michigan came when the city where I live, Ann Arbor, sought to completely eliminate it. They set up a smart growth act, created a greenbelt, cut infrastructure upgrades in rural areas, and created inter city tax incentives. The result? Well, people wanted to build new houses in spread out subdivisions, but they couldn't. And although they could have moved, they wouldn't be close to the excellent job they had in Ann Arbor, which they did not want to sacrifice. To cope with the demands, developers built higher density living, houses closer together, and maintained a traidtional urban neighborhood. It worked really well. And now Ann Arbor is building highrises which is allowing the city soar in population, instead of losing it to sprawl.

If we want to have low density living, there needs to be smart growth. I believe Kmannkoopa covered that quite well with his example of Queens, NY. Where walkable commerical districts exist within city BLOCKS of housing, not far from an urban core --- which DT mentioned as being a hybrid.

Therefore, when I build my cities in SimCity, I make them have urban cores, but not a lot of sprawly outgrowth

[aerojad 8]

I wanted to take this rare opportunity to post to agree with my fellow Michigan native. Sprawl is an absolutely insane problem here in the Detroit metro area. A long story short, after the 1967 riots the white people got scared of the black people, ran for the hills (or suburbs, as it were) and it has continued basically at a non-stop pace ever since then. And seriously, I'm not being racist - that's pretty much how the suburban explosion began here.

It is so bad that there is a gradual expanding ring around the immeidate downtown area where *nobody* lives at all, just vaccant land or buildings. Gradually, however, commerical and industrial enterprises are taking root from the downtown area and spreading outword, slowly filling the void.

In my opinion this will continue for another decade or two until it gets to the point where people are sick and tired of driving two to three hours each way per day to work and back, and there will be a gradual contraction and people heading back toward the inner city. The more the downtown area thrives and public transportation expands, it will begin to draw people back in. I myself will be moving downtown next year to attend Wayne State University, in the heart of this newly expanding and thriving downtown area, and I am psyched - I can't wait.

I have enclosed a map to provide a graphical, if not over symplified look at what happened to Detroit. In dark blue is the city limits of Detroit itself, as well as former satellite cities (not suburbs) of Mount Clemens, Pontiac, and Flint. There used to be farmland between these places, but suburbia has just made this place into one gigantic city.

Areas in the light red were pretty much settled by 1955, before the explosion began. This was due pretty much to just general population expansion & the returning soldiers coming home from World War 2. In lots of these areas you will find grid-system Levitown-style suburbs. Really simple to navigate.

Areas in the dark red were settled after the race riots up until about 1975-ish. Considering how small the city was before, the amount of land devoured was amazing. Here you will find a hybrid between Levi-town style suburbs and subdivision style 'burbs.

The pink would be the amount of land devoured between the mid 70's and pretty much present day. In some places the land has gone from trees & farm to densely packed malls & houses in as little as five years, and the explosion just continues. So now you're left with a falling Detroit population (down to 900k), and a rising Detroit-area population (up to 4 million).


*goes back into the shadows*

[starrdarcy 4]

I actually will have to side with the sprawl. I like to see growth and development. It makes people want to live in city that is booming. I will be eventualy moving to Calgary, a sprawling city - great!!

[Baro 44]

Why does a city have to grow OUT?

The 'argument' between sprawl and real growth is like the 'argument' between fitness and sickness. A city is a living organism. Like nature, it should strive to be compact and muscular, not a cancer ridden pile of lazy fat. When a person is 500 pounds, they pay for it. It's hard to move, they are full of sickness, and they are horrible to look at. Just like a sprawling city, hard to move, full of crime, and horrible to look at.

It's interesting how cities often so closely match the people that build them. In europe and japan, you have healthy people with efficient resource use and a sense of community, and their cities match. In north america you have fat people building fat cities, with their diet matching their construction methods, unhealthy.

[thatmonkeysim 8]

The thing about Detroit is very true i have alot of family there and they complain about all the holes in the downtown area...
and the thing that is happening in Detroit is happening in my city in little old West Virginia...

There are 3 major cities in WV: Charleston [the capitol and where i live], Huntington, and Parkersburg. Charleston and Huntington are pretty much on top of each being only 45 miles apart the land between the two cities was pretty empty with only a few feeder towns here and there. But, over last decade people are either leaving the area or moving to the little feeder towns because of the nice scenery and quietness from city life. Now both Charleston and Huntington's downtowns are starting to lose more alot of money and the traffic problems on the main roads [especially in front of my house] become very so bad that they have finally decided to expand I-64 from 4 to 6 between Charleston and Huntington, which is making the traffic problems even worse. Not to mention that the state is having alot of job problems and people are moving out of the state. I

[louisville327 0]

Date: 12/17/2004 5:34:00 PM
Author: Baro
Why does a city have to grow OUT?

The 'argument' between sprawl and real growth is like the 'argument' between fitness and sickness. A city is a living organism. Like nature, it should strive to be compact and muscular, not a cancer ridden pile of lazy fat. When a person is 500 pounds, they pay for it. It's hard to move, they are full of sickness, and they are horrible to look at. Just like a sprawling city, hard to move, full of crime, and horrible to look at.

It's interesting how cities often so closely match the people that build them. In europe and japan, you have healthy people with efficient resource use and a sense of community, and their cities match. In north america you have fat people building fat cities, with their diet matching their construction methods, unhealthy.

quote>

I swore I wouldn't get involved in this thread, but I really must say this is a superb observation!

[Baro 44]

How dare you! Telling a city it shouldn't sprawl is like telling a fat dieing person they should put down the tub of butter. That tub of butter/suburban life style TASTES good and it's their choice and they deserve it and how dare you try to save them from them selves. It isn't a matter of living or dieing, it isn't a matter of how long that lifestyle can last, it's a matter of 'preferance' or what 'feels good' at the time.

[dudyconstructor 40]

there are lots of differences between Planned Urbanization, Random Growth Unplanned urbanization.

They have lots of differences between them, However mixed zonning applies to both of them, not just only one. Urbanization is a very complex development, not always hard to understand, its worth to make a little research about it.

[PhilsCafe 8]

A pedestrian-centric development in cities seems to be quite reasonable to make life quality better (it serves you, me and our - future - children). In a city, where public transport is well developed, it's probably best to go to work by bus, subway, bike or simply take a walk. You can even save time by doing this, because you aren't stuck in congestions during rush hour. But, of course, people who live in suburban areas but work downtown are forced to take the car, because public transport isn't nearly as developed as in the city itself.

So, if one concentrates on developping the public transport system in the suburbs, it would be more likely that people use it. But obviously one rather clogs the main arteries by developping isolated subdivisions than investing in public transport.

I'm not a liberal, so I'm not in favor of abolishing car traffic, but I care for the environment. The way the system works in the suburbs right now is unreasonable...

What would you do in SC4 to lower commute times? You wolud figure out a new transportation concept using public transport, even in the suburbs, wouldn't you?

-PhilsCafe

[Crimson King 0]

There have been numerous studies on this topic sanctioned by the federal government lately, and they reveal a rather curious trend. A majority of Americans enjoy the idea of mixed-zoning planned communities, but aren't willing to pay the price for them when push comes to shove. Sure, W**-M*** is ugly and devoid of charm, but in the end the smart consumer is going to shop where the best bargains are, dooming the quaint corner stores to eradication. This was lampooned in a recent episode of South Park, in which the local W**-M*** becomes a sentient being. []

There is a way to get the best of both worlds, though. I live just north of Albany, NY, and one of my favorite towns here is Watervliet. The town is laid out in a classic grid pattern along the riverfront, and consists mainly of one- and two-family rowhouses. Every second corner or so has a small convenience store or tavern (no shortage of watering holes in this town []). The major commercial development (grocery stores, banks, strip malls, etc.) is located along the river and along 19th Street (aka Rt. 2, which connects the town to Troy across the river and Latham to the west).

The nice part about this layout is that you get all the convenience (and low prices) of large box stores while retaining the pedestrian-friendly charm of corner shops and bars. The little shops survive by offering convenience items only: milk, eggs, newspapers, etc. The residents do most of their grocery shopping at the large stores along the main roads, but still hike down to the little corner shops to get the odd one or two items that escape the weekly market list. And to get drunk, too.

[moeatc 0]

I think that if you take the majority of major urban centres, as we prograss out of the CBD, we see fantastic examples of urban sprawl. However, when we see urban renewal I think we see a sense of taking something chaotic and making it tidy - hence New Urbanism. If you go into any major city that has been modernaised we see major development in pedestrianisation, mixed development and a 'plan' style to everything.

When developing a city, I tend to go for that approach - start at the centre and work my way out, because we know that all urbanised areas do this. We see villages swallowed into suburbia and green land eaten up in an array of concrete and asphalt, while at the same time my urban centre goes through a regeneration phase, things are simplified. Its a nice balance and it works for me, so as long as it works I shall continue to do it.

[Motina 77]

How dare you! Telling a city it shouldn't sprawl is like telling a fat dieing person they should put down the tub of butter. That tub of butter/suburban life style TASTES good and it's their choice and they deserve it and how dare you try to save them from them selves. It isn't a matter of living or dieing, it isn't a matter of how long that lifestyle can last, it's a matter of 'preferance' or what 'feels good' at the time.

quote>

This is the very problem, the Machiavellian society. Instead of doing something creative or something rooted in purpose, people go on doing what is not only dangerous to themselves, but also to everything else around them. I will not be endangered by the selfishness of people who find capital/feels good more important than love/civilization/community.

Is this what you call freedom? A matter of preference or what feels good. The inability to think is not freedom, it slavery.

[starrdarcy 4]

Date: 12/18/2004 3:15:41 AM
Author: Baro
How dare you! Telling a city it shouldn't sprawl is like telling a fat dieing person they should put down the tub of butter. That tub of butter/suburban life style TASTES good and it's their choice and they deserve it and how dare you try to save them from them selves. It isn't a matter of living or dieing, it isn't a matter of how long that lifestyle can last, it's a matter of 'preferance' or what 'feels good' at the time.

quote>

so somepeople want to live downtown, while others want to live in the nice quiet suburbs, so what's the problem about that. You can't force people to want to live downtown. That's there concern, not the city's concern.

[UrbanLegend 63]

Date: 12/18/2004 1:25:39 PM
This is the very problem, the Machiavellian society. Instead of doing something creative or something rooted in purpose, people go on doing what is not only dangerous to themselves, but also to everything else around them. I will not be endangered by the selfishness of people who find capital/feels good more important than love/civilization/community.

Is this what you call freedom? A matter of preference or what feels good. The inability to think is not freedom, it slavery.

quote>

It is naive to expect people to do what is in the best interest of the community. When push comes to shove, people are not going to make tangible sacrifices - money, comfort, quality of life - i favor of some nebulous concept of improving society.

[Motina 77]

People only need to be educated. Who says you need to give up money, comfort and quality to improve society. Improving society will increase lower poverty, raise comfort and quality of life. How does the current suburban plan improve life, to make life meaningful? Suburban dwellers waste so mush time locked in their cars, while people who walk to work only walk about 15mins or it should be no more than that for ideal cases. This is not the industrial age were the workplace has to be removed from the residents because of all sorts of pollution. In fact most jobs can be replaced by machines now a day. It is a fundamental change that has to be done, and education is the way. Using time for money is not the way.

Naive, yes. But educating people to be unselfish instead of basing people off the Machiavellian The Prince of basic human urges. You are merely the product of your environment; this is where true freedom comes in.

[Pineporch 4]

^That's true, but in general, North Americans abhor rapid change. No matter what, it's going to be a long time until people catch on to that.

Everyone knows that mass transit is just one step from communism!

I live in a suburb in the maritimes, and it seems like every second vehicle on the road is a bloody SUV or soccer mom van. Even changing what kind of vehicles we drive would be a huge step in the right direction for the environment and the economy alike.

[Baro 44]

In 10-50 years, the suburban lifestyle will simply collapse. The tax base can not support the needed transportation infastructure, let alone upkeep, let alone stupid commie hippie stuff like 'schools' or 'hospitals'.

Also, there is NO oil crisis in the world. Longer travel times in less and less effecient vehicles can obviously go on for ever, fueled entirely by the owners sense of entitlement.

When the crisis hits (well hits harder than it is now), car dependant nations will suffer greatly, enough to topple super powers.

[Pineporch 4]

It may be sooner than you think too. Just look at some nations that are rapidly becoming a large economic presence, ie: China. For a country that has 1.3 BILLION people, it would be a scary thought to imagine how long oil reserves would last considering the changing consumption rates. As it is, the amount of energy that Americans and Canadians squander in general is ridiculous. If all 6 billion people on this planet were to consume at the North American rate, we would need 3 or 4 earths in order to sustain the demand. Things really have to change fast. The harder it is to get oil, the more willing people will be to fight over it.

[RodneyMullen03 5]

That is logical, but in some places, it's different. For instance, my part of the city of Carson could be called suburban, but we have public transportation around(2 bus lines each direction, and a train station), light industry, and a big refinery. Besides that, it's all residential. Maybe soon, people would still use their cars, but they'll be driving them to train station parking lots(Park and Rides) to get to work.

[cityplanner82 0]

As cities build out to thier limits we will see new urbanism principals put to use. I live in Glendale, a city about 9 miles north of Downtown Los Angeles. I work just two blocks from my house in Downtown Glendale an area that has many highrises, a shopping mall and much more, In fact it is possible to see the downtown LA skyline from the window in my office. Los Angeles is sometimes referred to a city of A thousand suburbs in search of a city. LA at one time had the best mass transit system that any city could have. In fact the mass transit lines is what made the city spread out. Unfortunately us angelenos traded in our mass transit system for the automobile and mile upon mile of freeway. The last new freeway was built in 1993, any other freeway construction consists of extensions to major routes already established. The metro area has one subway line, 3 light rail lines, and an extensive coummuter rail network, slowly but surely Los Angeles is embracing aspects of New Urbanism. Many of the cities in the area are beginning to change zonning laws to incorporate mixed use, Downtown Los Angeles is seeing a major housing boom, and most new shopping areas in the region are built to resemble villages or old main streets. While Los Angeles city limits only reach about 400 square miles, the metro area is huge, and is just about at its limit. Los Angeles Area urban sprawl reaches within 13 miles of San Diego's sprawl, seperated only by the Marine Base Camp Pedleton. The region has no choice, it must embrace new ways of dealing with the population, so therefore at some point sprawl does reach a cut off point, and leaders and planners must find new ways to handle future growth within the already established cities.

[EricN 0]

Meet the New-Urbanism, same as the Old-Urbanism.

There's nothing new about New-Urbanism. It's just one point in a cycle visible in the history of almost all old cities. Sprawl is the most efficient and practical method of short-term growth, yet after a point it can't sustain itself. When that happens, the city core is usually sitting with 30-40% or more vacancy rates in residential and office buildings. Speculative developers renovate the buildings and the fringes and trendsetters move in, followed by everyone else, enticed by the new pedestrian friendly areas and modern glamour. A decade or two later, after those modern condos and office buildings aren't so modern anymore, the idea gives way to practicality, half the pedestrian areas are paved over to accommodate the burgeoning traffic, and the cycle repeats.

EDIT:
You can even model this cycle with SimCity reasonably well too.

[smartpig 0]

Date: 12/19/2004 5:05:56 AM
Author: EricN
Meet the New-Urbanism, same as the Old-Urbanism.

quote>

Uh, no, not exactly. I consider the term New Urbanism to be somewhat misleading because what we usually refer to as new in fact draws heavily on prior historical experience, i.e., from the days before the private car became the primary means of urban transportation. I prefer the term TND, or Traditional Neighborhood Development, which refers to mimicking the design features that were standard procedure in the days when walking was a primary form of transportation, when streets were planned and built as the essential framework of urban life rather than simply as a means of linking parking lots to each other. IOW, TND means doing deliberately what we used to do out of force of habit.

Why is this an important distinction? Because it's entirely possible to build at urban densities but with antiurban character and functionality; this type of development is the norm in the higher-value areas of suburban America. It's also possible to build communities that are aggressively transit and pedestrian oriented but which aren't at all traditional in design; the Swedish new towns ringing Stockholm are an excellent example. Both of these alternatives are relatively new and certainly urban, but they aren't New Urbanism.

Another aspect of this is that, IMO, planning per se is way overrated. The fact is that there are many thousands of developments that are planned down to the last blade of chemically-sustained grass, but which are the epitome of sprawl due to their isolation from the surrounding urban context.

The key aspect of TND is its emphasis on the character of the street network as a a means of organizing urban functionality. A properly designed street network enables each new building to build upon the best aspects of the surrounding areas, thereby leading to a process of continued, evolutionary improvement and warding off the cycle of development, decay and redevelopment of which you wrote.

[Norwegian Neko 12]

Date: 12/18/2004 3:15:41 AM
Author: Baro
How dare you! Telling a city it shouldn't sprawl is like telling a fat dieing person they should put down the tub of butter. That tub of butter/suburban life style TASTES good and it's their choice and they deserve it and how dare you try to save them from them selves. It isn't a matter of living or dieing, it isn't a matter of how long that lifestyle can last, it's a matter of 'preferance' or what 'feels good' at the time.

quote>

I think maybe your sarcasm could be written so that it sounds even more like sarcasm... I actually know of people & organizations who use that argument. Look up:

reason public policy institute
cascade policy institute

the other argument they use is that OBVIOUSLY all suburban sprawl is market driven (and thus 100% a consumer choice), so should be built. Nobody lives in NYC, London, Tokyo, Paris, Rio...those cities are in communist dictatorships. Roads are paid for by companies and market forces, and mass transit is paid for only by tax money to support those lazy homeless bums who should go get a job!