Urbanism and Planning in Action

[cityhawk 12]

Just yesterday, me and my friend that rides home from school with me everyday were talking about how our little town used to have hardly anything in it, how rapidly it has changed, and what we thought it would be like in the near future. The town is Semmes, a rapidly growing suburb of Mobile, AL (Metro area pop: 550,000+).

When I first moved to Semmes about 10 years ago, all there was out here were homes, nurseries, and pastures. The four-way about a mile from my house used to be surrounded by trees, but now there is a gas station, a church, and a Dollar General there with proposal for a strip mall and a traffic light at that intersection because traffic has gotten so bad out here. Traffic used to be very light, but in the past years, and currently, they have built a lot of new subdivisions, several new schools (2 elem. schools, 2 middle) to accomodate those people, and several new businesses. For the future, the main county road that runs the entire length of Semmes, currently 1 lane in each direction, is going to be four-laned. That probably means more homes and more businesses to clog up the roads even further. The only aesthetically pleasing thing coming in the very near future is a new and huge public park.

So that's my story about urbanism and planning in action. Feel free to add anything you like about any urban developments or plans for the future about your area.

[Physbo 1]

Well, I live in a city of 50,000 people, lol Casper,Wyoming so its not going to be very big. Being the second largest in the state it attracts a lot of business. The plans ive seen right now are huge housing areas being cleared and preped. Downtown getting redone and facelifted, business park getting 3 hotels, a retraunt, and a secondary hostpital. The on the other side of town, getting a 2nd walmart, couple office buildings, a couple restraunts and more housing in that area. Then the mall is getting a small additon. The subbubs i think might get included in the bus system and a few factorys.

[SC4Noobie 5]

I got a story similar to yours cityhawk. I also live in a suburb, out here in Chicago. Napervillie is the suburbs name. When we moved in here 9 years ago, the entire city was basicaly just farms, and the suburban downtown, creatively named Naperville Downtown, and a few subdivisions. After years of suburbanization, all the farmland that streched out for miles was turned completly into suburbs. Houses that originaly sold for 100,000 (our old house cost) can easily fetch upto 380,000+ now. When we moved to Naperville (before we lived in the city next to it, like literaly 2 minutes away) we bought a much bigger home for an amazing 630,000 (and THAT was supposidly a awsome deal) in 2006. When that home was originally built in 2004, it sold for about 565,000. If you went to the same model that was built before, it would go for about the same price as our house. If you went to when that house was built, (like 1999) it may have sold for a measly 320,000. So land value shoots up in suburbs, and basicaly all the farms in that city get destroyed.

[spa 968]

This isn't mine but it's my parents. They grew up on Orangeville Ontario that was at the time a sleepy little agricultural town of about 5,000 people. The place was dominated by small businesses and everyone worked in and around the town. Today the places is around 30,000 and few work there. Now everyone commutes to Toronto to work. Over the last 30-40 years the place went from a small town with a distinct identity of its own to a bedroom community of Toronto. I suspect this story isn't unique given ever increasing levels of urbanization throughout the world.

[Mantis747 1]

My home town is Basingstoke

It is a large town in the center of Hampshire and has a population of over 150,000 people.

It has grown loads in the last ten years.  I don't live in Basingstoke but i was bron there but i visit Basingstoke alot because some of my family live there.  It used to be known as a boring town but now it has expanded and is a very big workplace and has good rail connections to London where thousands of people from Basingstoke commute to every day.

It has a few mid-rise skyscrpaers and a very popular lesuire center.  

Like any Town or City it has its good areas and its bad areas.  It has an above-average standard of living and a low unemployment rate.

Here is its location on the map:

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[zane900 1]

That's really interesting. You know, New York City's pop hasn't been really growing or not frowing recently. It's gone down and back up again so now we're back where we started.

[Duke87 1,070]

New Yorks growth has become rather limited since we've run out of space to grow. You can't buid something anywhere without knocking something down first, and that isn't likely to happen. Most of the buildings in Manhattan are at least 30 years old. A fair majority of them are over 50 years old. This is pretty much why.

Note, however, that if you look at the metro population, there has been more steady growth. Outside the city itself is where all the room to grow is, after all.

[hamsterTK 93]

I live in College Station, Texas

right now my town has something like 60,000 thousand people, however it directly touches another town(Bryan, Texas) about the same size(if it werent for the signs non locals would not be able to tell where one town ends and the other begins).

Together, the two towns make up a small city with about 130,000 people.

Bryan was first(i think). It was a railroad town with industry and has been a local trade center for its entire existance. It has an old downtown with a large hotel tower built in the old days that some say is haunted, and the railroad crisscrosses the area around it. Bryan is the less wealthy of the two, and is more or less mostly a blue collar town. They failed to plan well in the 70's for the massive growth that hit the area in the 80's so today they have only a small part of the area's retail and white collar jobs, and the town does not have as much newer housing. Many parts of the town are very poor and not safe.

College station was originally just that, a train station for Texas A&M University. A&M got started sometime around 1876 i think. A&M was a unofficial military school and was guys only till after WW2 and the conservative military tradition has made the town not the typical college town(meaning its not all artsy and liberal like some college towns). Of course, im a democrat myself and id rather not go on this tangent. Anyways, the town was built along a place called northgate, which is our 'downtown'.

College Station became the town it is today after WW2. until the 70's it was dwarfed by Bryan and still a small town. However, it began to grow from the influence of the university, which brought in high paying jobs and attracted white collar families. Basically what this means is that college station grew 3 times its original size within about 20 years, and today it is high income and has all the big box stores and restaraunts not to mention the bigger nicer regional indoor mall(bryans small indoor mall was recently torn down). Also, the old northgate part of town has survived with the old buildings intact and looking the same becoming a entertainment district type place. Behind the northgate strip the old tiny houses that had been empty are being transformed into a mid-rise town center type of thing, although its not been exactly planned for by developers, more or less it just happened with some help by the city. Our tallest building in town is 13 stories and was built in the 80's. Hopefully the old albertson's shopping center which has sat empty for years will be torn down and replaced with a taller hotel in the near future.

Even though both are on opposite ends of the spectrum(old and poor and modern and rich), together they balance each other out and make an interesting city that is nice to live in.

I think had both places worked together with planning we would have better and more roads, which is the thing the two towns lack.

[Aleutiandude13 0]

I live in Kansas City  and we have a pop. of 1 million with suburbs and we have the larget railroad station in the midwest. the city name was voted by the citizens an it was eather Possom Trot or Town of Kansas. The city has lots of new downtown projects like the sprint center and a renovation of the Truman Sports Complex. The city has the Country Club plaza which you feel like your in spain. 

[jupitercrisis 1]

About B/CS, TX.

I agree with TK, if College Station wasn't so stand-offish about Bryan, they could get together and build very nice roads.

Chad Brinkley

KEOS 89.1 FM, Bryan.

[hamsterTK 93]

[q]About B/CS, TX.

I agree with TK, if College Station wasn't so stand-offish about Bryan, they could get together and build very nice roads.

Chad Brinkley

KEOS 89.1 FM, Bryan.[/q]

WOW!

small world. I'll listen to you sometime.

[Micah 16]

Oh yeah, I went to College Station the other day, and I noticed they are building a skyscaper which appears to be a hotel. That's great to see!

I think the best city in the world for urban planning is Singapore. Can you believe that city is the most advanced city and yet has a tropical forest right next to it.

[hamsterTK 93]

you mean that thing on the east side of Hwy 6 on university drive?

thats gonna be a bank hq. the ppl who were originally got bought out and the project got stalled and now its just inching along. Word is that A&M might buy it if it for who knows what use they could have for it (they also got a midrise office bldg behind the Hilton) in case it gets done and nobody else wants it.

Its like 11 stories i think btw

[Safrani 0]

I'll tell something about the city planning in Europe. All cities here are build in a spider web-structure. Every spider thread represents a street. The centre of the spiderweb most of the time represents a cathedral. And round the spiderweb is a road-ring. The main spider threads are connected with other nearby cities and villages. The latest evolutions in the region where I live is ribbon cultivation. When you drive in Belgium you can't see the borders between towns. I only notice the changing of churches Everywhere I go here, I see houses and buildings with "gardens". It's hard to find a quiet nice spot here to relax. I actually have to get myself into a small forest and imagine myself being in a huge American no man's land forest like I see in the movies, just to have some peace. I'm not saying Belgium is one big city but you can call this land one chaos with lack of environmental planning.

[rzapp 0]

Hello there, I live in São Paulo, Brazil.

-An introduction in the main aspects of the city, for those who don't know it:

Founded in 1554, the 452 year city developed to a huge metro area with 11 million habitants and a total of 20 million in it's metropolitan region. That makes it the 2nd largest city and the 5th metro area in the world. It is an industrial, commercial and financial center for the hole country and for Latin America as well. Just to give an idea, the citys GDP was around 50 billion dollars in 2002.

-Urban planning citywide:

Unordered growth and planing mistakes made a lot of problems appear in the city in the last decades. The most important are: lots of poor people, pollution, massive traffic problems, floods (it rains a lot around here), crime, health and others.

The city has made quite a lot of progress in the tratment of these problems, like:

>Popular subsidized housing built over some of the famous "favelas";

>Avenue re-planning and reforms, new lines of subway, lots of bus lanes were added in the main commute channels, car shif? (i dont know the word in english, it is a law that states that for each week day some cars can't enter the city's expanded center. i.e: car plates ending 1 and 2 can't go to the central region on mondays);

>'Piscinões" (the name itself means a large swimming pool. in fact it's a big flood control facility, which holds the water of the rain for a period of time before letting it go to the rivers and sewer systems ***);

>The 2 main city rivers (Tietê and Pinheiros) are being dredged and having it's margins remade (paved). Tietê used to flood entire neighborhoods and caused a lot of prejudices in the past. Now, with the project almost concluded, even the most intense rains can't fill it enough. Ah, and they are making the river look quite good (a little too urban because of the concrete margs);

>Crime is not a huge (but still big) problem when compared to other cities, like rio de janeiro (beautiful city by the way, dont scare yourself, you can go there with no need to worry...but i prefer my city );

>The city center has been really improved. It concentrates a LOT of the services workforce and some of the oldest buildingss in the city. Bovespa (são paulo stock exchange), BM&F (Commodities, futures, derivatives), government buildings, many banks and other institutions are there. It was getting quite ugly because of the abandonment by the government. Now it looks quite good, i was impressed in the last time i went there (i hardly go there).

>Health is a massive problem...Public health is a mess and untrustable, so everyone with enough money buys a privete health plan.

>Waste care and recycling: São Paulo is famous for it's solutions in this subject. We recycle a lot (nearly every aluminium can is recycled in a very short period of time) and have some interesting facilities like energy plants using the gas produced by the organic trash.

>I could go on eternally...

-urban planning in my area:

I live in a neighborhood called Tatuapé. It is going through an intensive growth process, with loads of residential buildings showing up (loads = dozens and dozens). The traffic in the region has been affected badly due to this growth, so the streets are being converted into one way streets, crossings now have traffic lights, our 2 closer shopping malls are getting pretty crowded in the weekends and in my opinion this wave of expansion should have stopped a long time ago. It seems that planners didnt realize yet that when you take houses out and build big aparment buildings, you increase population density, overcrowding a place not meant to have such population. I would really apreciate if they limited the higher density zones to what they are now, but as the construction of theses buildings leads to job generation and tax income i guess nothing will change in the near future.

I guess the information i put here is interesting for you all, and if you are interested in something else about my city feel free to ask. As a civil engineer i'm allways interested in urbanism talking.

And i have some good pictures as well, i could post then if you want, just let me know.

[cityhawk 12]

Like I said before, I live in Semmes, but now I'm going to tell y'all about some major projects around Mobile:

In West Mobile, growth is very rapid. There are restaurants, department stores, etc.  popping up everywhere all the time. Traffic is getting worse, and traffic lights are being erected at an alarming rate everywhere. In western Mobile County, there are a lot of roads being widened and repaved to accomodate the heavy traffic that has worn them down over the years.

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There are also a couple of major road projects that are supposed to be completed within the next few years (the picture that all of these talk about is located at the very bottom of this post under my sig):

1. One is the U.S. 98 Wilmer Bypass, shown in the top left of the picture below by the yellow dotted line. Right now, the current U.S. 98 through that area goes through a lot of residential areas and also crosses Big Creek Lake (Mobile County's water supply), and it would not be good if a tanker full of poisonous material tumps over and spills into the lake.

2. Another is the AL 158 Extention, as indicated by the grey line w/ brown stripes at the top of the below picture. This extension would complete an entire loop bypassing the actual city of Mobile , going from I-10 to I-65 (you might can tell it from the picture, but don't worry if you can't; I know this is true b/c I live in this county). It would also give people in Semmes, Wilmer, even possibly West Mobile a shorter route to the very busy city of Saraland.

3. Finally, the biggest, costliest, most significant project for Mobile County would be the West Mobile Bypass freeway. Two main routes that this freeway could take are highlighted: the green line represents the outer loop path, and the orange line represents the inner loop path. The yellow, purple, and red lines represent alternatives that allow for portions of both paths to be used (this sentence was taken from www.southeastroads.com/mobile.html). The interchanges for this freeway are also represented by the various dots. 

Strong community opposition has caused this project to slow to a stand-still b/c of the many homes and neighborhoods that would have to be destroyed to make this freeway possible; my house could potentially be one of them! If this project ever makes it to construction, it will be years before that would happen, and then it would take about 25 years to complete the route. I will be done moved out of Mobile already before action is even taken for the freeway, so I probably won't care then unless my parents still live there.

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If anybody would like more info on the West Mobile Bypass or anything about other parts of the county, go to http://www.southeastroads.com/Mobile.html.

I would like to see some stories that could top mine! However, input on your hometown is still appreciated.

[smartlake 0]

Well I live in Kootenai County Idaho (Coeur d'Alene). When I first moved here, the population was 65,000. Now 15 years later it is like 135,000. That is nearly a 100% increase, and by 2020, the population is expected to be something like 250,000, in only another 15 years. Idaho is consistenly the 3rd-5th fastest growing state, and nearly ALL of that growth occurs is in one of three counties (Canyon & Ada (Boise Met) or Kootenai (Spokane-Coeur d'Alene Met) both are nearly identical in size). Most of the growth in Kootenai County is expected to occur in Post Falls, Rathdrum, Hayden, Spirit Lake-Athol-Bayview. THe city of Coeur d'Alene can't really gorw that much more, as it is surrounded by water on 2 sides, moutains to the east, Hayden to the North and Post Falls To the East. That is why we are growing ^UP^, not .