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[City Planning] Super Sprawl Me
OremLK
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
All right, so I wanted to make a spinoff of a discussion we were having in the Fat Acceptance thread so as not to derail it too hard. Urban planning is a subject of great interest to me and I don't think I can do it justice with my OP, but I'll present a few broader points to get us started, as well as point out a few interesting books on the subject.
The basic premise is this: Dense, walkable urban places make their residents safer, healthier, and more productive, while reducing emissions and protecting the environment. This is a view which seems to be shared by most modern urban planners, and one I share as well.
The grandmama of modern urban planning thought is Jane Jacobs, who did battle with Robert Moses in the 60s to save Greenwich Village from being bulldozed in favor of an interstate through Manhattan.
But the more important part of her legacy may have been her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which proposed a model for the design of an ideal urban neighborhood based upon her experiences living in Greenwich Village. Not all of her ideas are still accepted today, but the book was an important driver in a major shift in city planning in the US toward traditional city planning as opposed to automobile-focused suburban sprawl.
So just to be clear, what we're talking about is more like these
Instead of these
Today, Jacobs' ideas have been refined by modern urban planners and others in related fields. One of my favorite books explaining modern thought on the topic is urban planner Jeff Speck's Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America. Another good book to check out is Happy City by author Charles Montgomery. Also maybe check out The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at UCLA and an economist.
Here are a few theses put forth by urban planners, which seem to be mostly well-supported by the studies I've seen:
Lastly, some clarifications about modern urban planning. I cannot cover anywhere near everything, but I'll mention a few things which I think are widely accepted as "good urban planning" principles.
Urban planning principles
All right, so I'm going to cut it short there because like I said, entire books have been written on this, and phew, this was already too damn long. But TL;DR, the point I'm trying to put forth here is that fixing our approach to city planning in the US would help us deal with some of the problems we face, not just the obvious (climate change) but also some of the less obvious (the healthcare situation, the economy, the lives and value lost in car crashes). Obviously it's not a one-stop cure-all for every societal ill. But working toward creating more well-designed, dense, urban places would make a much bigger impact than I think people widely realize.
The basic premise is this: Dense, walkable urban places make their residents safer, healthier, and more productive, while reducing emissions and protecting the environment. This is a view which seems to be shared by most modern urban planners, and one I share as well.
The grandmama of modern urban planning thought is Jane Jacobs, who did battle with Robert Moses in the 60s to save Greenwich Village from being bulldozed in favor of an interstate through Manhattan.
But the more important part of her legacy may have been her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which proposed a model for the design of an ideal urban neighborhood based upon her experiences living in Greenwich Village. Not all of her ideas are still accepted today, but the book was an important driver in a major shift in city planning in the US toward traditional city planning as opposed to automobile-focused suburban sprawl.
So just to be clear, what we're talking about is more like these
Instead of these
Today, Jacobs' ideas have been refined by modern urban planners and others in related fields. One of my favorite books explaining modern thought on the topic is urban planner Jeff Speck's Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America. Another good book to check out is Happy City by author Charles Montgomery. Also maybe check out The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at UCLA and an economist.
Here are a few theses put forth by urban planners, which seem to be mostly well-supported by the studies I've seen:
- Dense, walkable, cities are healthier for their residents than sprawled-out, driving-oriented cities. This is what we were discussing in the Fat Acceptance thread. The idea here is pretty straightforward: When your commute involves sitting on your ass in a car for an hour a day, it's lot less healthy than if you instead spend some or all of that hour walking (or biking or some other alternative form of transportation such as skateboarding, rollerskating, or riding a pogo stick to work). I would also like to propose that our food culture in America may interact with city planning by encouraging fast food consumption and buying junk food from big box stores--this is not something I've seen much hard data on, so it's just a hypothesis, but I'd love to see some research on it (which maybe has been done and I just haven't seen it?)
- They're also better for the environment. Two big things here--walking, biking, public transportation--all of these modes of transit produce a lot less in the way of emissions and pollution per capita than driving personal automobiles, even hybrid and/or electric cars. The second point is the mass-destruction of natural environments to build sprawl. "The best way to protect nature is to stay away from it." Walkable cities may be one of our best solutions to climate change.
- Dense cities are more productive and encourage local businesses to thrive instead of mass chain stores. Statistical data seems to bear this one out.
- When properly designed, dense and walkable cities are much safer than suburban sprawl. Car crashes are the leading cause of accidental death in America and IIRC are also the leading cause of death in people under the age of 30. More people die in car crashes in the US alone each year than are killed worldwide in terrorist attacks. These deaths are mostly preventable through better urban planning.
Lastly, some clarifications about modern urban planning. I cannot cover anywhere near everything, but I'll mention a few things which I think are widely accepted as "good urban planning" principles.
Urban planning principles
- Residential density is the key to creating walkable cities. Typical suburban residential density in the US is under 5,000 people per square mile. Off the top of my head, I believe it takes somewhere around 3x that number before you start reaching the density levels which can allow people to walk for most of their daily needs and can support high frequency public transportation routes.
- Achieving this density can be done in a lot of different ways, but it doesn't have to mean tall buildings with people packed into apartments. You can actually get to this density level with only single family detached houses of 3 floors or less, provided the lots are small enough and the streets are narrow enough. That said, it seems to be best to have a mixture of different residential types ranging from single family detached homes, to townhouses, to apartment buildings of various heights.
- Density alone is not all that matters, you also need to allow a mix of uses. Most US cities use far too restrictive residential zoning, which means no commercial uses are allowed and there is nothing to walk to.
- Design is also important. This is a huge topic, but a few important things are as follows:
- Off-street parking requirements. This is the topic of Shoup's book mentioned above. Most US cities force developers to build high amounts of off-street parking, which naturally lowers density but also makes walking around intensely unpleasant (if you've ever walked past a row of strip malls and big box stores you know what I mean).
- Street width. Most US cities these days create far too wide of streets with far too many lanes. This too lowers density, but it also induces drivers to drive at high speeds, which is uncomfortable and unsafe for pedestrians. It also makes it much more difficult to cross the street, especially away from a stoplight.
- Setbacks. The most comfortable and appealing walking experience happens when buildings are built right out to the sidewalk instead of buried behind a huge parking lot or a large lawn--which once again, reduce density.
- Block size/frequency of intersections. Huge superblocks are bad for pedestrians because you have to walk all the way around if you're trying to get past them. Frequent intersections and crosswalks are needed for the same reasons.
All right, so I'm going to cut it short there because like I said, entire books have been written on this, and phew, this was already too damn long. But TL;DR, the point I'm trying to put forth here is that fixing our approach to city planning in the US would help us deal with some of the problems we face, not just the obvious (climate change) but also some of the less obvious (the healthcare situation, the economy, the lives and value lost in car crashes). Obviously it's not a one-stop cure-all for every societal ill. But working toward creating more well-designed, dense, urban places would make a much bigger impact than I think people widely realize.
My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
OremLK on
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whereas suburbia involves walking to your car and walking from your car to your destination. a common refrain from my other nyc friends visiting their parents in suburban places is they feel stir crazy because suddenly they lose all this extra exercise as there's nowhere to walk.
some people do own cars, but parking is so limited and expensive that these are almost exclusively used for long trips and to go grocery or ikea shopping. no one commutes to the city in cars. a lot of people who live outside of nyc but commute to the city take public transit, but they use a car to get to their train station and then take the subway when they get to nyc.
there are definitely downsides to living in a dense city. having a yard and your own personal open green space is incredible. but it seems like that is not very sustainable in the way it's currently done. I like the images the OP posted of a walkable town, my ideal living space would probably be a smaller down with a vibrant, walkable downtown.
I, a Euro, work for an American company, and their local building is a couple of miles away from my house. I normally walk there, or take the bus if the weather sucks.
One time, I had to go to the head office for training. The hotel I was in was less than half a mile from the office. Less walking, right?
Wrong. We're out in suburbia, and between the hotel and the office is a four-lane highway with no pedestrian accommodations.
So even though I was geographically closer to my place of work than usual, the infrastructure choices mandated I go there by car.
Boo to sprawl.
I think this is probably true for city versus rural, but I doubt it's true for city versus suburbs. For example, Houston, which is where I live, is almost entirely comprised of low-density suburban sprawl, and we have some of the worst air quality in the nation.
To be fair, most of it is because of the plants in east Harris county. Pasadena, La Porte, Texas City, etc etc
Plus, just TRY and take a Texan's truck away. lol
Ideally, you should have a single shared green space like a park, instead of dozens of tiny lawns that are too small for any children larger than a toddler.
MWO: Adamski
They range from decent to fairly shitty on the environmental impact angle depending on what climate you live in, but they serve a definite purpose outside of curb appeal.
Green spaces are important for drainage, but "lawn" implies certain grass species (like Kentucky bluegrass) which may or may not be native to your region.
Using native local plants is almost always better, even if that means you resort to succulents.
Edit: also you don't need a half-acre of green space for each and every single-family detached home.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
This has been a big push for the EPA, at least it was. I assume now we're going to make sewage treatment illegal or something just out of spite.
I dunno if he still posts much but @moniker might be interested.
She probably won't post but imma batsignal @Fluvial too.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Off the top of my head, historically, the lawn has its roots in English nobility wanting the bragging rights of saying "look I have all this land and I don't even have to use it for planting crops because that's how rich I am".
But yes, it does provide some additional sound isolation and privacy versus being right on the sidewalk. However, this could be more cheaply replicated via soundproofing/window treatments.
Edit: Also, regarding the drainage issue, street trees are a great way to help with it. They suck up a lot of moisture and have a lot of other side benefits. Street trees are awesome and cities should plant them as much as possible.
In a similar situation, my old commute to Santa Clara was made a bit longer by the lack of pedestrian access from the train station to my office.
I made this little diagram to illustrate.
(Note: I didn't work for Channel Fireball, just in their general neighborhood.)
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
They started one, but ran out of money and sealed the entrance.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
That's ridiculous. Reminds me of these Google Maps directions which got thrown around in urban planning circles awhile back. Neighbors with adjacent lots where it would take almost 2.5 hours to walk between their houses.
Florida.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Those kinds of designs mess with emergency vehicles, too.
Ah Avalon Park.
That's far from the only problem of that neighborhood.
Beat little beginner type stuff or just so wrong makes you furious
The basic SimCity formula does tend to reward players for doing some of the same things which are problematic in most American cities, such as separating uses by zones instead of allowing for a mix of uses, building freeways right through the heart of dense cities, etc. It's also kind of funny because despite being fairly car-centric these games do tend to almost completely omit the parking problem, which is one of the biggest reasons automobiles mess up the built environment for pedestrians.
Older versions of SimCity used to ship with manuals that had a primer in urban planning.
I give you Japan. They have a lot of other problems, and their planning isn't perfect, but I think they do a good job as far as modern city planning is concerned. They also do a good job of demonstrating that you don't need to have a centuries-old, historic city center already in place like much of Europe does in order to achieve a walkable city--much of Japan was bombed out during WW2 and in many cases they had to rebuild almost from scratch.
There are a few really important things they do which make a huge difference.
The main cause for this (and it is particularly true in cities) is particulate matter and exhaust from tailpipes. Particularly diesel. Which has the ironic effect of making people who wait for the bus (and don't contribute to the problem nearly as much) breathe in more, worse air than people driving. ( https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/10/ls-carmageddon-produced-dramatic-instantaneous-air-quality-improvements/3464/ )
The obvious and easy eventual solution is electrification. Especially if we ever electrify freight rail. This will still cause pollution depending on your energy source, but power plants are a lot more efficient. The harder solution is changing land use patterns to be less auto-centric. But if trends meet or exceed projections we should have close to half of all cars electric around 2040, plus rising CAFE standards. It won't make Manhattan as breathable as Montana, but it will be an amazingly drastic improvement.
Venturi wrote 'Learning From Las Vegas' in the 60s-70s for Yale and it kind of reflected how suburban design evolved over time to be very oriented towards cars at speed. Like Vegas was. But look at Vegas now and it is actually really pedestrian oriented in comparison to the past. Not, like, ideal new urbanist Oasis but not bad considering it's fricken Vegas.
Urban planning is my THING, you guys. It's my most absorbing research hobby! To see you well-educated, thoughtful, interesting people actually start a thread like this feels like Christmas! :biggrin:
I'm at work now, but I will hold this thread up single-handedly (if I have to), later tonight!! *rubs hands
Not at all. They are horrible for drainage. Most lawns basically become impermeable surfaces after a half inch or less of rain - ever notice how much water runs off when people water their lawns? And then there's the fertilizer and pesticides and herbicides (which are usually massively overused and run off) and gasoline burned to mow them and they're basically terrible all around.
It is possible to make some not terrible lawns, by planting deep-rooted buffalo grass instead for instance, but the stereotypical lawn is awful.
Please teach me, wise forumers.
This is such a huge issue that I find often gets ignored. And not just lot size, but house size too. One of the big factors we noticed when we bought a home recently was that what one might think of as a "starter home", with it's smaller size and smaller lot and such, simply didn't exist in most places. Like, we'd look at newer developments in the area and they'd be building like hundreds of homes and literally none of them were smaller then fuck-off-big. 4-bedrooms minimum detached homes with huge expansive floorplans and all that shit. Affordability, let alone density, is impossible under this scheme. Everyone gets pushed out further and further from the city because they can't afford the homes being built till you are way the fuck out there where your ability to navigate your local area becomes impossible without cars and long commutes.
From what I've been able to determine a lot of it is caused by the same factors that lead to this kind of shit:
Namely that development is a confluence between developers who only care about making money and local governments that only care about bringing in non-tax-based funding via fees developers pay. The local government doesn't give a shit about planning and just wants to sell-off/zone areas for residential to developers so they can bring in money to pay for shit in a way that doesn't anger voters the way property taxes do. And developers just want to make money and the way the financial incentives of residential home realestate seem to function, the most money is made at the point where you are selling large homes on large lots. That's where the cost of building the home vs the price you can sell it for maximizes.
And because each developer is just buying up his or her chunk of land and developing a "neighbourhood" and calling it a day, they basically take a huge chunk of land, build a bunch of internal streets connecting all the houses, slap a bare minimum of access points on the outside edges of the land so people can get in and out to major arterial roads and call it a day. Meaning each chunk of development is completely disconnect from the one next to it, killing walkability. Shit, often the city can't even be bothered to make them name the fucking streets the same thing so you'll be driving along and street names will be different from the left to the right of the intersection.
And so the city and it's environs sprawl, traffic becomes horrendous, areas become 100% car dependent, transit becomes impossible to do well because of low volume and bad design of residential areas and housing becomes unaffordable which then just further causes sprawl because people move even further away from where they actually want to be just to be able to buy something.
And I think more then anything this is a thing that people don't really think about but that would actually be really popular to push for. Because as Japan demonstrates, you don't have to tell people "Well fuck you, you can't own a home". Which most people just don't want to hear. You can buy a house. A lot of people can if you just fucking design them the way, frankly, a lot of in-high-demand older neighbourhoods deep in the city are already designed: smaller lots with smaller houses packed closer together. But I find that among the public it doesn't really seem to be a major part of the conversation. You start talking about density and it's all about fucking condos and apartments and that turns a lot of people against the idea.
Good news! Earlier today the VTA said they would open the crossing to Brokaw "soon".
So, you know, maybe by the end of the year.
No joke: The homeowner's association probably specifies that they aren't allowed to put landscaping within a certain distance of the street (I don't know this for a fact, but having grown up in the area, I wouldn't be surprised at all).
I feel like this part (especially since it happened after semi-modern subways, etc, were invented) is really important, though. As is, commercial land-owners and other entrenched interests have no financial reason to change the status quo.
The most recent example (AFAIK) of an urban core just being obliterated in the US is San Francisco in 1906, which was a long time before these ideas existed.
Simpler explanation is that people shopping for homes expect a lawn so you have to have one to be able to sell it.
And in a lot of neighborhoods you don't want to put significant plantings withing 4-6 feet of the road because that is city right-of-way that they can tear up at any time for utility work, etc.