I've seen a lot of pushback to the whole notion of Facebook having their own village you never have to leave if you work for them and like
That's kind of the point of density? You don't have to travel super far to get everything you need?
And also like, of course this kind of thing is going to be spearheaded by private companies and forward-thinking municipalities, cause you can't really zone for that kind of thing and have to setup decent plans and coordinate with the developers and contractors who are building your denser communities.
I'm not one to defend Facebook and dont' even use their platform, but this kinda thinking seems really..limited to me.
Yeah they're ticking all the boxes of what a neighbourhood should be in an ideal world - well done facebook. I can't think of many other companies that have the power to create something like that and not get it dumbed down.
Yeah I'm impressed. It actually addressed the question I've had with these types of denser communities re: where the fuck are office spaces or manufacturing plants and etc. cause one of the main issues with building towards density is having to completely redesign the American office since it's been setup for sprawl.
Which is also why I think companies in collaboration with municipalities and developers are the way we get more of these types of communities in areas where it's been nothing but sprawl for half a century: you have to have work near the life.
Not to derail, but saw this pop up and didn't know about Jane Jacobs in the op. Her Wikipedia article is fascinating, NYC and Toronto are my co-home cities, and the things she saved in both cities happen to be some of my favorite places in both... I need to do some more reading about her.
I travel for work every week, and I've seen a large number of cities in the US and Canada on these trips. Maybe I'm biased because of the NYC/Toronto roots, but well planned density and urban space are so important to creating a vibrant, multicultural, and effective city. Cars aren't the enemy, but they aren't more important than people. Cities that focus on where people need to get to instead of where cars need to get to are much more compelling, and the design philosophy is very easy to tell from the ground.
I studied Human Geography & Planning @ Utrecht University. For my thesis I studied the challenges in urban design for a small city in India that had a large historical inner city. I should come back to this thread later, as I have read some interesting stuff in the past few weeks and I would love to share it with you fine bunch of people.
Currently working for the mapping department of a municipality, but that's mostly just processing changes to the city map (we can zoom in to a scale of 0.0001/1, so there's a lot of detail we have to get right).
Not to derail, but saw this pop up and didn't know about Jane Jacobs in the op. Her Wikipedia article is fascinating, NYC and Toronto are my co-home cities, and the things she saved in both cities happen to be some of my favorite places in both... I need to do some more reading about her.
I travel for work every week, and I've seen a large number of cities in the US and Canada on these trips. Maybe I'm biased because of the NYC/Toronto roots, but well planned density and urban space are so important to creating a vibrant, multicultural, and effective city. Cars aren't the enemy, but they aren't more important than people. Cities that focus on where people need to get to instead of where cars need to get to are much more compelling, and the design philosophy is very easy to tell from the ground.
Thanks for the topic!
Besides reading more about her, check out http://janeswalk.org/ for walking tours in whatever area you're in. I have read about them and they sound like a lot of fun. Basically: a fellow citizen leads a group of people around a neighbourhood and together you look at the kind of developments going on and how you would make the neighbourhood better. I.e. you all look at an area as Jane Jacobs would do and then discuss it with the other participants.
That stands in stark contrast to Apple's new monstrosity, a monolithic superblock suburban office building which does little to serve anybody besides people who work at Apple.
Well done, Facebook (I don't get to say that often.)
It's the epitome of 1950's sci-fi futurism.
It's always weird watching City of Tomorrow stuff from then now, because so much of it is really just creating a world of shut-ins.
Well, I doubt this can ever possibly be as interesting as the Trump/Russia stuff, but I'm gonna keep this thread alive! Found some great, informative, thoughtful stuff on "sprawl repair" and its politics....
The above starts the discussion around 5:00 (the preceding is a cute story about how much fun the Fourth of July can be when you can walk to the festivities in a downtown) - it's a heartfelt reflection on the backlash to the idea that some suburbia will not be able to be reformed even with an incremental, reasonable development pattern.
(If you have an idea about how to package this message in a palatable way, email Chuck Marohn! ^^;)
I really like his argument that we did the same with inner cities all those years back and those buildings we left behind were of lasting materials (marble, stone etc) whereas US suburbia is barely worth slavaging for parts.
I get it that no one wants to see their childhood home demolished, but it is a kind of nostalgia we cannot afford.
I don't care what happens to my childhood home. It was one of about a thousand near identical suburban houses built by a company. It's not like it was built by my own grandfather with his bare hands.
However, the housing estate was well-planned (for the '80s) since it was built with a central shopping area with a newsagent (general store), grocers, butchers, pharmacy, bakery, doctor's office and church. The shopping area was walkable from all parts of the housing estate. The difference between UK and US suburban planning I guess.
I don't care what happens to my childhood home. It was one of about a thousand near identical suburban houses built by a company. It's not like it was built by my own grandfather with his bare hands.
However, the housing estate was well-planned (for the '80s) since it was built with a central shopping area with a newsagent (general store), grocers, butchers, pharmacy, bakery, doctor's office and church. The shopping area was walkable from all parts of the housing estate. The difference between UK and US suburban planning I guess.
I don't care what happens to my childhood home. It was one of about a thousand near identical suburban houses built by a company. It's not like it was built by my own grandfather with his bare hands.
However, the housing estate was well-planned (for the '80s) since it was built with a central shopping area with a newsagent (general store), grocers, butchers, pharmacy, bakery, doctor's office and church. The shopping area was walkable from all parts of the housing estate. The difference between UK and US suburban planning I guess.
Nope. I just assume the town made the developer put up the shops as part of the deal, because it was so neatly planned, with each type of necessary business in its own place.
Hmm that is generally how areas are planned in The Netherlands as well. You cannot build a new residential area without also planning public transport, shops, parks and schools. And make sure all of it is reachable by foot and by bike.
A lot of our suburban planning is influenced by the garden cities movement.
Garden cities are 'new' towns, completely new settlements that were meant to be self sufficient with mixes of residential, commercial and industry. In reality, most have become commuter towns.
What @CelestialBadger is referring to are large developments that are attached onto a pre-existing city. I've never been to the US, but in the UK a great deal of the suburbs are towns and villages that have been absorbed and therefore tend to retain some degree of a high street. The estates and other new developments are generally built to try to retain some degree of community. There'll be provisions for GP surgeries, schools and shops.
Sprawl is mitigated by the fact that English homes tend to be smaller than their US counterparts, and in the cities and suburbs detached properties are far less common - most houses will be semi-detached or terraced homes (or flats). Where detached houses have been absorbed into the city they have often been converted into flats.
The problem with "Garden city planning" is that any planning that says "These are the shops we're going to need/have are both unnecessarily rigid and leads to situations with unnaturally weak competition.
It's almost always better to plan with partially filled slots for absolutely necessary buildings, and then a framework plan that allows for light commercial development.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Well, I doubt this can ever possibly be as interesting as the Trump/Russia stuff, but I'm gonna keep this thread alive! Found some great, informative, thoughtful stuff on "sprawl repair" and its politics....
The above starts the discussion around 5:00 (the preceding is a cute story about how much fun the Fourth of July can be when you can walk to the festivities in a downtown) - it's a heartfelt reflection on the backlash to the idea that some suburbia will not be able to be reformed even with an incremental, reasonable development pattern.
(If you have an idea about how to package this message in a palatable way, email Chuck Marohn! ^^;)
The letter does have some ideas in it that I've basically held for the last several years but haven't really been able to express cleanly:
In my own personal opinion, I hold out very little hope for some of the fantasies that I see drawn for standard suburbia. This is not meant to be a Debbie Downer; it's just been the reality after going through the wars for a fair amount of time. Concepts such as turning cul-de-sac, disconnected subdivisions into mixed-use or even mixed-residence neighborhoods; making long stretches of pad-site retail stroads into transit-oriented urbanism; or connecting together broken street networks - I just see very, very little of that actually happening in the future.
We look at drawings of sprawl repair and think - wow, something really can be done for this crap! But even when drawn by the best, it’s a very different task than balancing the time and money investment relative to the reward.
In general, that really is the theme that I take away from much of the Strong Towns movement, and how I see today and the future. We need to focus talk of planning and development on more realistic cost/benefit scenarios. I’m not optimistic that most places are going to have a deluge of public money available to create place, and I’m also concerned about what sort of private financing will be available as interest rates begin to rise again.
This is all also not to mention the sheer hubris that we SHOULD try to change it all, for whatever reason. [...] But the idea that every place should be walkable, well, I’m sorry, but no. It’s a big world full of choices, and who are we to say every choice should be urban just because (insert your reason)? Many people really do like their sprawl. As Chris Leinberger astutely notes, we only need 5% of the land area to accommodate the demand for walkable urbanism, anyway. We should focus on those areas where we can do it really, really well. We can’t possibly fix it all; the math (and the politics) just doesn’t work.
It's a very nice, realistic assessment of how we should judge this going forward. A lot of places either don't want to or can't fix their sprawl, so the focus should be on applying the funding available for this in the most efficient ways possible.
The problem with "Garden city planning" is that any planning that says "These are the shops we're going to need/have are both unnecessarily rigid and leads to situations with unnaturally weak competition.
It's almost always better to plan with partially filled slots for absolutely necessary buildings, and then a framework plan that allows for light commercial development.
Looking at google maps, the shopping area is still there, but the newsagents is now a daycare, and the grocers/butchers is now a Tesco Express. All else still the same. So I guess it was flexible for changing needs.
Boston's Mayor published an Op Ed about the city's plan so I went and looked at it in some more detail. Then I realized it might be of interest to this thread
My office received a newsletter today for a project taking place near us.
Seems like a pretty intuitive idea, not really sure why Portland wouldn't have done this before.
Meanwhile, on the side of suburban sprawl, construction on basically doubling the size of my town (city?) which used to be the first distinct thing from Sacramento until the suburbs filled in the gaps has started.
Note that the second header item is "Water." They put nice words on it, but it basically boiled down to "we just had a massive drought. Everyone should be concerned about the huge increase in population using more water. During the drought, we saved X water, and so that allocation of water goes to the new place instead of trying to rebuild our aquifer!"
I do like that they have significant sets of open space/parks planned, and I also hate that I'm sounding NIMBY-ish ("I'm here, why should they expand, yaddah yaddah") but I hate seeing such a large amount of suburban growth right as we're coming out of a drought, particularly after having seen some of the local politics/members of the board having connections to construction companies/etc.
Any suburban sprawl anywhere is a bad idea. It's not NIMBY, it's NIABY.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
My office received a newsletter today for a project taking place near us.
Seems like a pretty intuitive idea, not really sure why Portland wouldn't have done this before.
They have been doing this for years. Lots of those on a main road near me.
That makes sense. The notice we got made it seem like it was a trial program.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Eugene has been doing more and more of those rain water runoff projects as well. They look really cool and hopefully they'll help with the flooding we get every fall with all the leafs that clog up the regular gutters.
We do a lot of these in philadelphia. I have spent... altogether too much time designing them since it took everyone a while to decide what they wanted to do.
The early ones are a bumpout that look like this:
More recently we usually do underground storage with a tree trench at grade level since the bumpouts are a lot harder to find space for in the city.
Philadelphia has been working with the EPA for years now to reduce CSOs, and these systems help. Probably going to have to dig a big old expensive tunnel like chicago eventually, but these are good value for the money.
Meanwhile, on the side of suburban sprawl, construction on basically doubling the size of my town (city?) which used to be the first distinct thing from Sacramento until the suburbs filled in the gaps has started.
Note that the second header item is "Water." They put nice words on it, but it basically boiled down to "we just had a massive drought. Everyone should be concerned about the huge increase in population using more water. During the drought, we saved X water, and so that allocation of water goes to the new place instead of trying to rebuild our aquifer!"
I do like that they have significant sets of open space/parks planned, and I also hate that I'm sounding NIMBY-ish ("I'm here, why should they expand, yaddah yaddah") but I hate seeing such a large amount of suburban growth right as we're coming out of a drought, particularly after having seen some of the local politics/members of the board having connections to construction companies/etc.
Lovely. One of the issues that came up in the drought is that all of that development northeast of Sacramento had little to no groundwater sources and was almost entirely reliant on Folsom lake for drinking water (unlike Sacramento and other areas that combine wells and surface water). Hell, on the city of Folsom's website it says that all of the city's drinking water is drawn from the lake.
So sure they've reduced consumption some via metering and fixing leaky pipes, but you still only have so much water in that lake, so when the next water shortage comes up you're gonna have that much more demand to meet with the same amount of water.
We do a lot of these in philadelphia. I have spent... altogether too much time designing them since it took everyone a while to decide what they wanted to do.
The early ones are a bumpout that look like this:
More recently we usually do underground storage with a tree trench at grade level since the bumpouts are a lot harder to find space for in the city.
Philadelphia has been working with the EPA for years now to reduce CSOs, and these systems help. Probably going to have to dig a big old expensive tunnel like chicago eventually, but these are good value for the money.
We have those in Chicago too. Which should help on top of deep tunnel finally being mostly finished in December.
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That's kind of the point of density? You don't have to travel super far to get everything you need?
And also like, of course this kind of thing is going to be spearheaded by private companies and forward-thinking municipalities, cause you can't really zone for that kind of thing and have to setup decent plans and coordinate with the developers and contractors who are building your denser communities.
I'm not one to defend Facebook and dont' even use their platform, but this kinda thinking seems really..limited to me.
Yeah I'm impressed. It actually addressed the question I've had with these types of denser communities re: where the fuck are office spaces or manufacturing plants and etc. cause one of the main issues with building towards density is having to completely redesign the American office since it's been setup for sprawl.
Which is also why I think companies in collaboration with municipalities and developers are the way we get more of these types of communities in areas where it's been nothing but sprawl for half a century: you have to have work near the life.
I travel for work every week, and I've seen a large number of cities in the US and Canada on these trips. Maybe I'm biased because of the NYC/Toronto roots, but well planned density and urban space are so important to creating a vibrant, multicultural, and effective city. Cars aren't the enemy, but they aren't more important than people. Cities that focus on where people need to get to instead of where cars need to get to are much more compelling, and the design philosophy is very easy to tell from the ground.
Thanks for the topic!
Currently working for the mapping department of a municipality, but that's mostly just processing changes to the city map (we can zoom in to a scale of 0.0001/1, so there's a lot of detail we have to get right).
Besides reading more about her, check out http://janeswalk.org/ for walking tours in whatever area you're in. I have read about them and they sound like a lot of fun. Basically: a fellow citizen leads a group of people around a neighbourhood and together you look at the kind of developments going on and how you would make the neighbourhood better. I.e. you all look at an area as Jane Jacobs would do and then discuss it with the other participants.
It's the epitome of 1950's sci-fi futurism.
It's always weird watching City of Tomorrow stuff from then now, because so much of it is really just creating a world of shut-ins.
Going down the rabbit hole of sprawl repair
The above is written by a person who works in sprawl repair, about what is possible and what is... unlikely.
Podcast on the politics of sprawl repair
The above starts the discussion around 5:00 (the preceding is a cute story about how much fun the Fourth of July can be when you can walk to the festivities in a downtown) - it's a heartfelt reflection on the backlash to the idea that some suburbia will not be able to be reformed even with an incremental, reasonable development pattern.
(If you have an idea about how to package this message in a palatable way, email Chuck Marohn! ^^;)
I get it that no one wants to see their childhood home demolished, but it is a kind of nostalgia we cannot afford.
However, the housing estate was well-planned (for the '80s) since it was built with a central shopping area with a newsagent (general store), grocers, butchers, pharmacy, bakery, doctor's office and church. The shopping area was walkable from all parts of the housing estate. The difference between UK and US suburban planning I guess.
You lived in a Garden City? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_city_movement
Nope. I just assume the town made the developer put up the shops as part of the deal, because it was so neatly planned, with each type of necessary business in its own place.
A lot of our suburban planning is influenced by the garden cities movement.
What @CelestialBadger is referring to are large developments that are attached onto a pre-existing city. I've never been to the US, but in the UK a great deal of the suburbs are towns and villages that have been absorbed and therefore tend to retain some degree of a high street. The estates and other new developments are generally built to try to retain some degree of community. There'll be provisions for GP surgeries, schools and shops.
Sprawl is mitigated by the fact that English homes tend to be smaller than their US counterparts, and in the cities and suburbs detached properties are far less common - most houses will be semi-detached or terraced homes (or flats). Where detached houses have been absorbed into the city they have often been converted into flats.
It's almost always better to plan with partially filled slots for absolutely necessary buildings, and then a framework plan that allows for light commercial development.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
The letter does have some ideas in it that I've basically held for the last several years but haven't really been able to express cleanly:
It's a very nice, realistic assessment of how we should judge this going forward. A lot of places either don't want to or can't fix their sprawl, so the focus should be on applying the funding available for this in the most efficient ways possible.
Looking at google maps, the shopping area is still there, but the newsagents is now a daycare, and the grocers/butchers is now a Tesco Express. All else still the same. So I guess it was flexible for changing needs.
http://imagine.boston.gov/imagine-boston-plan/
Some of it is beyond the scope of the thread (universal preK for instance) but lots of stuff like:
edit Also for those unfamiliar with Boston neighborhoods please enjoy how far north South Boston is and now East Boston is north of the North End.
The shape is because Boston was stopped in absorbing neighboring towns like most northeast cities did in the 19th century.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Seems like a pretty intuitive idea, not really sure why Portland wouldn't have done this before.
It has its own fucking website.
Note that the second header item is "Water." They put nice words on it, but it basically boiled down to "we just had a massive drought. Everyone should be concerned about the huge increase in population using more water. During the drought, we saved X water, and so that allocation of water goes to the new place instead of trying to rebuild our aquifer!"
I do like that they have significant sets of open space/parks planned, and I also hate that I'm sounding NIMBY-ish ("I'm here, why should they expand, yaddah yaddah") but I hate seeing such a large amount of suburban growth right as we're coming out of a drought, particularly after having seen some of the local politics/members of the board having connections to construction companies/etc.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
They have been doing this for years. Lots of those on a main road near me.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Yeah I think I first saw and heard about them in like 2011.
They're SUDS! I've designed a fair few at work in some of our schemes. It's really great to see them occuring more and more.
edit: https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Rain-Gardens-Sustainably-Landscape-Sustainable-Rainwater-Management/0881928267 Here's a good book if people would like to learn more.
The early ones are a bumpout that look like this:
More recently we usually do underground storage with a tree trench at grade level since the bumpouts are a lot harder to find space for in the city.
Philadelphia has been working with the EPA for years now to reduce CSOs, and these systems help. Probably going to have to dig a big old expensive tunnel like chicago eventually, but these are good value for the money.
Lovely. One of the issues that came up in the drought is that all of that development northeast of Sacramento had little to no groundwater sources and was almost entirely reliant on Folsom lake for drinking water (unlike Sacramento and other areas that combine wells and surface water). Hell, on the city of Folsom's website it says that all of the city's drinking water is drawn from the lake.
So sure they've reduced consumption some via metering and fixing leaky pipes, but you still only have so much water in that lake, so when the next water shortage comes up you're gonna have that much more demand to meet with the same amount of water.
Joy.
We have those in Chicago too. Which should help on top of deep tunnel finally being mostly finished in December.