#new urbanism

[sylviaodhner]

Cars and Independence

My Patreon

Update: This comic has received a lot of both positive and negative attention, and I decided to post a follow-up comic to address some of the criticism: Revisiting Independence

[typhlonectes]

[cnu-newurbanism]

Protect the porch

The porch is more than just another single-family architectural feature, it's an important part of the culture of Black neighborhoods. Read more.

[nathandiary]

Late night research: eco-anxiety, solarpunk, new urbanism

[edge-oftheworld]

‘I still hate Chicago’

Chicago:

from an urban design perspective: checks out

reading the street signs: with things that I miss

[rivesudboi]

New Town Saint-Charles, Missouri, USA Par : DPZ CoDesign Date : 2002

Projet de 3500 logements en banlieue de Saint-Louis au Missouri. Le projet intègre résidences, commerces et loisirs afin de créer un milieu de vie complet, selon les principes du New Urbanism. Les basins de rétention et de drainage de l'eau sont intégrés avec élgance dans le paysage de la ville.

A projet of 3500 homes in the suburbs of Saint-Louis in Missouri. The project include housing, commerce and recreation, according to the principles of New Urbanism. The retentions ponds needed for the project are integrated into the cityscape elegantly.

Source : https://www.dpz.com/projects/new-town-saint-charles/

[wolf-words]

Howl

And so the wolf howls

perched atop the sprawl,

his path laid out

in roundabouts

and copy paste homes.

No more, he screams.

[bumblebeefarts]

So happy I saw this before starting my essay "Why Cars are a Menace to Society."

[thoughtportal]

the things that are reported matters. the language used matters. what is left out of the story matters.

[loserunknown]

[sylviaodhner]

The Walk Light

Does crossing an intersection on foot have to take this long? I think we can do better. My friend Alex Zorach helped me come up with the idea for this one.

[megalopolousity]

Also add: the "why would we invest in and improve the bus because only the poors take it" mentality that prevents us all from having a world class transit system in this country!

[typhlonectes]

[cnu-newurbanism]

Great Idea 7: Tactical urbanism

The latest trend in urban design and planning gets them off of the paper and out of a big room, testing ideas in the real world. It is fun and hands-on, and making many converts. Read more.

[reasonsforhope]

"With “green corridors” that mimic the natural forest, the Colombian city is driving down temperatures — and could become five degrees cooler over the next few decades.

In the face of a rapidly heating planet, the City of Eternal Spring — nicknamed so thanks to its year-round temperate climate — has found a way to keep its cool.

Previously, Medellín had undergone years of rapid urban expansion, which led to a severe urban heat island effect — raising temperatures in the city to significantly higher than in the surrounding suburban and rural areas. Roads and other concrete infrastructure absorb and maintain the sun’s heat for much longer than green infrastructure.

“Medellín grew at the expense of green spaces and vegetation,” says Pilar Vargas, a forest engineer working for City Hall. “We built and built and built. There wasn’t a lot of thought about the impact on the climate. It became obvious that had to change.”

Efforts began in 2016 under Medellín’s then mayor, Federico Gutiérrez (who, after completing one term in 2019, was re-elected at the end of 2023). The city launched a new approach to its urban development — one that focused on people and plants.

The $16.3 million initiative led to the creation of 30 Green Corridors along the city’s roads and waterways, improving or producing more than 70 hectares of green space, which includes 20 kilometers of shaded routes with cycle lanes and pedestrian paths.

These plant and tree-filled spaces — which connect all sorts of green areas such as the curb strips, squares, parks, vertical gardens, sidewalks, and even some of the seven hills that surround the city — produce fresh, cooling air in the face of urban heat. The corridors are also designed to mimic a natural forest with levels of low, medium and high plants, including native and tropical plants, bamboo grasses and palm trees.

Heat-trapping infrastructure like metro stations and bridges has also been greened as part of the project and government buildings have been adorned with green roofs and vertical gardens to beat the heat. The first of those was installed at Medellín’s City Hall, where nearly 100,000 plants and 12 species span the 1,810 square meter surface.

“It’s like urban acupuncture,” says Paula Zapata, advisor for Medellín at C40 Cities, a global network of about 100 of the world’s leading mayors. “The city is making these small interventions that together act to make a big impact.”

At the launch of the project, 120,000 individual plants and 12,500 trees were added to roads and parks across the city. By 2021, the figure had reached 2.5 million plants and 880,000 trees. Each has been carefully chosen to maximize their impact.

“The technical team thought a lot about the species used. They selected endemic ones that have a functional use,” explains Zapata.

The 72 species of plants and trees selected provide food for wildlife, help biodiversity to spread and fight air pollution. A study, for example, identified Mangifera indica as the best among six plant species found in Medellín at absorbing PM2.5 pollution — particulate matter that can cause asthma, bronchitis and heart disease — and surviving in polluted areas due to its “biochemical and biological mechanisms.”

And the urban planting continues to this day.

The groundwork is carried out by 150 citizen-gardeners like Pineda, who come from disadvantaged and minority backgrounds, with the support of 15 specialized forest engineers. Pineda is now the leader of a team of seven other gardeners who attend to corridors all across the city, shifting depending on the current priorities...

“I’m completely in favor of the corridors,” says [Victoria Perez, another citizen-gardener], who grew up in a poor suburb in the city of 2.5 million people. “It really improves the quality of life here.”

Wilmar Jesus, a 48-year-old Afro-Colombian farmer on his first day of the job, is pleased about the project’s possibilities for his own future. “I want to learn more and become better,” he says. “This gives me the opportunity to advance myself.”

The project’s wider impacts are like a breath of fresh air. Medellín’s temperatures fell by 2°C in the first three years of the program, and officials expect a further decrease of 4 to 5C over the next few decades, even taking into account climate change. In turn, City Hall says this will minimize the need for energy-intensive air conditioning...

In addition, the project has had a significant impact on air pollution. Between 2016 and 2019, the level of PM2.5 fell significantly, and in turn the city’s morbidity rate from acute respiratory infections decreased from 159.8 to 95.3 per 1,000 people [Note: That means the city's rate of people getting sick with lung/throat/respiratory infections.]

There’s also been a 34.6 percent rise in cycling in the city, likely due to the new bike paths built for the project, and biodiversity studies show that wildlife is coming back — one sample of five Green Corridors identified 30 different species of butterfly.

Other cities are already taking note. Bogotá and Barranquilla have adopted similar plans, among other Colombian cities, and last year São Paulo, Brazil, the largest city in South America, began expanding its corridors after launching them in 2022.

“For sure, Green Corridors could work in many other places,” says Zapata."

-via Reasons to Be Cheerful, March 4, 2024

[cazort]

it's often less that the transit itself is bad and more that the physical structures of the community are such that it is hard to service them with public transit.

i've worked in transit agencies and a lot of them are actually very well-run and doing close to the best they can.

the issue is that we have a lot of low-density development, including both low-density single-family housing, and strip malls, instead of the high-density development. also, the density is often not clustered in a way that works well with transit. to make transit work, you want major transit corridors which intersect at transit hubs, and the neighborhoods around the transit hubs to have a high density of housing and businesses, and then have density gradually decrease away from the hubs.

most suburbs from the 1920's and earlier have this structure. Ex: Shaker Square in Cleveland, built in 1927-29:

This community is walkable and also has excellent transit. A train line goes through the middle of the square, going to downtown Cleveland to the west (becoming a dedicated track below the street), and splitting into two lines to the east and southeast which are trolleys on the street. Look how much is packed into a small area: you have a major commercial area around the square, then dense apartments behind that, and you only get single-family housing farther from the transit hub.

Now here is Levittown, PA, built 1947 to 1951, same scale photo:

Note the whole scene is low-density. It's also completely uniform, the density is the same throughout, excepting the school grounds. There isn't any commerce along the main street even. This is in part because the low density cannot support as many businesses, so you need to go farther to get a commercial area, and these areas are still low-density strip malls.

Note also that the streets aren't even laid out in a grid, so sometimes it takes much farther to walk from point A to point B, because you have to walk so far around because the streets aren't well-connected.

It is very hard to serve communities like this via transit.

This is why public transit is so poor in the U.S. It is not that our transit agencies are incompetent, it's that our communities are designed in such a way that makes good transit nearly impossible.

Thankfully, we do still have a lot of communities too like the one pictured above. Choosing to live in one can not only help you to enjoy public transit, but also can help push society back in the direction of transit-oriented development.

American urban planning!