Both my laptop and desktop have decided to break within the past week, so a planned post on the new TTI traffic report has been postponed. I know you, dear reader, are extremely excited, and are waiting with bated breath. So here is a short placeholder:
I already promised someone that I would not write a meditation on downtown parking policy, but that was before the City of Austin extended the hours on all its parking meters downtown. I can't find the best article I read about it, but the Statesman is good, Community Impact has a Podcast, and the Chronicle, though it does not have a story on it yet, has a good archive of people complaining.
Four Observations:
1. This sucks for a lot of people, though it seems unlikely people will stop going downtown. But not me; I live downtown and walk everywhere anyway.
2. If indeed people stop going downtown, parking will be easier to find. Moreover, the article I read and can't find argues that other lots and garages that are closed at night will be able to open since they won't be competing with free on-street parking.
3. Fine-tuning will probably happen as the city responds to complaints from downtown employees who work after 5 and people who say the 3 hour limit makes going to long shows impossible. It seems to me there are easy fixes (negotiate some sort of permit for the workers - I think some businesses already do this; and get rid of the time limit on nights and weekends.) So hopefully those will happen, though ideally they would have already been included.
4. The city estimates this will yield an extra 4 million dollars annually; that's pretty good money.
I'm going to a Sierra Club meeting tonight, and some sort of housing tour tomorrow. Thursday's post might concern these. - JPL
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
"Most Toxic American Cities"
A Yahoo! front page link: http://realestate.yahoo.com/promo/americas-most-toxic-cities-2011.html
This is pretty cool. It ranks the US cities based on air quality, TRI emissions, superfund sites, and water quality issues. The exact methodology is confusing: Salt Lake City is ranked below St. Louis despite having significantly more ozone action days and TRI emissions. And the full rankings, as well as any kind of numerical index are missing. But its still cobbles together several different measures of environmental quality - air, water, and land - which is not something I had seen before
The top ten, if you don't want to read the story:
1. Philadelphia
2. Bakersfield
3. Fresno
4. New York
5. Baton Rouge
6. LA
7. Houston
8. St. Louis
9. Salt Lake City
10. Riverside
Note that the California cities are there for air quality; Houston, St. Louis, and Baton Rouge are there for the oil industry; Salt Lake is there because of the mining industry, (and also salty water); and NY and Philadelphia are there because the East Coast is a dirty, polluted place.
This is pretty cool. It ranks the US cities based on air quality, TRI emissions, superfund sites, and water quality issues. The exact methodology is confusing: Salt Lake City is ranked below St. Louis despite having significantly more ozone action days and TRI emissions. And the full rankings, as well as any kind of numerical index are missing. But its still cobbles together several different measures of environmental quality - air, water, and land - which is not something I had seen before
The top ten, if you don't want to read the story:
1. Philadelphia
2. Bakersfield
3. Fresno
4. New York
5. Baton Rouge
6. LA
7. Houston
8. St. Louis
9. Salt Lake City
10. Riverside
Note that the California cities are there for air quality; Houston, St. Louis, and Baton Rouge are there for the oil industry; Salt Lake is there because of the mining industry, (and also salty water); and NY and Philadelphia are there because the East Coast is a dirty, polluted place.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Athens
A note: This blog has no followers and one page view in the last 7 months. But I've had some ideas and I might be motivated enough to consistently write them down. I'm also compelled by one of my classes to write blog posts. Might as well put them here.
Anyway.
People who know me know that I spent 3 days in Athens at the end of a Turkey-Greece trip and that I judged that to be 60 hours too long. (Stumbling on the temple below, at night, was quite pleasant though.) My overall opinion of Athens is that it has one good hill and one good museum and the rest can be more or less ignored. So it was with interest that I saw the following article on Planetizen.
It's quite lengthy, and probably not worth reading in full unless you're really interested. But the statement 'A city with no Suburbs' is alarming and worth exploring. Apparently, present day Athens had built out to its current extent by the 1970's, and since then has gone about converting low density single-family housing into 6 or 8 story apartment buildings. The numbers are convincing and staggering: the outer neighborhoods of Athens have higher densities than the central business districts of dense North American cities like Philadelphia and Toronto.
The city is also walkable and the car ownership rates are low. The article has some good data on the number of intersections and blocks per acre, an indicator of connectivity and walkability, and again they are significantly higher than North American cities noted for their intersection density. The study also compares Athens to six other European cities (Paris, London, Berlin, Barcelona, Rome, and Madrid) and finds Athens to be the densest. So far, so good.
The jump to the miserable hellhole I experienced seems to be that Athens is a walkable city, but it is not walked. The money quote is, "Athens is effectively an immense parking lot form edge to edge." Apparently, there are not enough downtown parking spaces in Athens creating a culture of illegal street parking. Up to 45% of parking in Athens is illegal; the street parking creates greater congestion and makes the sidewalks less walkable. Athens has the worst congestion of the 7 cities, despite a grid set up conducive to good flow. Its streets, crowded and miserable, are full of cars stuck in traffic.
Further miseries arise from the denseness of the city: air pollution (right) from congestion, views blocked by ubiquitous 8 story towers, and sad children whose development is impaired, by the "unsuitability of apartment living for raising children, particularly in the absence of nearby open space."
The foil to Athens is Barcelona. Barcelona is the second densest city, but has twice as much parking and wide car friendly streets and has the least congestion. By all accounts, Barcelona is a great city, and much better than Athens. The author points out that on the Mercer ranking of city quality, where Athens ranks 77th, Barcelona only ranks 42nd, which he does not think is that great. (Zurich is #1, London is #39) At a glance, I am highly skeptical of this ranking. I haven't read all the criteria, but it ranks Chicago ahead of Portland and says, "Chicago, ... [is] amongst the safest cities in the US." (I spent 4 years in Chicago and did not find it to be highly livable or particularly safe.)
Implications:
The author concludes, "[i]t appears that every single urbanist approach, which Athens exemplifies, fails to deliver anticipated results. This challenges current theoretical assumptions and design directives. Clearly, there are elements in the Athenian version of natural urbanism that produce unwelcome outcomes; they should be clearly identified as warning signs to planners."
Ready conclusions are inadvisable because the plight of Athens is so tied up with the idiosyncrasies of Greek culture and Greek dysfunction.
But here are my three reckless thoughts:
1) The easiest lesson, plentiful downtown parking seems like a good solution, but there is a raging debate on that matter which I only barely know about, let alone am informed on. My attempts to outline an argument on this matter started sprawling like Dallas, becoming almost the length of another post, so suffice to say, in my personal experience, more downtown parking seems helpful.
2) The new urbanists argue the social determinism of the urban form. One example is porches, which New Urbanist form-based code requires. So, lots of porches will cause people to sit outside, and be more social. If it is the case that Athens is dysfunctional from cultural reasons, form has not dictated mores; if it has dictated mores, then the form is clearly wrong. Either way the New Urbanists lose.
3) An implication for Austin: I am not yet on the record as against the two big changes to to the downtown street network mandated by the mobility bill, but I am about to be. One change is to make 7th and 8th street two way; the other is to great-streets-ize Lavaca and Guadalupe (completely redo the infrastructure under the streets, repave, and widen the sidewalks substantially.) The changes will arguably make the streets more pedestrian friendly, and conducive to local business and thus make the added congestion worth it; the example of congested, unhappy, Athens argues powerfully against.
Anyway.
People who know me know that I spent 3 days in Athens at the end of a Turkey-Greece trip and that I judged that to be 60 hours too long. (Stumbling on the temple below, at night, was quite pleasant though.) My overall opinion of Athens is that it has one good hill and one good museum and the rest can be more or less ignored. So it was with interest that I saw the following article on Planetizen.
It's quite lengthy, and probably not worth reading in full unless you're really interested. But the statement 'A city with no Suburbs' is alarming and worth exploring. Apparently, present day Athens had built out to its current extent by the 1970's, and since then has gone about converting low density single-family housing into 6 or 8 story apartment buildings. The numbers are convincing and staggering: the outer neighborhoods of Athens have higher densities than the central business districts of dense North American cities like Philadelphia and Toronto.
The city is also walkable and the car ownership rates are low. The article has some good data on the number of intersections and blocks per acre, an indicator of connectivity and walkability, and again they are significantly higher than North American cities noted for their intersection density. The study also compares Athens to six other European cities (Paris, London, Berlin, Barcelona, Rome, and Madrid) and finds Athens to be the densest. So far, so good.
The jump to the miserable hellhole I experienced seems to be that Athens is a walkable city, but it is not walked. The money quote is, "Athens is effectively an immense parking lot form edge to edge." Apparently, there are not enough downtown parking spaces in Athens creating a culture of illegal street parking. Up to 45% of parking in Athens is illegal; the street parking creates greater congestion and makes the sidewalks less walkable. Athens has the worst congestion of the 7 cities, despite a grid set up conducive to good flow. Its streets, crowded and miserable, are full of cars stuck in traffic.
Further miseries arise from the denseness of the city: air pollution (right) from congestion, views blocked by ubiquitous 8 story towers, and sad children whose development is impaired, by the "unsuitability of apartment living for raising children, particularly in the absence of nearby open space."
The foil to Athens is Barcelona. Barcelona is the second densest city, but has twice as much parking and wide car friendly streets and has the least congestion. By all accounts, Barcelona is a great city, and much better than Athens. The author points out that on the Mercer ranking of city quality, where Athens ranks 77th, Barcelona only ranks 42nd, which he does not think is that great. (Zurich is #1, London is #39) At a glance, I am highly skeptical of this ranking. I haven't read all the criteria, but it ranks Chicago ahead of Portland and says, "Chicago, ... [is] amongst the safest cities in the US." (I spent 4 years in Chicago and did not find it to be highly livable or particularly safe.)
Implications:
The author concludes, "[i]t appears that every single urbanist approach, which Athens exemplifies, fails to deliver anticipated results. This challenges current theoretical assumptions and design directives. Clearly, there are elements in the Athenian version of natural urbanism that produce unwelcome outcomes; they should be clearly identified as warning signs to planners."
Ready conclusions are inadvisable because the plight of Athens is so tied up with the idiosyncrasies of Greek culture and Greek dysfunction.
But here are my three reckless thoughts:
1) The easiest lesson, plentiful downtown parking seems like a good solution, but there is a raging debate on that matter which I only barely know about, let alone am informed on. My attempts to outline an argument on this matter started sprawling like Dallas, becoming almost the length of another post, so suffice to say, in my personal experience, more downtown parking seems helpful.
2) The new urbanists argue the social determinism of the urban form. One example is porches, which New Urbanist form-based code requires. So, lots of porches will cause people to sit outside, and be more social. If it is the case that Athens is dysfunctional from cultural reasons, form has not dictated mores; if it has dictated mores, then the form is clearly wrong. Either way the New Urbanists lose.
3) An implication for Austin: I am not yet on the record as against the two big changes to to the downtown street network mandated by the mobility bill, but I am about to be. One change is to make 7th and 8th street two way; the other is to great-streets-ize Lavaca and Guadalupe (completely redo the infrastructure under the streets, repave, and widen the sidewalks substantially.) The changes will arguably make the streets more pedestrian friendly, and conducive to local business and thus make the added congestion worth it; the example of congested, unhappy, Athens argues powerfully against.
Monday, June 21, 2010
A Further Thought
That the Olympics is ultimately deleterious to their host cities is a counter-intuitive but well-established argument. The idea is that after the crowds leave, there is a big Olympic village and big Olympic stadia and none of them are seeing substantial use. Moreover, the costs to build the village and venues leave the city in a great deal of debt. According to the linked article, Montreal ran up so much debt that it took 29 years to pay it off. I was living on the South Side of Chicago when Chicago proposed its bid for the 2016 Olympics. Though many Chicagoans were excited, some South Siders were angry that their open spaces would be turned into stadia and even that rising property values would force out current residents. You can read about the kerfuffle here.
This post argues, with no evidence, that the World Cup does the opposite. The argument rests on the dilute nature of the World Cup: the entire nation participates, not just one city. This helps financially, since costs are absorbed nationally, or over many cities and not just one. More importantly, I suspect, all the host cities gain improvements, but none of the problem of too many buildings concentrated in one area.
This is just a hunch and I'm probably not going to research it more thoroughly. However, what little research I have done contradicts my thesis while not addressing the dilute city argument. From the above NYT article:
"Studies of the 2006 World Cup in Germany showed that the country experienced little in the way of improvements in income or employment figures, just as most economists would have expected. However, surveys noted a noticeable improvement in residents’ self-reported levels of happiness following the event. The World Cup didn’t make the Germans rich, but it appeared to make them happy."
This post argues, with no evidence, that the World Cup does the opposite. The argument rests on the dilute nature of the World Cup: the entire nation participates, not just one city. This helps financially, since costs are absorbed nationally, or over many cities and not just one. More importantly, I suspect, all the host cities gain improvements, but none of the problem of too many buildings concentrated in one area.
This is just a hunch and I'm probably not going to research it more thoroughly. However, what little research I have done contradicts my thesis while not addressing the dilute city argument. From the above NYT article:
"Studies of the 2006 World Cup in Germany showed that the country experienced little in the way of improvements in income or employment figures, just as most economists would have expected. However, surveys noted a noticeable improvement in residents’ self-reported levels of happiness following the event. The World Cup didn’t make the Germans rich, but it appeared to make them happy."
Johannesburg and the World Cup
In honor of the World Cup, I've been meaning for a while to write a post on Johannesburg and the effect the World Cup will have on it. Johannesburg is one of six cities profiled in Endless City (the others are Berlin, London, Mexico City, New York City, and Shanghai) and of those, it is far and away the most messed up. Johannesburg seems like Detroit only much worse. North and northwest of the city is a prosperous ring of closely guarded homes; in the middle there is violent crime, apartheid-level conditions and a hollowed-out downtown. In the southwest is Soweto, a historically black township with slum-like conditions and more violent crime. The original idea of this post was that the World Cup would benefit the prosperous parts of the city while neglecting the latter two. Or that, like most Olympics, the Cup would prove more of a detriment than anything else. Happily, this seems not to be the case: while benefits seem mixed, the World Cup in Johannesburg seems to be benefiting Soweto more than anyone else.
Two Cautions: Soweto contains roughly 800,000 people. It is a third of the city of Johannesburg's population, and roughly the size of Austin. What goes for part of it does not necessarily go for all of it. This WSJ article, while mostly about the ANC, also discusses economic disparity in Soweto. Also, there was a certain level of improvement in Soweto prior to the World Cup - malls, upper class development. electrification and paving of roads. However, it seems that more benefits have accrued through World Cup preparations.
Notably, Soccer City, the premier stadium for the Cup, is located in the middle of Soweto. The stadium has provided jobs, tourism, and prestige. Infrastructure improvements to beautify the area and reduce crime are also beneficial. But the real benefit, I think, is the new Nasrec train station, designed to accommodate up to 20,000 riders per hour. The station is also safer and prettier than what was there before.
Endless City emphasized the transportation deficits in Johannesburg, noting that a third of all trips are made on foot. This is a serious problem, since limited transit also limits economic opportunity. And if it is true that there is a strong correlation between public transportation and economic justice, then the much improved train station should yield dividends even after the tournament ends, and the crowds go away.
Two Cautions: Soweto contains roughly 800,000 people. It is a third of the city of Johannesburg's population, and roughly the size of Austin. What goes for part of it does not necessarily go for all of it. This WSJ article, while mostly about the ANC, also discusses economic disparity in Soweto. Also, there was a certain level of improvement in Soweto prior to the World Cup - malls, upper class development. electrification and paving of roads. However, it seems that more benefits have accrued through World Cup preparations.
Notably, Soccer City, the premier stadium for the Cup, is located in the middle of Soweto. The stadium has provided jobs, tourism, and prestige. Infrastructure improvements to beautify the area and reduce crime are also beneficial. But the real benefit, I think, is the new Nasrec train station, designed to accommodate up to 20,000 riders per hour. The station is also safer and prettier than what was there before.
Endless City emphasized the transportation deficits in Johannesburg, noting that a third of all trips are made on foot. This is a serious problem, since limited transit also limits economic opportunity. And if it is true that there is a strong correlation between public transportation and economic justice, then the much improved train station should yield dividends even after the tournament ends, and the crowds go away.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Endless City
The Endless City is an immense, 6 pound tome produced from the Urban Age Project run by the London School of Economics and Deutsche Bank's Alfred Herrhausen Society. Combining urban the proceedings from international mayoral conferences and years of research, travel and investigation, it profiles six world cities - New York, London, Berlin, Shanghai, Johannesberg and Mexico City - as well as other global urban issues going into the 21st century. It is awesome, and I'm going to be spending much of the summer reading and discussing it. But tonight, I just want to throw this quote up, from the last paragraph of the introduction:
"... [B]eneath the skin of at least these six world cities lie deep connections between social cohesion and built form, between sustainibility and density, between public transportation and social justice, between public space and tolerance, and between good governance and good cities that matter to the way urban citizens live their lives. Perhaps moreso than ever before, the shape of cities, how much land they occupy, how much energy they consume, how their transport infrastructure is organized and where people are housed - in remote, segregated environments behind walls or in integrated neighborhoods close to jobs, facilities, and transport - all effect the environmental, economic, and social sustainability of global society. One of the overriding realizations of the urban age is that cities are not just concentrations of problems - which they are - but that they are also where problems can be solved."
Words for any urban planner to live by.
"... [B]eneath the skin of at least these six world cities lie deep connections between social cohesion and built form, between sustainibility and density, between public transportation and social justice, between public space and tolerance, and between good governance and good cities that matter to the way urban citizens live their lives. Perhaps moreso than ever before, the shape of cities, how much land they occupy, how much energy they consume, how their transport infrastructure is organized and where people are housed - in remote, segregated environments behind walls or in integrated neighborhoods close to jobs, facilities, and transport - all effect the environmental, economic, and social sustainability of global society. One of the overriding realizations of the urban age is that cities are not just concentrations of problems - which they are - but that they are also where problems can be solved."
Words for any urban planner to live by.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Edge City and Suburban Nation
So I happened to be at the Border in the Domain today, and I read Suburban Nation for a bit. It's a polemic, published 2000, against the suburbs and all the evils the suburbs have wrought. Like Jane Jacobs (to whose book this has been compared) the authors bemoan a lack of diversity in suburban zones, claiming this detracts from diversity. As Jacobs attacked single-use housing projects and business-only downtown buildings, so Duany et al attack the single use suburban division of housing subdivision, bigbox shopping mall, and office park. A particularly damning graphic shows a "bubble map," an entire suburb divided lazily into six zoning sections. As a whole it is a well-written and cogent critique, if not as thorough or insightful as The Death and Birth of Great American Cities.
My problem is this: suburban sprawl is depicted entirely as a result of social trends, decrees from on high, and the bad choices of urban planners themselves. The FHA and interstate highways take the rap for cities spreading out, and the aforementioned zoning codes are blamed for making suburban life itself nightmarish. But the people who choose to live there are never brought up. They are portrayed as the passive victims of a badly designed system, who are powerless to change it. But we know from Edge City that this isn't true. Garreau stresses again and again that Edge City is the result of choices Americans made. Suburbia may be nightmarish, but people embrace that nightmare. People like driving just to get groceries, or circling for the best place to park at the mall. Sometimes malls are better than downtowns and big box stores better than Main Street. I myself was reading their book in an Edge City mall (mixed use, yes, but I only use the shopping part) in a big box book store. The point is that planners can plan better, make useful open space instead of water easements, make many, narrow streets, etc. but we can't make people walk and not drive, or play outside, or live in dense housing. More fundamentally, as long as Americans will move beyond the edge of the current city just to get a house or a bigger house, there will always be sprawl.
Jane Jacobs says in the preface to her book that she likes walking cities more than driving cities, and her book is less useful if you prefer the latter: Duany et al need a similar caveat.
My problem is this: suburban sprawl is depicted entirely as a result of social trends, decrees from on high, and the bad choices of urban planners themselves. The FHA and interstate highways take the rap for cities spreading out, and the aforementioned zoning codes are blamed for making suburban life itself nightmarish. But the people who choose to live there are never brought up. They are portrayed as the passive victims of a badly designed system, who are powerless to change it. But we know from Edge City that this isn't true. Garreau stresses again and again that Edge City is the result of choices Americans made. Suburbia may be nightmarish, but people embrace that nightmare. People like driving just to get groceries, or circling for the best place to park at the mall. Sometimes malls are better than downtowns and big box stores better than Main Street. I myself was reading their book in an Edge City mall (mixed use, yes, but I only use the shopping part) in a big box book store. The point is that planners can plan better, make useful open space instead of water easements, make many, narrow streets, etc. but we can't make people walk and not drive, or play outside, or live in dense housing. More fundamentally, as long as Americans will move beyond the edge of the current city just to get a house or a bigger house, there will always be sprawl.
Jane Jacobs says in the preface to her book that she likes walking cities more than driving cities, and her book is less useful if you prefer the latter: Duany et al need a similar caveat.
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