CITY BREATHS: Definition of a City #1
A Greek city. ©SAATAN
”Cities are the spatial articulations of political, demographic, economic, technological and cultural developments which take place on local, regional, national and global scales. A city is continuously being shaped by its context, and its identity, form and function…
Source: citybreaths
The Unbearable Cost of Sprawl
It’s no secret that America’s sprawling, car-dependent exurbs were Ground Zero for the economic meltdown. These “drive ‘til you qualify” communities were built on risky decisions and over-leveraged debt—buyers betting that the price of gasoline for commuting wouldn’t go up too much, or that they’d be able to sell their pricey McMansions before their artificially low mortgages reset. Millions of homeowners lost that bet, and the entire world paid the economic price.
But we haven’t gotten rid of the danger. In fact, the worst might be yet to come. Energy costs continue to skyrocket, making travel and heating exorbitant. New research suggests sprawl is hurting our health. For example, rates of obesity in unwalkable suburbs are near epidemic levels. And local municipalities that tried to grow their tax base through sprawl may soon be overwhelmed by the extra costs of maintenance.
We can’t afford to throw these places away, as they represent a huge investment of resources, energy and human capital. Luckily, some promising new tools are emerging to retrofit sprawling neighborhoods into walkable and sustainable communities. To do that, planners should take advantage of these principles:
- Many of the ingredients are there.Sprawling suburbs often have jobs, housing, recreation and talented populations - all the elements of a sustainable urban environment. But they are poorly organized, disconnected and often in the wrong place.
- The wasted space is a resource. Under-used right-of-way is available for transit. Over-large lots and setbacks can allow accessory dwellings or live-work facilities. Excessive parking lots often make excellent infill sites. Reconfiguring poorly organized, car-dependent commercial developments can often produce walkable and diverse town centers.
- Make it pay. Many suburban sites suffer from a lack of users to support quality development. By adding customers for vibrant, well-designed new centers, suburbs can support more attractive commercial and civic amenities.
But how do we implement these principles? Sprawl developments have been aggressively promoted and encouraged, and the approach to retrofit must do the same. Here’s how cities and planners can help this along:
- Add new design tools and tactics. A growing toolkit of design techniques is becoming available in “shareware” formats. New “sprawl retrofit” strategies offer elegant new ideas for turning car-dependent, wasteful suburban sites into vibrant, successful centers. Public, private and non-profits are working together to pioneer new incremental mechanisms and tools.
- Remove the old codes and barriers and add new regulatory tools. Many of the most desirable, sustainable neighborhoods in human history would be illegal under today’s zoning codes. They need to be replaced with a new generation of codes that allow flexible development that supports walking, transit and a good distribution of amenities.
- Create new incentives and funding mechanisms. Good development will happen if its supported through the early stages with financial tools and incentives. In addition, unsustainable development should pay its true cost, so that it does not have an artificial competitive advantage over good-quality sustainable development.
The global financial crisis was a shot across the bow. We have to stop living at the edge of our means, and start living in a way that’s environmentally - and economically - reasonable and sustainable. In that light, it should be clear to all but the blindest ideologues that we can’t afford sprawl any more. On the other hand, we can’t afford not to repair the sprawl we already have. The good news is that “sprawl retrofit” is possible, as numerous built projects show, and it offers us more than cost savings: it offers a higher quality of life too.
El costo del suburbio
(via humanscalecities)
Source: theatlanticcities.com
Human Scale Cities: History of urbanism in 6 videos
The text is in spanish, but the videos are in english. Originally posted in my blog
Desde que hace un año hice el ejercicio de recopilar una serie de vídeos sobre políticas urbanas para una sesión audiovisual en el curso Repensar las políticas urbanas 30 años después no he dejado de ir…
Source: humanscalecities
This Week's Must-Read: What Happened to Obama?
[…] Franklin D. Roosevelt offered Americans a promise to use the power of his office to make their lives better and to keep trying until he got it right. Beginning in his first inaugural address, and in the fireside chats that followed, he explained how the crash had happened, and he minced no words about those who had caused it. He promised to do something no president had done before: to use the resources of the United States to put Americans directly to work, building the infrastructure we still rely on today. He swore to keep the people who had caused the crisis out of the halls of power, and he made good on that promise. In a 1936 speech at Madison Square Garden, he thundered, “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.”
When Barack Obama stepped into the Oval Office, he stepped into a cycle of American history, best exemplified by F.D.R. and his distant cousin, Teddy. After a great technological revolution or a major economic transition, as when America changed from a nation of farmers to an urban industrial one, there is often a period of great concentration of wealth, and with it, a concentration of power in the wealthy. That’s what we saw in 1928, and that’s what we see today. At some point that power is exercised so injudiciously, and the lives of so many become so unbearable, that a period of reform ensues — and a charismatic reformer emerges to lead that renewal. In that sense, Teddy Roosevelt started the cycle of reform his cousin picked up 30 years later, as he began efforts to bust the trusts and regulate the railroads, exercise federal power over the banks and the nation’s food supply, and protect America’s land and wildlife, creating the modern environmental movement.
Those were the shoes — that was the historic role — that Americans elected Barack Obama to fill. The president is fond of referring to “the arc of history,” paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics — in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time — he has broken that arc and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation.
When Dr. King spoke of the great arc bending toward justice, he did not mean that we should wait for it to bend. He exhorted others to put their full weight behind it, and he gave his life speaking with a voice that cut through the blistering force of water cannons and the gnashing teeth of police dogs. He preached the gospel of nonviolence, but he knew that whether a bully hid behind a club or a poll tax, the only effective response was to face the bully down, and to make the bully show his true and repugnant face in public.
IN contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public — a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it. Had the president chosen to bend the arc of history, he would have told the public the story of the destruction wrought by the dismantling of the New Deal regulations that had protected them for more than half a century. He would have offered them a counternarrative of how to fix the problem other than the politics of appeasement, one that emphasized creating economic demand and consumer confidence by putting consumers back to work. He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it. But the arc of his temperament just didn’t bend that far. […]
Carve out some time to read the whole piece.
Also, Paul Krugman’s reaction, and MoJo’s Kevin Drum’s thoughts.
Source: kateoplis
gq:
Lithuanian Mayor Drives Tank Over $200,000 Mercedes Illegally Parked in a Bike Lane
We don’t care if this is a publicity stunt. It’s fucking awesome. Hat tip, Mayor Arturas Zuokas.
(via GOOD)
Source: gq
Entrevista a Edward Glaeser, autor de "Triumph of the City"
“El error más común es confundir el trazado urbano con la ciudad real, que es la gente. Es fácil pensar que una obra nueva cambia las cosas porque sí y eso no es así.”
Una reflexión sobre el transporte en las grandes ciudades. Entrevista a Georges Amar, director de Prospectiva RATP
“El transporte se refiere más al vehículo o al desplazamiento, pero la movilidad debe tratar más sobre las personas, pues es un derecho social”
Tecnocultura, educación y ciudad. Por Armando Silva
“Dejó de ser cierto lo que se dijo en algún momento de ‘ciudades globales’ para referirse a las de gran desarrollo económico y adonde llegaban inmigrantes de todo el mundo. Lo global se entiende mejor ahora como tecnocultura y a todos nos toca. La ciudad digital existe al mismo tiempo con la física, construyendo entre ambas nuevas maneras de espacio público, sociedades del conocimiento e ideales de futuro. La ciudad real se está transformando a diferentes niveles desde la otra digital a partir de introducción de hábitos derivados del uso de nuevos dispositivos tecnológicos.”
¿Cómo funcionan las ciudades en la vida real?
“… que hoy proliferan espacios públicos en los que se fomenta el pasar frente al estar… que las aceras no son sólo extensiones sino auténticas instituciones sociales…” Anatxu Zabalbeascoa
Source: ninetosix
