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Urban planning in current events

Started by noahclem, November 06, 2014, 06:04:14 AM

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noahclem

I often find myself coming across interesting relating to SC4 through urban planning so I thought I'd start a thread for it. I'm hoping to generate a bit of discussion here which would take some of the pressure off my wife who is immediately bored numb by any discussion of city planning ;D  Feel free to share anything relevant and of interest that you come across here as well :)

Recently I ran into this article where the author aggressively makes a case for reducing lane widths to 10'/3m or less. The advantages cited are shorter distances for pedestrians to cross, available space for dedicated bike lanes, and increased safety for non-car traffic in particular due to traffic tending to move slower on narrower roads. I found the arguments pretty compelling. It's certainly interesting to think how narrower lanes would impact SC4 though that would be opening a can 'o' worms and a half  ::)

EDIT: forgot to mention I found the article here

Read here for how a country shouldn't build roads  &mmm

MandelSoft

#1
Funny, we dutch have the exact opposite problem on rural roads: our lanes are too narrow and therefore they don't leave much room for error. The shoulder lanes are very narrow and usually, there are ditches next to the road. We just need wider shoulder lanes (preferably about 1 - 1.5 meters wide, so it's not wide enough to be another lane). Compared to our neighbours, we have quite narrow road profiles, especially on provicial roads. Though we are in general a country with safe traffic, these provincial roads remain the most dangerous roads in our network.

The author of the article linked above wants to reduce the lane width from 3.6 meters to 3.0 meters. In the Netherlands, the lane can be even less than that (and still fit within the norms: left turn lanes for roads with a design speed of 60 km/h (37.5 mph) are just 2.5 meters wide following the CROW guidelines. In practice, quite a lot of roads here have lanes between 2.6 meters and 3.2 meters width. Only on motorways, you have wider lanes (3.5 meters). The general rule is that you need wider lanes at higher design speeds to incorporate more room for error. A common rule of thumb is that the minimum lane width should be 2.0 meters + 1/100*maximum speed (in km/h). However, as the author also writes, wide lanes invites people to go faster or drive more recklessly, and this is not what we want from safety aspects. Therefore, you need narrower lane widths for streets with lower speeds.

But an interesting article indeed ;)

Best,
Maarten
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Themistokles

#2
This is a really interesting topic that's well, well worthy of a thread of its own! And an interesting article as well! And while we're at it, take a look at this: http://player.vimeo.com/video/67638874; that's what I call city planning! ;D

(Btw, I found the video on this site: http://gehlarchitects.com/.)
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kbieniu7

Very interesting topic, I'm glad that you stared it, Noahclem!

I've read this article before and in my opinion, author is right, at least in some points.

Last years, in many polish cities we have the same issue - many new roads, even in the cities, in densely built-up areas, have really wide lanes - 3.0-3.5 meters. That creates the situation, that the drivers exceed the speed limit (usually 70 km/h, but often even 50 km/h) almost all the time. That causes two problems:

- safety - higher speed = increased risk of an accident and fatalities, especially for pedestrians and cyclists. One year ago, there was quite loud discussion about an accident in Wrocław. In the city centre, the driver lost control over his car and killed a cyclist riding on a sidewalk. Of course, in such places there should be appropiate crash barriers, but  there would be always clue points - pedestrian crossings and intersections.

- but also the noise - it's also a big problem in cities, while the clue is the same - higher speed, which causes increased noise emission. Even, if there is speed limit for 50 km/h, drivers exceed it. And engineers take it into consideration and build a lot of soundwalls - spending a lot of money and ruining the aesthetics of the city.

But even on the rural roads. I would like to refer to words written by Maarten:

Quote from: Mandelsoft(...)our lanes are too narrow and therefore they don't leave much room for error. The shoulder lanes are very narrow and usually, there are ditches next to the road. We just need wider shoulder lanes (preferably about 1 - 1.5 meters wide, so it's not wide enough to be another lane).

In this case, I would also like to share an experience from my country. Too wide paved shoulder might be a threatment too. It's all up to the perception of the drivers: the more place we have, the safer it looks like. I underlined it on purpose, because it's not always true, as it's followed by: the safer it looks like, the faster I can drive.

Polish infrastructure is not top-notch. It's been getting better and betterlast time, but for many years the main national roads were 1x2+wide paved shoulder. With the speed limit of 90 km/h, driving 100+ km/h was and still is nothing surprising. What is more, quite common were: "overtaking as the third"; driving on the paved shoulder for "make ovetaking easier", or overtaking with forcing drivers coming ahead to escape on tthe soulder (many times drivers count, that the others will do that!).

Of course on highways and expressways wider lanes are necessary, there's no doubt. However, in cities and even many roads in unbuilt-up areas, I find more negatives than positives of them.

Quote from: MandelsoftThough we are in general a country with safe traffic (...)
I envy this! Hope to go to the Netherlands somewhen and try it on my own (especially by bike) ;)
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compdude787

Making lanes narrower doesn't seem to have any benefits IMO. The lanes are designed to be wide enough so that you don't feel cramped in them, and so that you have room for error. (i.e. not staying exactly in the center of the lane)
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MandelSoft

Have you actually read the article? It describes why the reasoning you just put up there doesn't hold...
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compdude787

Silly me, should have read the article! :P

Thinking about it more, I wouldn't mind if the lanes are a bit narrower if it allows bike lanes to be added to a four-lane road without reducing the road to two lanes. I can't stand it when municipalities do this!! In a very hilly city like Seattle, the terrain is not conducive to biking like it is in the Netherlands, so you can't expect that a significant amount of people will switch their mode of commute from driving to biking just because there's now a bike lane on the road.

Seattle's roads that are four-lane roads don't have super-wide lanes, though. I'm pretty sure most of them are 10 ft. wide lanes.
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carlfatal

Thanks Noah for this topic! My two cents here are very unorganized, but I am thinking about this since long time.

The problem mentioned in this article is well known. When I was young, the most rural roads here around were around 4 to 4.5 meters wide. Absolutely enough, if you drive a tractor or a small car, and not faster than 60 km/h.
But cars are made to be fast, and they became faster every year. The first VW Golf had a max speed of around 140, and if you look now to the same basic model...

So traffic experts paid by companies, who build streets, told us, wider lanes would be more safe. This is not true, as it depends on the speed on a street. Also it depends on the traffic volume, and like the author of the article above mentions: wider lanes invite people to use them with mor speed. So you mostly have a new street made fo a specific volume of traffic, and woa - after a short time, this street will have more traffic than expected. So safety is an illusion here.
On highways we have the most heavy accidents. To prevent people from getting harmed, we learned to build cars with safety cells. Cars now need more energy than their aequivalents in former times, a 1960 Beetle is more eco than any new car, especially if you count the energy, that was used to made six generations of following cars from this, only to make it safer in the case of an heavy accident.
BUT: all the cars, all the new wider lanes in towns were followed by more heavy accidents harming bikers and pedestrians (faster driving, longer ways for pedestrians etc.).

So these safer cars harm more people than the ones in earlier times, cause they are bigger, heavier and faster. And there are much more of them. And every new street will attract traffic, so there is no way out of this game.

To make lanes more narrow would indeed help to prevent traffic, it would help people to become more active, to use their legs instead of sitting. And - in my view very important: Narrow lanes force drivers to communicate with the world outside of their car. And you have to force drivers, as every car gives you the illusion, you would sit inside a safe room and you can escape every single unwanted situation by driving away.
So narrow lanes and small cars and less power would help indeed. But sadly cars aren´t made for driving first. They are made as status objects. And I am sure, this will prevent us from better solutions...

As a militant radical I would say: Let´s build railways again. Railways are a sign of real civilisation in my view, they are communicative. And I remember times in Germany, when we had trains with movie theaters, with playgounds inside, Restaurants, that were worth this word.
Traffic without communication is no traffic, it is only moving without sense.

catty

Quote from: carlfatal on November 07, 2014, 08:03:44 AM
...As a militant radical I would say: Let´s build railways again. Railways are a sign of real civilisation in my view, they are communicative. And I remember times in Germany, when we had trains with movie theaters, with playgounds inside, Restaurants, that were worth this word.
Traffic without communication is no traffic, it is only moving without sense.

:thumbsup:

Have traveled between Wellington and Auckland by car a few times its a all day (or night) journey and its something best done with more than one driver available so you can take turns, but years ago did the same trip on the Silver Star Train

QuoteThe Silver Star was a luxury passenger train that ran overnight between Auckland and Wellington on the North Island Main Trunk railway of New Zealand. The train ran from Monday, 6 September 1971 until Sunday, 8 June 1979.

and it was   ()stsfd()  there is something magical about travelling thru the night on a train, especially one as comfortable as that was, it was like going on Holiday.

-catty
I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?" DEATH thought about it. "CATS," he said eventually, "CATS ARE NICE.

compdude787

So I posted this on the "If you could change a RL city with SC4, what would you change?" topic on Simtropolis. It's not totally relevant to this particular thread topic, but I really didn't want to start another thread, so I'm posting it here.

Anyway, what I would change in Seattle is to add more freeways, especially in North Seattle. I-5 is the only north-south freeway in North Seattle. OTOH, in South Seattle, you have five freeways: an east-west freeway known as the West Seattle Bridge, (the whole freeway is referred to as a bridge since pretty much all of it is elevated) I-90, and three freeways running north-south: the main freeway, I-5, and two minor ones, the W. Marginal Freeway (SR-99 and 599) and SR-509. So, that's not fair! Why does North Seattle only have one freeway, while South Seattle has five? As you'd expect, this lack of redundancy in the road network spells trouble whenever there's an accident that blocks most of the lanes on the freeway. Every side road you'd take in these cases is completely clogged up, and it's so annoying. So here's my idea to add more freeways! :D

(sorry about the lousy quality; Imgur compresses the crap out of every image you upload &mmm )

So, I-205 would serve as a reliever to I-5, with a connection built from Northgate to Greenlake where it would intersect with the free-flowing expressway portion of Aurora Avenue/ WA-99. WA-99 would then be upgraded to Interstate standards, the Aurora Bridge would be replaced with a wider structure (by 2032, the current Aurora Bridge would be 100 years old, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a replacement project like this happening at that point IRL). The wider bridge would have 8 lanes on the upper deck and four on the lower deck, which would serve as collector-distributor lanes connecting Fremont to Queen Anne, and reducing weaving on the mainline of the freeway.

I-205 would then go through the Alaskan Way Tunnel, which is going to have 4 lanes, but I would build another tunnel to increase capacity to eight lanes. Considering that I-5 has only 6 lanes that continue all the way through downtown (4 if you don't count the HOV/ carpool lanes), this would mean that it'd have more capacity than I-5 for thru traffic! South of Seattle, it would use the current Alaskan Freeway to West Seattle Bridge (widened, obviously). South of that bridge, WA-99 currently becomes a 6-lane arterial. I would build an elevated viaduct here with local roads running underneath; after all it's an industrial area, so who cares, right? Then, it would go over the 1st Avenue South Bridge, and then would connect with a widened SR-99 freeway (W. Marginal Freeway) via some flyover ramps. Currently you have to go through a light to get from the West Marginal Freeway to the 1st Avenue South Bridge, and that's such a waste of time and gas to have to slow down, sit thru a light, and then accelerate back up to speed. I-205 would continue down to I-5 along a widened W. Marginal Freeway. This freeway is currently only four lanes wide, but the state was smart enough at the time to give it a wide median to allow for future expansion.

This freeway would serve much of the same function as the R.H. Thompson Freeway would have had: to serve as a reliever for I-5. For those not familiar, the R.H. Thompson would have run to the east of I-5 along the route of MLK, Jr. Way in South Seattle, up north to the Arboretum, intersecting with 520 where the "ghost ramps" are now, tunneling under Union Bay, then going through Ravenna Park, and connecting up with I-5 just east of Green Lake.

Okay, so what about I-305, you ask? Well, it's my rendition of the Bothell Freeway proposal which was proposed back in the late-50s and early-60s, when all the other freeways were being built in Seattle and the rest of the country. I honestly think it was a great idea and it was unfortunate that it never got built. The NIMBYism would be strong with this one, but in SimCity, nobody would care!!! :D But this is a freeway I'd love to see IRL. On the map above, you can see that the my I-305 designation extends beyond I-405; yes, I-305 would continue along what is currently the alignment of SR 522, which exists as a freeway east of I-405. Over the next few years, it is being upgraded to a four-lane freeway all the way to its eastern terminus in Monroe, so under my proposal, the fast-growing town of Monroe (population 17,304 in the 2010 census) that is becoming a quite a suburban bedroom community would have an Interstate! How cool would that be?
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Themistokles

#10
Quote from: carlfatal on November 07, 2014, 08:03:44 AM
---
As a militant radical I would say: Let´s build railways again. [...]
Traffic without communication is no traffic, it is only moving without sense.

These are true, true words. I couldn't agree more - indeed, I'd say remove all roads except those needed for emergency vehicles, and we'd see each other as people with faces again, biking, walking, using public transit when needed, instead of only tons of steel and number plates. Shrinking lane width is a good measure, but gradually roads ought to be cut back. That's what I like about Jan Gehl's architecture, whose video I linked above - he builds an urban environment for people. For it is, as you said, carlfatal, and I agree, in the communication between people that urban life becomes meaningful.

And, compdude787, if I may suggest, why not attain equality between the different parts of the city by cutting back the freeway network where it is over-extensive? The disused freeways could then be used as parkland (like the NYC high lane), and the new city inhabitants housed with urban infill, thus not requiring any new freeways.
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Flatron

I must admit that I really, really love driving. With a good, fast car on good roads(that feeling when you hit 180km/h). On sunday afternoons when there are no trucks ;)
But when I travel to the town where I study, I always take the train because, well on the first stretch out of the mountains, I would safely only average a speed of 70km/h in my car, which is only slightly faster than the train, and then, out in plain, the autobahn is restricted to 120km/h all the time and sometimes even down to 80 because of construction works, whereas the train reaches speeds of 160km/h.(sure, it stops a few times and in the end, the whole journey takes 20min longer, but honestly, I like to be able to re-read some of the anatomy stuff or talk with friends that travel with me, something not to be tried when driving on a busy motorway).
Now, back to city planning. Regensburg,(the location of my alma mater) didn't really grow between 1803(when it lost the privilege of hosting the imperial diet) and the 1960ies(when the university was founded), so large parts of the city reflect the planning principles of that time, ie. wide avenues, apartment blocks, shopping centres and parks. This made it easy to implement a superb network of cycling lanes, but also makes the city quite unwalkable. There are buses, though, so the situation isn't that bad.
There are plans to create a new lightrail, but there's no real progress on that matter since 2005.

noahclem

#12
If Wikipedia's article of the day counts as "current events" than yesterday's article is worth noting, especially for the freeway lovers here (compdude and Maarten, I'm looking at you ;) ).

I think I fall somewhere in the middle in the discussion here between big, fast road-oriented cities and walkable, rail/public transit-oriented cities. I've always loved trains and freeways though my interest has swung between the two over time. Coming from Sioux Falls, SD, USA I was intensely annoyed from at least age 7 by the lack of interstate highway access to the city center and the general poor fit of the interstates to the rapidly-growing city (the metro area has roughly quadrupled since the '60s when the interstates were planned). Visiting Minneapolis, Omaha, or Denver I'd try in vain to get my parents to drive through every big interchange I could find on the map and I came to idealize large wheel and spoke systems like Houston. Moving to Milwaukee in my mid-20's was a watershed moment as I lived near the city center very close to an area rapidly revitalizing in the wake of an urban freeway being removed. Milwaukee was able to build only a small amount of it's planned freeway system before protests stopped the rest but I eventually came to the conclusion wasn't bad in most areas. The almost $1B reconstruction of the city's central interchange into a 5-level masterpiece convinced me there much more important things to making a city's freeway system great than its number of miles. During that time I accepted a job in Chicago after failing to find one closer to MKE and had my first experience with consistently awful freeway congestion. The 90m Amtrak line (starting a mile from home and ending a block from work) was a much nicer way to go than 3-4 driving, cool interchanges or no. Comparing the differences in freeway systems, population, sprawl, and urban character between Milwaukee, Chicago, and Minneapolis really drove home the effect expanding freeways have to increase sprawl, disrupt and devalue neighborhoods, and simply encourage more commuters to drive from ever further away resulting in no less congestion. My current view is that the perfect city should have a place for neat systems with all those elements; highways, rails, and pedestrian-accessible and cohesive neighborhoods; while balancing the interests of the people with interests in the different styles. That's idealistic, not a practical solution to all kinds of cities with varying existing cityscapes and political systems, but you'll notice it heavily influences how I tend to build my cities.

edited to fix link

compdude787

#13
Quote from: Themistokles on November 09, 2014, 02:03:06 AM
And, compdude787, if I may suggest, why not attain equality between the different parts of the city by cutting back the freeway network where it is over-extensive? The disused freeways could then be used as parkland (like the NYC high lane), and the new city inhabitants housed with urban infill, thus not requiring any new freeways.

We are currently doing that here in Seattle with the Alaskan Way Viaduct, moving it into a tunnel and then redoing the entire waterfront. It's not clear whether they will keep part of the viaduct, but I really wish they would. Part of it is still in decent shape and it won't all fall down in an earthquake. (most of it will, though)

But no freeway should ever be destroyed just for the sake of destroying freeways. Existing roads would not be able to handle the additional traffic that would not be on the freeways. I can understand how freeways cut through neighborhoods and whatnot, but it really should be possible to build them so that they go between neighborhood boundaries. And, I honestly would use more tunnels (like Australian cities) but whenever we build tunnels here, it always ends up running into countless problems. Example: the tunnel carrying sewage discharge from the Brightwater sewage treatment plant to Puget Sound, and the Alaskan Way Tunnel being built right now. The boring machine is currently halted for months.
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Flatron

usually, additional roads only generate more traffic. Cars as we know them now will either be unaffordable or simply nonexistent in the not-so-distant future. Thus, new freeways should only be built where they're really necessary.(and within a city, they are usually not necessary, a simple boulevard/avenue can handle much more traffic[if you include pedestrians and cyclists]) 

j-dub

QuoteBut no freeway should ever be destroyed just for the sake of destroying freeways

Sadly, the US has a history of this though. I've seen it myself. It kills me the towns that were killed when they built the freeways to bipass them, only to present day, shut those paths of travel down if not remove bridges all together. I don't think that tragic post apocalyptic drama "The Road" would have happened on screen if they didn't actually have an abandoned highway to go by on. There is not to mention the amount of railroads that were since removed, where as they were not government owned to get technical.

Still, I have seen various proposals for traffic revisions if not highways, but it never sees the light of day, due to right away, not to mention money. I just don't get why that two block stretch in my reality to build a new bi-pass cost over thirty million, not to mention the construction union that purposely made it worse before it could get better, and the rest of the ten miles on that route still will not be done for a long, long time. Too much of that exists in my reality, they start something and just can never finish. Eventually it comes to a point where it can no longer remain be free. They finally return to continuing this hwy 390 construction nearly 2 decades later, it's no where near finished, but when they finish it has to be a toll road to make up the millions of dollars it cost.

noahclem

I meant to share this last week, but the Economist published an essay on suburbs and suburbanization recently that I thought was really interesting. Thought a few city planners around here might find it interesting  ;)

linkie

compdude787

That is pretty interesting; I had no idea how much suburbia is proliferating around the world. I think it's fair to say that most people with families are generally drawn to the quiet, peaceful nature of suburbs more so than urban areas. That's not to say that families won't live closer to the city, but generally, suburbs are nicer, more peaceful places to live.

People's concerns about endless suburban sprawl are sensible and many cities have urban growth areas where a certain density of zoning cannot take place outside of the boundaries of the urban growth boundary. This all fine and dandy but land values inside the urban growth area increase a lot, so many newer suburban developments tend to be way denser to the point where they have to cram houses super-close to each other and you end up with the house taking up a large portion of the lot and you have a tiny backyard and all your neighbors are staring down at you. Talk about privacy! Personally, I don't like those kinds of suburbs.

The article's mention about Phoenix is pretty interesting--infrastructure definitely has played a role in that city's development. Phoenix has an awesome arterial and freeway network, IMO. They actually are looking ahead to the future when they plan their roads. When I was flying into Phoenix several years ago, I looked down and thought "Whoa, that's a lot of freeways!" But I was really seeing a lot of 6 lane avenues that looked like freeways to me because arterials wider than four lanes are practically non-existent in Seattle.

Also, many of the suburbs in Phoenix are planned and developed on a much larger scale than those near Seattle. That makes it easier for municipalities to plan road upgrades since they have a clearer idea of the amount of extra traffic they're going to be dealing with (and I wouldn't be surprised if the developer pays for a large portion of the road upgrades). But up here near Seattle, a lot of new subdivisions are developed on a much smaller scale. This is harder for the city or county to keep up with, and a lot of the roads are still winding 2-lane roads with four way stops all over the place. Now there's no room to widen them without having to tear out houses or encroach on peoples' front yards, and nobody likes that.
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MandelSoft

#18
I actually disagree with the article. When I was in the USA, I found the suburbs there quite boring and dull. In fact, other than in Europe, I never felt a distinct character for each suburbs. The houses may be all different, it still felt endless monotony. To me, these suburbs are to sparse and too space consuming. However, living in concentrated city centers or pencil tower district (Hong Kong/Macau style) is also not a comfortable way of living...

There has to be a middle way, and I think we have found it in the Netherlands: decentralised concentration. Instead of growing endless suburbs, development is concentrated in satellite cities. The very city I live in (Zoetermeer) is a result of this plan. The original intent in the 1960s was that the growth of cities and towns in the Netherlands should be managed more so people wouldn't spread out too much. If they did, it would be hard to provide enough services to the people and it may destroy the little amount of green space we had. Unlike the USA, we don't have an abundance of space, so spatial planning is neccessary here.

This type of development results in a myriad of smaller, more concentrated cities. This is the reason why the Netherlands, the densest populated country of Europe (not taking into account city states with less than 1 million inhabitants), has no single city that's over 1 million inhabitants (OK, only Amsterdam gets over 1 million if you take the neighbouring cities into account, and you get to 2 million if you combine the whole urban area of The Hague and Rotterdam). Instead, we have 30 cities in this small country that have over 100 000 inhabitants and a lot more that are all way over 50 000. Lately, we do tend to build suburbs near the larger cities here, but still, these suburbs are quite concentrated with row-homes, a common good in the Netherlands.I'm quite happy with our family row-home of just 100m² of land (just over 1000 sq. ft.), including the garden taking up half of the portion of the land. We have three floors of 50m² each (the third floor is the attic which we have converted to liveable space). This is vastly different from Phoenix, as mentioned in the article:
Quote"The richest people in Phoenix live on one acre [0.4 hectares]," explains Grady Gammage, a lawyer and local expert. "The poorest live on about one-fifth of an acre."
0.2 acres is still 810 m²! You can fit eight dutch row homes in that area!

The main pro's of this approach is:
- Lots of green space between cities. You don't have a city with parks anymore, you have one big park with cities.
- Public transport is quite feasible in these smaller cities. By concentrating more, more customers can get in range of the public transit. This also helps with setting up the public transit network hierarchy.
- Work is more spread over the region; each city offers its own jobs.
- Cities are bikeable. You can get anywhere in the city within a reasonable of time by bicycle. No wonder why we dutch fell in love with cycling!

The downside is however that there is less privacy and you have less space in your home. But you get used to living like that...

Now, the article states that richer people tend to live more spaciously, but if you would compare the wealth of some-one living in a row home here and someone in the USA living in a typical suburb, the wealth is about the same, but the space consumption is quite different. There is no 1:1 releation between wealth and space consumption; part of it is culturally determined.

Here's an nice image where you can get the idea how different this approach is compared to other urban areas.


Even in Sweden, I had the idea that the cities were quite similarly concentrated as in the Netherlands. The urban sprawl as seen in the USA was much less apparent there, despite having a whole abundance of space. Sweden is also quite bike friendly and has proper public transit.

In my opinion, the USA can learn from these examples...

Best,
Maarten
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Themistokles

Thanks for sharing the link, noahclem!

Without any real evidence, I believe many people are rather fleeing the cities, than are attracted to the suburbs. Continued suburbanization, I believe, is a symptom of unattractive cities. Cities can be walkable, lush and attractive with great amenities and rapid transport but as long as they are not, people will flee them for the peaceful suburbia, like in Chennai in the article. Suburban expansion is not only destroying the cities, but also the country-side it replaces.

Although I agree that space requirements are partly culturally determined, I also think that they are inspired by international ideas. In Sweden, row houses are not as popular now as they once were, probably because of inspiration from the American suburb. The problem in Sweden, I believe, is that there is space in excess -- environmental protection alone seems not to be reason enough to build well. Still, Swedish cities are relatively bikeable, but not in the same dimension as Copenhagen or the Netherlands.

What strikes me, is that even in countries like Sweden that are often regarded or at least regard themselves as environmentally progressive, new development is still often spread out and fossil-oriented. I think the Dutch are very fortunate to have such a plan, because if we are ever to achieve a fossil-independent, low-energy life-style, we will have to cram together -- perhaps Manhattan-style (Manhattan is still on the same level of fuel consumption also an interesting article although it won't fit as current events as the rest of the USA was in the 1920s!), perhaps in a modernized version of a Chinese hutong or perhaps like in medieval city centres (or perhaps like in the Netherlands).

To set the ball rolling, I think London's Green Belt is a great solution. But to work for integration rather than segregation, that is to avoid London-like property prices, it must be paired with a conscious building plan, so that the existing urban environment is preserved, improved and densified to allow all people to live there.
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