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Urban planning in current events

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

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noahclem

Great points guys!

My concern with the article is that it seems economic-focused to a detrimental extent. Specifically, the environmental impact both of land use and transportation costs stemming from low density aren't thoroughly-enough addressed for me. That said, I suspect in response to my land-use concern the authors would respond with how much more of a concern the space that agriculture takes up is. Still, I'm sure all the existing and impending suburban sprawl around a major city in India could have provided habitat for a number of elephants, or even tigers, not to mention all the other critters that can't share habitat with us. That probably sounds like a bit of a silly argument but I really, really like elephants and tigers ;D  But the environmental impact of suburban sprawl land usage is certainly non-negligible imho.

As far as the boring/monotonous/cultureless line of argument I'm in agreement, and have read the Economist make the same criticisms. In particular Milton Keynes, which in a green-belt-restricted development system like the UK generally has seems a close equivalent to a suburb, has been repeatedly mocked by them, albeit a mocking qualified by more upbeat economic statistics. And I think there's a social cost to living arrangements where one never interacts with their neighbors. Seeing neighbors walking, biking, in public spaces, etc means more interaction with more people and exposure to more perspectives from more kinds of people. I sometimes wonder if America's dysfunctionally partisan politics are caused in part by people almost never having to meet the people they disagree with. It's probably the case that families with growing children are much more interested in affordability, safety, and each other's company than the benefits of urban living and there does seem to be a pretty clear cost to limiting sprawl in arbitrary ways like green belts. One can't help but think there are other tools planners can use to strike a better balance though.

Certainly an interesting topic in any case, and one likely to remain relevant for a long time to come. I wonder how driverless and potentially emissionless and inexpensive cars will factor in....

compdude787

Quote from: noahclem on December 16, 2014, 07:46:36 AM
And I think there's a social cost to living arrangements where one never interacts with their neighbors. Seeing neighbors walking, biking, in public spaces, etc means more interaction with more people and exposure to more perspectives from more kinds of people. I sometimes wonder if America's dysfunctionally partisan politics are caused in part by people almost never having to meet the people they disagree with. It's probably the case that families with growing children are much more interested in affordability, safety, and each other's company than the benefits of urban living and there does seem to be a pretty clear cost to limiting sprawl in arbitrary ways like green belts. One can't help but think there are other tools planners can use to strike a better balance though.
Maybe my neighborhood is an exception to the rule, but we have very friendly neighbors on our block, and we've really gotten to know each other. Our street is a dead-end street so there's very little car traffic and so it's pretty peaceful and quiet. There's often people walking their dogs and talking with other neighbors. The houses on our street are all cookie-cutter 60s split levels (of which there are thousands in the Seattle area, all with a very similar floorplan) some of which could use a bit of TLC, but people who live here are not all a bunch of shut-ins. The reason why I think suburbs are so attractive is that they allow people to have a quiet, peaceful house just like out in the countryside with all the benefits of living in a city: grocery stores are close by (albeit not exactly within walking distance), as well as your job. Let's be honest, most people want peace and quiet but still don't want to work on a farm, so that's why people love suburbs.

Quote from: noahclem on December 16, 2014, 07:46:36 AM
Certainly an interesting topic in any case, and one likely to remain relevant for a long time to come. I wonder how driverless and potentially emissionless and inexpensive cars will factor in....

I think driverless cars might lead to car-sharing becoming more of a thing and you'd need less parking lots. Instead of having your car sit in a parking garage at work or at a park-and-ride all day, it can go around and pick up other people and transport them to where they need to go.

As for electric cars, well, they're going to result in a massive increase in power consumption and I think it's about time for America to start building some more nuclear power plants, since they're the only large-scale form of power generation other than hydropower that doesn't produce any CO2 emissions. They've really gotten safer over the years; many incidents at nuclear power plants have happened because the plants' reactors used older designs that weren't very safe and/or were missing many safety features, as was the case with Chernobyl. But the big question is what to do with the waste...
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compdude787

This was raised in the RHW thread, but the discussion belongs here:
Quote from: Indiana Joe on December 16, 2014, 02:58:47 PM
Yep.  Not to turn this into an urban planning discussion, but the Interstate highway system isn't sustainable and is gonna have to go.
Could you please elaborate on this a bit? I can sort of understand why people would have this opinion about urban freeways, but the whole Interstate Highway system needs to go? Tell that to the truckers who rely on it to transport goods between cities. Faster intercity travel is without a doubt the biggest benefit of the Interstate highway system, and it has made a huge economic impact.
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APSMS

Quote from: compdude787 on December 16, 2014, 06:55:13 PM
<snip>

... I think it's about time for America to start building some more nuclear power plants, since they're the only large-scale form of power generation other than hydropower that doesn't produce any CO2 emissions. They've really gotten safer over the years; many incidents at nuclear power plants have happened because the plants' reactors used older designs that weren't very safe and/or were missing many safety features, as was the case with Chernobyl. But the big question is what to do with the waste...
Ah yes, the waste. My chem professor said they were looking into this thing called salt-domes as being a viable storage solution: large naturally occurring underground salt deposits (sodium-chloride salts, but other kinds as well). The domes are underneath the water table (no contamination), sufficiently dense to contain the radiation, and are self-sealing because the inside melts with the heat from the waste and creates a sort of shell around the material.

But my view on nuclear power is paraphrased from the book: Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher: Basically, if it is unviable to be using a fossil fuel that contaminates the environment for possibly decades, how viable can it be to suggest that using a fuel that contaminates the environment for millennia?
That and of course the number of nuclear power plants we'd have to build to cover the power requirements is absurd. And nuclear energy is a non-renewable energy, so it's not really much a solution. Coal powerplants can be just as clean as Natural Gas powerplants when properly regulated (smokestack scrubbers) and the cleaning equipment necessary to equip all these powerplants is far cheaper than building dozens of new nuclear powerplants.

Quote from: Themistokles on December 16, 2014, 02:52:08 AM
...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).
I'm not sure that cities are the way to go to be green. We had a green way of life before (farming), but someone decided it was uneconomical to grow your own food and set out to change that. Farming nowadays (America especially, but most 1st world nations in general) is industrialized in the extreme, and this industrialization and utilization of low-labor cost/resource-intensive farming methods is what has allowed sub/urbanization to grow at previously unprecedented rates.

Can we go back? I'm not sure we can, though it's a nice thought.
Should we go up (and in)? I think Isaac Asimov has a lot to say about this in his "Robot Novels" (e.g. The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun), but essentially the point is that while consolidating people in one place seems like the most efficient way to produce a "green" lifestyle and reduce resource use, it may not be the smartest way. The reason is because by doing so we generally are assuming that urban life is the only life, that traditional methods (farming/country lifestyle) are outdated and unsuitable.

But I've run out of time  :-[. I'll be back later with more things to say (probably).
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compdude787

#24
Quote from: APSMS on December 16, 2014, 09:07:44 PM

Ah yes, the waste. My chem professor said they were looking into this thing called salt-domes as being a viable storage solution: large naturally occurring underground salt deposits (sodium-chloride salts, but other kinds as well). The domes are underneath the water table (no contamination), sufficiently dense to contain the radiation, and are self-sealing because the inside melts with the heat from the waste and creates a sort of shell around the material.

But my view on nuclear power is paraphrased from the book: Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher: Basically, if it is unviable to be using a fossil fuel that contaminates the environment for possibly decades, how viable can it be to suggest that using a fuel that contaminates the environment for millennia?
That and of course the number of nuclear power plants we'd have to build to cover the power requirements is absurd. And nuclear energy is a non-renewable energy, so it's not really much a solution. Coal powerplants can be just as clean as Natural Gas powerplants when properly regulated (smokestack scrubbers) and the cleaning equipment necessary to equip all these powerplants is far cheaper than building dozens of new nuclear powerplants.

Oh yeah, I completely forgot about coal scrubbers. And, btw, nuclear fuel can be recycled; take a look at this. I really meant that nuclear power should be used to provide additional power, not necessarily to replace coal power plants.

Quote from: APSMS on December 16, 2014, 09:07:44 PM
I'm not sure that cities are the way to go to be green. We had a green way of life before (farming), but someone decided it was uneconomical to grow your own food and set out to change that.

Really? So we should all go back to farming? Our lives are better off now because of the technology we have! China is more technologically backwards than all the first-world nations are, and that country is more of an environmental disaster than the US is now. Here in America, we now have cleaner rivers (haven't had a river catch on fire since the late-60s), more trees even in urban areas (a church that I used to go to is called Lakeview Free Methodist Church because you used to be able to see Lake Washington when it was built 50 years ago. Now you can't because the trees have gotten taller), and cleaner air (heck, most of San Fran's pollution comes from China).

If we all went back to farming, many people would hate their life because they aren't working in the sort of occupation that they enjoy. Ideally, a job should be something you enjoy; otherwise, you'd be looking for a better one or getting an education so you can have the skills to get a better job. Anyway, this thing called specialization allows people to do only what they enjoy (a job you enjoy is a job you're good at) and then trade with others to get the things like food that they need. This voluntary trade creates wealth, and so by producing what we're good at and buying items someone else enjoys making makes us all better off. This is basic economics, and economics is not just about money but the study of how people make decisions.
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roadgeek

Quote from: compdude787 on December 16, 2014, 07:10:16 PM
This was raised in the RHW thread, but the discussion belongs here:
Quote from: Indiana Joe on December 16, 2014, 02:58:47 PM
Yep.  Not to turn this into an urban planning discussion, but the Interstate highway system isn't sustainable and is gonna have to go.
Could you please elaborate on this a bit? I can sort of understand why people would have this opinion about urban freeways, but the whole Interstate Highway system needs to go? Tell that to the truckers who rely on it to transport goods between cities. Faster intercity travel is without a doubt the biggest benefit of the Interstate highway system, and it has made a huge economic impact.

Logistically speaking, it would be somewhat of a challenge to do so, but I have often wondered why cities don't designate certain stretches of freeway as congestion area, and restrict them from truck traffic during the rush hours. They could have a sign with flashing lights could indicate that all truck traffic must exit the freeway when flashing, and build a giant parking lot off the service road, in order to optimize usage of the interstate system. I must agree though that getting rid of the interstate system is rather dumb. Developing countries everywhere are building their own interstate systems, because they realize the importance of a good transportation system.

Themistokles

#26
Quote from: compdude787 on December 16, 2014, 07:10:16 PM
[...]
Quote from: Indiana Joe on December 16, 2014, 02:58:47 PM
Yep.  Not to turn this into an urban planning discussion, but the Interstate highway system isn't sustainable and is gonna have to go.
Could you please elaborate on this a bit? I can sort of understand why people would have this opinion about urban freeways, but the whole Interstate Highway system needs to go? [...]

Carbon-dioxide-wise, a motorway is a motorway no matter if it's in an urban or rural setting, it stimulates non-sustainable development nonetheless. From a quality of living and health perspective, urban motorways are worse because more people will inhale the exhaust, but, well, considering the climate globally, rural motorways are just as bad.

Quote from: roadgeek on December 17, 2014, 08:11:45 PM
Developing countries everywhere are building their own interstate systems, because they realize the importance of a good transportation system.

Developing countries everywhere are building their own interstate systems, because they follow an outdated road-model. Getting stuck in traffic is going to lead developing nations nowhere, except giving them emissions problems, debts and an unsustainable infrastructure. Just because they build like we did in the 1960s doesn't mean they'll have half a century to benefit economically before environmental degradation becomes an issue. Especially developing countries should assess the problem critically, rather than just copy-pasting the old-fashion western solution of gigantic expressway network.

However, whatever standard of living, any country building motorways today are building themselves into an obsolete mode of transport, including my own, planning to spend the equivalent of almost 6 billion USD on the largest motorway project ever in our country.

If we predict a future with driverless cars, we must consider that they take up a quarter of the road space compared to manually driven cars, because they can interact and know each other's actions in advance. This will mean that a road that is today eight lanes (like RHW-8S), could potentially be built with only two (like RHW-2) in a near future. With self-driving cars not only parking but also congestion will probably just be a memory. If we believe that driverless cars will come in a decade or two, motorway expansion in developed and developing countries alike is disastrous, not only for sustainability, but also for the economy.
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compdude787

Cars get better gas mileage and are more efficient when they're going at 60 mph as opposed to like 10 in traffic, or having to constantly accelerate and decelerate in stop-and-go traffic or while going thru lights. Because the cars are running less efficiently at slower speeds or when not keeping a constant speed at a constant RPM, they are bigger polluters. That's why I think it's actually better for the environment when freeways have enough capacity to handle traffic during the rush hour without causing everyone to slow to a halt.
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builder

Quote from: compdude787 on December 17, 2014, 11:13:44 PM
Cars get better gas mileage and are more efficient when they're going at 60 mph as opposed to like 10 in traffic, or having to constantly accelerate and decelerate in stop-and-go traffic or while going thru lights. Because the cars are running less efficiently at slower speeds or when not keeping a constant speed at a constant RPM, they are bigger polluters. That's why I think it's actually better for the environment when freeways have enough capacity to handle traffic during the rush hour without causing everyone to slow to a halt.

Problem with having that capacity, is that it's impossible to do, especially over longer periods of time. Sure, you can solve the traffic jams on the freeway now, and even in the next 10-15 years, but that means more and more people will choose cars over public transport, because they see it's more comfortable to take the car when the jams have been solved. It all has to do with latent demand in traffic and such. Oh, and actually expanding the freeway networks will eat up lots of valuable land (and I mean a LOT), especially in urban areas where land is sparse and very costly to acquire for road development.

MandelSoft

Expanding motorways is not an option, especially in places where there is not much room. In the Netherlands, the A13 near Rotterdam was the first 2x3 lane motorway of the Netherlands in 1959; it hasn't been widened ever since. Why? Well, it's pretty crammed already:



And this is not the only case where this happens; Japan can't widen their roads because there is little room to build to begin with, NYC is stuck because the streets can't be widened due to adjacent buildings, lots of bridges and tunnels form bottlenecks because widening means a complete replacement of the bridge or tunnel. "Widen this road" just doesn't work everywhere.

More clever solutions need to be taken into account, such as:
- Route guidance: spread the traffic more evenly over the network
- Flexible work times: spread traffic over time, leading to longer, but much less intense peak hours.
- Ramp metering: creates small queues at onramps to prevent a large queue on the mainline. It's better to wait in a 2 minute jam than in a 10 minute one...
- Reversible lanes: reverse the direction of lanes depending on the demand. Benificial in areas where there is a great imbalance in the peak hour directionality
- Use alternative intersection setups, like roundabouts or displaced left turn intersections. Some intersection types perform better than others.

Another really counter-intuitive solution is this: remove some intersections or intersection connections. When I was in the USA, I saw one of the main downsides of the grid: lots of intersections, also on main road. There was an intersection like every 100 meters. In the Netherlands, we usually have main roads with considerably less intersections than others and there is a much more clear hierarchy. I build my cities this way too. On these main roads, there is much less risk of stopping, despite having stoplight controlled intersections, all due to the fact there are just less intersections you have to stop. Just check out the road network of Zoetermeer and see how the hierarchy is set up there. I think this is a well-planned city...

Best,
Maarten
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krbe

Stack them. Make it cheap to cross the city, and expensive to enter during rush hour.

Flatron

Even more important would be to make driving as unappealing as possible, (sending cars on a zigzag course while cyclists, pedestrians, trams, busses and emergency vehicles are given a straight path.)

compdude787

Honestly, I wish many roads in Seattle could have reversible lanes. This is especially true with those annoying roads that used to have 4 lanes that were 9 feet wide but were turned into a TLA-3 with bike lanes. I would be all for making these into ARD-3s, especially up hills where you need a climbing lane to pass slow vehicles like buses and trucks.

Also, Seattle really could use some more roundabouts, especially at 5-way intersections. Those get really complicated when you just go by the all-way stop rule. Even up where I live, there's a lot of 4-way stops that should be converted into roundabouts, especially in cases where the majority of traffic is going in one direction. That's where roundabouts work best IMO. If anything, I bet when I become a civil engineer, I'm going to be designing A LOT of roundabouts. :D
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vortext

#33
Speaking of Seattle, I just came across this highly entertaining, though in the end slightly depressing article Seattles unbelievable transportation megaproject fustercluck which is about an alternative to this stretch of elevated highway and everything that can and will go wrong.  ::)

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compdude787

We can never succeed at building a tunnel without running into a host of problems. The only tunnels built recently without any major problems are the Sound Transit light rail tunnels. The big problem is is that WSDOT could use some better engineers.

The other tunnel that ran into dirtloads of problems is the discharge tunnel built from a sewage treatment plant called Brightwater ten miles away from Puget Sound and they built a tunnel to Puget Sound. There were issues with sinkholes, stalled TBMs and tons of other headaches. One wonders why we keep on building tunnels in the Seattle area! You really have to, with all the hills.
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vortext

#35
Problems with the TBM and engineering aside, when the initial plans were being made in 2007 no one - citizens, council and engineers alike - wanted to build a tunnel in the first place. But unfortunately lobbying proved effective once again and the city ended up with a tunnel nonetheless. That's the fustercluck-y part of it imho. Basically a scaremongering tactic which boils down to this: 

QuoteTurns out most people simply can't fathom getting rid of an urban highway. No matter how many examples to the contrary accumulate, people instinctively think that tearing down a highway means that all the same traffic will just spill onto side streets.

You're right though, tunneling is hard.

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compdude787

The thing with the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement project is that city and state officials kept flip-flopping between saying that a new viaduct would be built and a new tunnel would be built. Nobody could make up their mind! I think that Seattle's mayor wanted a tunnel while our governor wanted a viaduct, so there was constant disagreement between the city and state. At one point it seemed clear that the viaduct would end up being replaced with another viaduct, but then some lobbyists came and convinced the state to build a bored tunnel instead. (the original tunnel idea was a cut-and cover tunnel, not a bored tunnel) So, that's what ended up happening, despite the stupidity of building a tunnel that big under the city. I think a lot of people, myself included, knew this was a stupid idea from the beginning.
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Themistokles

#37
Quote from: Flatron on December 18, 2014, 08:44:29 AM
Even more important would be to make driving as unappealing as possible, (sending cars on a zigzag course while cyclists, pedestrians, trams, busses and emergency vehicles are given a straight path.)

I'd say definitely, this is the most important part, because that's in the end how I think car-dependency will be diminished, without specifically targeting people who cannot afford congestion pricing. The last thing we want is making car-driving even more of a status and money thing.

In my hometown the central roads have been rebuilt from common roads to car-allowed bike lanes, where car drivers are expected to drive at bike speed, which has improved the city environment a lot. Yet this rhymes badly when parliament recently decided to go forward and spend the equivalent of 6 billion dollars on a motorway tunnel. What's more, part of the funding is to come from the congestion tax, but requires such an amount of congestion before it reaches its funding targets that it'll simultaneously mean that Sweden fails its climate responsibilities. So yes, I do recognize the Seattle frustration just all too well.

(edit: moderation is a virtue... $%Grinno$%)
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roadgeek

#38
Quote from: Themistokles on December 17, 2014, 10:43:04 PM
Developing countries everywhere are building their own interstate systems, because they follow an outdated road-model. Getting stuck in traffic is going to lead developing nations nowhere, except giving them emissions problems, debts and an unsustainable infrastructure.

Recent developments in highway building are much more innovative in getting highways built properly with plenty of space available. Many highways are being built, frontage road first, with huge medians for future main-lanes. Examples of where space constriction have been overcome, include the Wichita Falls downtown freeway and Dallas' Central Expy widening project. The newest innovation is High Occupancy/Toll lanes with adjustable rates, which helps pay for the improvements, so the remarks about debt/expense is rather moot, because these highways can literally pay for themselves. Some of these places where space is a concern, it doesn't appear that there are any high rise buildings that need to be blown up..just a bunch of homes that are too close to the highway. Other viable solutions include double-deckers, rerouting rail lines that run parallel to a highway, and building outer loops around cities. This in addition to my aforementioned idea about removing 18-wheelers from designated highways during rush hour, which could optimize road usage, makes this far from an "outdated road-model".

Flatron

yeah, building even more roads is obviously THE solution...
//irony off