Auto Apartheid

by Joel Hirschhorn

Grist Magazine

October 2005

 

 

Analyses of the failure of all levels of government to prevent or effectively manage the Katrina calamity in New Orleans have generally missed a crucial point. Alongside bias against poor people and African-Americans is automobile apartheid, born of fifty years of suburban sprawl. First-class citizens drive motor vehicles, second-class Americans walk, cycle, or ride public transit. Certainly many of the latter are poor, but millions more are middle-class Americans.

When emergency response largely ignores the plight of second-class citizens, no one should be surprised.

Automobile apartheid means anyone who wants mobility through walking, cycling, or public transportation suffers discrimination in a built environment designed for automobiles. In the past 20 years, as automobile addiction has increased, sprawl has run rampant, the number of trips people take by walking has decreased by more than 42 percent, and obesity has skyrocketed.

Personal freedom and independence should mean more than the ability to go wherever one wants, whenever one wants. Americans should also have the freedom to travel how they want. When cars are the only option, freedom is diminished.

Government has largely ignored public safety for second-class citizens. In the past 25 years some 175,000 pedestrians have been killed on America’s roadways. Though Americans make less than 5 percent of their trips on foot, 12 percent of all traffic fatalities are pedestrians. Some 60 percent of those deaths occur in places where no crosswalk is available.

Though few students walk to school, in 1999 nearly 900 children ages 14 and under were killed and 25,000 injured in pedestrian accidents with vehicles. Each year about 175 children are killed by vehicles in between school and home.

And there is bad news at the other end of the age spectrum: Americans 70 and over suffer the highest rate of pedestrian fatalities.

Sprawl-intense Sunbelt areas are the most dangerous for pedestrians. Atlanta’s pedestrian fatality rate increased 13 percent from 1994 to 1998, and the 1998 rate was over twice that in Portland, Ore., New York City, and Philadelphia.

Automobile apartheid also has a social-justice dimension. The Atlanta pedestrian-death rate was 4 per 100,000 for African-Americans, 10 for Hispanics, and less than 2 for Caucasians.

While New Orleans’ illustration of automobile apartheid stands out, government officials have long enforced it in more subtle ways. The traffic-studies chief of Prince George’s County, Maryland once said: “The street should be strictly for cars.” New York City’s Department of Transportation deactivated 77 percent of the pedestrian walk-push buttons at intersections and left the signs telling pedestrians to use them. For 25 years cars whizzed by hapless pedestrians waiting for a useless walk button to stop traffic.

In early 2003, Georgia’s Department of Transportation disclosed it was against having trees between sidewalks and streets because sidewalks are “auto recovery zones.” The commissioner said “the protection of intermittent foot traffic should not come at the expense of a motorist’s life.” Apparently air bags and seat belts are not good enough for first-class citizens.

Though we know how to make safer streets for pedestrians through traffic-calming techniques, most governments spend a paltry sum on this compared to road maintenance and expansion. A five-year study in Oakland, Calif. found that > children living within one block of a speed hump are 50 to 60 percent less likely to be injured by a car than those whose streets lacked humps. Oakland installed 1,600 speed humps and child-pedestrian deaths and injuries dropped 15 percent from 1995 to 2003.

Reducing vehicle speeds is nearly always a low priority relative to moving traffic. Yet the probability of a pedestrian being killed when struck by a vehicle traveling at 15 mph is just 3.5 percent. It rises to 37 percent at 31 mph and 83 percent at 44 mph. If streets are to serve people, car speeds must be reliably reduced.

Long before the recent spike in gasoline prices, millions of Americans abandoned sprawl and sought homes near transit stations, closer to work, and in pedestrian-friendly communities. Now we need government to fairly serve all citizens: Reduce subsidies for automobiles and focus more on public transit.

The Victoria Transport Policy Institute analyzed rail transit in the U.S. and found that its economic benefits ($53 billion) were roughly four times higher than the total cost of national subsidies ($12.5 billion). In Portland, Ore., 75 percent of light-rail riders say they could drive but choose transit. In Salt Lake City, 45 percent of light-rail riders were new to public transit; in Denver it was 39 percent.

Americans are smarter than their elected representatives. A 2004 national survey by Associated Press found that 51 percent of respondents judged public transportation a higher priority for government than building roads; 46 percent favored roads. In the congested Atlanta region, a survey found 61 percent think the long-term cure for traffic congestion is expanding mass transit and creating communities that allow for shorter trips; just 22 percent supported new road building.

Let those Americans who choose to stick to heavy-vehicle use deal with traffic congestion and high costs. Give others an opportunity to break their automobile addiction.

 

Context-Sensitive Street Design Literature

By Dom Nozzi, AICP

Too often, traffic engineering guidelines for a community takes a “one size fits all” approach. Such an approach nearly always adopts suburban, car-happy design as the default approach. Unfortunately, this severe restriction on freedom of travel and lifestyle choice means, to paraphrase Henry Ford, that you can choose any form of travel and lifestyle as long as it is suburban and car-dependent.

Since there will always be a meaningful number of citizens in our communities who seek not the suburban choice but the walkable, urban lifestyle (or neighborhoods that are safe for children, seniors and pets), it is essential that the traffic design manual contain tools sufficient to provide for the street design needed to create walkable, human-scaled places.

In recent years, the emerging term used to refer to this customize-able approach is the “context-sensitive” street design. Such design recognizes that once a high-speed suburban or highway design enters a community, a neighborhood, or a special, walkable district, it needs to transition into a more human-scaled design that obligates cars to drive in a slower, safer, more courteous and aware manner. The following are recommended citations for context-sensitive design for streets.

1. “Traffic Engineering for Neo-Traditional Neighborhood Design,” Feb. 1994. An Informational Report of the Institute of Transportation Engineers.

2. “Street Connectivity in Practice”, Planners Advisory Service Report #515 from the American Planning Association.

3. “Pedestrian Facilities User Guide” by FHA of the USDOT, March 2002.

4. “Street Standards” by Southworth & Ben-Joseph. APA Journal Winter 1995.

5. “The Design of Traditional Neighborhood Streets” by Rick Chellman, 9/98, from the Seaside Institute.

6. “Traditional Neighborhood Development — street design guidelines” by ITE, June 1997.

7. “AASHTO (2001) and the Urban Arterial” by Peter Swift. 2003. From Swift and Associates, Longmont CO.

8. “Traditional Neighborhood Development — street design guidelines.” NCDOT Div. of Hwys. TND Guidelines. 8/00. Raleigh NC.

8. “Street-type matrix” Portland OR. 10/02.

9. “Changing the Residential Street Scene” by Eran Ben-Joseph. APA Journal Autumn 1995.

10. “Neighborhood Street Design Guidelines” Vancouver WA SE Neighborhood Traffic Mgmt Plan. 10/03.

11. “Mobility-Friendly Street Standards for Delaware” by Reid Ewing. Urban Street Symposium Conference Proceedings: Dallas. 12/00.

12. “Urban Design Guidelines.” City of Raleigh NC. Draft 6.6.01

13. “Central Florida Mobility Design Manual.” Prepared for Lynx by Glattening, Jackson. 1994/1995 edition.

14. “The Hidden Design in Land Use Ordinances.” Edited by Paula M. Craighead. March 1991.

15. “Twelve Steps Toward Community Walkability” by FDOT Safety Office. Pedestrian Facilities Planning and Design Training Course. Undated.

16. “Design Highlights: Traditional Neighborhood Development District” by Tunnel-Spangler & Associates for the City of Oak Ridge TN. 11/01.

 

The Merits of New Urbanism

By Dom Nozzi, AICP

The standards and principles of new urbanism are designed to make areas more livable, more vibrant, and more people-oriented, and to build community pride in the city and the work of its developers.

The people-oriented, traditional areas of the city share a number of desirable characteristics that provide us with many benefits. We should strive to preserve, celebrate, encourage and emulate how these areas are designed because of such benefits. For example, a traditionally designed city provides the following benefits:

Gives people without access to a car, such as children, the elderly, and the disabled, more safety and independence in their world.

Enhances urban livability, which reduces the desire to flee to the suburbs, which, in turn, reduces the pressure for costly sprawl and strip commercial development.

Substantially reduces government and household costs — especially because of the enormous savings in the building and maintaining of road infrastructure, and the purchase and maintenance of cars.

Reduces the need for travel.

Helps retain historic structures instead of replacing them with parking or large suburban retail “boxes””

Features streets designed to slow traffic. It increases travel choices and reduces the length and number of vehicle trips.

Makes neighborhoods more memorable and dignified.

Contains structures built for permanence, instead of structures designed, as too many contemporary structures are, for a short-term “throw-away” life.

Integrates income groups by mixing housing types and providing a public realm available to all incomes.

Makes walking feel more enjoyable.

Is not characterized as much by strip commercial visual blight.

Increases citizen access to culture.

Creates a good environment for smaller, locally-owned businesses to become established and to operate in.

Puts “eyes on the street” and promotes “citizen surveillance” of public places where citizens watch over their collective security, crime is reduced, as are public law enforcement costs.

Stabilizes, reinforces the identity of, and improves the value of nearby older neighborhoods.

Preserves and promotes community character.

Promotes neighborhood and community self-sufficiency and, therefore, sustainabilty.

Reduces per capita gasoline consumption and air pollution.

Coupled with regulations that are designed to promote and preserve its features, restores the traditional citizen hope and expectation for a better future with each new development in the city, and, in so doing, reduces the extreme polarization between developers and neighborhoods.

Provides affordable housing options.

Creates a sense of place, a sense of community, a sense of belonging and restores civic pride and place-based loyalty.

Strikes a balance between the needs of the car and the needs of the pedestrian. It creates a pedestrian ambiance and interesting pedestrian features, and makes the pedestrian feel safe, convenienced, and comfortable.

Creates a good environment for smaller, locally-owned businesses to become established and to operate in.

Increases transit viability, primarily through density, access, traffic calming, community-serving facilities, compactness, mixed use and pedestrian amenities.

Currently, developers are often reviled and their developments feared. This is manifested in the contemporary epidemic of NIMBYs (not in my backyard), NIMTOOs (not in my term of office), BANANAs (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything), and NOPEs (not on planet earth). Largely, these attitudes have emerged because since WWII, developers and cities have sought to make cars instead of people happy.

Typically, American suburbs are characterized by this design. Suburban design features:

Large setbacks that are inconvenient for pedestrians and fail to define a comfortable public realm

Large parking lots in front of buildings

Large street blocks with no cross access or connecting streets

Buildings with their backs or sides turned toward the street. Instead of an entrance or windows, the pedestrian is confronted with blank walls, air compressors, dumpsters, and long walks to the building

Pedestrian-hostile features that are designed to promote car use, such as drive-throughs, single-use zoning, segregation of land uses, and “armoring” with fences and walls

To make Gainesville a safer, more livable place, and to increase citizen pride in its developments, the new urbanist standards are designed to primarily promote the health, safety, and welfare of pedestrians, while still accommodating the needs of the car. More specifically, the design is intended to make the pedestrian feel:

Safe and secure

Convenienced

Pleasant and comfortable

With enhanced safety, livability, civic pride, and visual appeal in these older parts of the city, the city will establish an important engine in job recruitment and a strengthened tax base. A downtown that adheres to these standards will be a city that provides an important incubator for new, entrepreneurial, locally-owned small businesses and entry-level job opportunities. A healthy downtown also protects the property values of surrounding residential areas.

Some Principles of New Urbanism

Build-To Line

Overly large setbacks are inconvenient and unpleasant for pedestrians. They are inconvenient because they can significantly increase walking distances from the public sidewalk. They are unpleasant because they prevent the pedestrian on the public sidewalk from enjoying the building details and the activity within the building. In addition, they prevent the building from contributing to an intimate, pleasant, comfortable street wall, which harms the sense of place and makes the pedestrian feel as if she or he is in “no man’s land.” Buildings pulled up to the street sidewalk have more of a human scale. The intent of a build-to line is to pull the building facade up to the street to abut the streetside sidewalk. By doing so, building facades along a block face will be aligned to form a street wall that frames the public realm, while retaining sufficient width for people to walk, and sufficient space to provide a formal landscape created by the shade of street trees. The street wall shapes the public realm to provide a sense of comfort and security for the public space.

Building Height of At Least Two Stories

“Low-slung” one-story buildings are more appropriate in low-density residential areas designed for motor vehicle travel. They reduce the density and intensity needed to make transit, walking, and bicycling viable, and typically are too low in profile to form a desirable, intimate, comfortable public realm with facing buildings across the street. They also reduce the opportunity to create mixed-use buildings containing, typically, both commercial and residential uses. Low-rise multi-story buildings two to five stories in height are an important component of the compact, walkable city. The building profile forms the desired street wall and the additional stories allow the establishment of the number of residents needed for a viable urban neighborhood.

Parking Located at the Rear or Side of Building Instead of in Front

Parking areas located in front of buildings are inconvenient and unpleasant for pedestrians. They are inconvenient because they significantly increase walking distances from the public sidewalk. They are unpleasant because they often make for hot expanses of areas to walk in, prevent the pedestrian on the public sidewalk from enjoying the building details and the activity within the building, and increase safety problems since pedestrians must dodge cars in the parking area. In addition, they prevent the building from contributing to an intimate, pleasant, comfortable street wall, which harms the sense of place and makes the pedestrian feel as if she or he is in “no man’s land.” Buildings pulled up to the street without intervening motor vehicle parking have more of a human scale.

Hidden Trash and Recycling Receptacles and Loading Docks

Trash and recycling receptacles and loading docks typically provide an unsightly appearance and an odor problem for pedestrians. In addition, improperly located and improperly screened receptacles and docks can cause noise problems for nearby land uses when the receptacles and packages are being loaded or unloaded. Therefore, they should be located as far from public sidewalks as possible and screened from view.

Sidewalks Sufficiently Wide and Aligned for Convenience

Sidewalks, when properly dimensioned and maintained, can provide the pedestrian with a pleasant, safe, and convenient place to walk. Sidewalks that are too narrow are inconvenient, especially in areas with large volumes of pedestrians, pedestrians walking side-by-side (which requires a minimum sidewalk width of five feet unobstructed), and people using wheelchairs. In addition, sidewalks that must wrap around large block faces are a serious impediment to pedestrian convenience.

Building Oriented to the Street, Instead of Turning Its Back to It

A successful commercial establishment is designed to provide convenience for customers by minimizing walking distances from public sidewalks and nearby buildings. Rear or side entrances, or entrances oriented toward a parking lot, make travel highly inconvenient for pedestrians and transit users. Such a design also cuts the building off from street life. In addition, a building with its main entrance directed away from the primary sidewalk and street “turns its back” to the public realm, reduces urban vibrancy, and is harmful to promoting street life. When a building is located at an intersection, the most convenient entrance is usually abutting the public sidewalks at the corner of the intersection. Often, the most convenient sidewalk is formally aligned diagonally and aligned straight to minimize walking distance.

Facade Treatment Creates Interest for Pedestrians

All building shall be designed to provide interest for pedestrians. Long expanses of blank walls tend to be boring and unattractive for the pedestrian. In addition, windows attract pedestrians, which act as a security system for the business. Buildings without such relief and interest tend to create a “massive scale”, and makes the public realm impersonal. Such an appearance is inconsistent with the “human-scaled” and pedestrian-oriented character of the a traditional area of a city, and inconsistent with a city intent to restore such character to the traditional city area.

Hidden Outdoor Mechanical Equipment

Outdoor mechanical equipment, such as heating or AC units, when improperly located on a site or improperly screened, can contribute to noise problems and create visual blight.

Formal Landscaping

In the traditional, pedestrian-oriented areas of a city, landscaping should be used both to soften the “hardness” of the urban area for the pedestrian, and make the pedestrian feel more comfortable by providing cooling, reducing glare and helping to form public spaces, “outdoor rooms,” and street corridor edges. Such formality of landscaping adds dignity to the traditional area of a city, instead of a chaotic one, thereby inspiring a sense of civic pride.

Properly Scaled Lighting

Lighting can often detract from the intimate, pleasant, romantic character a city seeks to promote in the traditional, pedestrian-oriented areas of a city. But lighting designed for cars tends to be not human-scaled. Lights on tall fixtures cause light pollution by casting light into areas not needed by pedestrians. In addition, the lights present a poor, bleached out atmosphere as the pedestrian views an area from afar, and hides the nighttime sky completely. A new urbanist, pedestrian-oriented street lighting design features shorter and more numerous light fixtures and structures.

Prohibited Auto-Oriented Uses

Certain uses are oriented toward or designed to attract motor vehicles, and therefore contribute to danger, visual blight, inconvenience, and lack of human scale for pedestrians. Therefore, such uses are not compatible with the a people-friendly downtown area.

Alleys

Alleys allow the developer to place garages, driveways, waste receptacles, and overhead utilities in a less conspicuous location away from the public street and therefore less likely to detract from the pedestrian ambiance of the neighborhood. Alleys also provide an additional location for emergency vehicles to gain access to a building, and a relatively safe place for children to play.

Front Porches

When they are set back a modest (“conversational”) distance from the sidewalk, porches allow persons to sit on their porch and interact and socialize with their neighbors. They therefore add safety (by putting “eyes on the street”) and friendliness to the street. As a result, porches contribute to an enjoyable walk by pedestrians in the neighborhood.

Narrow Streets

Narrow streets force cars and trucks to travel slowly through the neighborhood, which significantly contributes to neighborhood safety, low noise levels, low traffic volumes and, therefore neighborhood livability.

Mixed Housing Types

Mixed housing types provide the neighborhood with a mixed income environment, since the mixed types provide a range of housing affordability. Mixed housing types enable lower income workers to live within walking distance of their jobs, instead of creating traffic problems by being forced to commute by car to their jobs.

Transit Links

When a neighborhood contains — or is near — safe, pleasant, and convenient bus stops, a larger number of trips are made by bus, which reduces excessive neighborhood trips to and from the neighborhood by car. This provides more transportation choice, enhances neighborliness, and reduces household transportation costs (every car a household can shed saves the household the equivalent of the monthly home mortgage payment on a $51,000 house, at 10 percent interest).

On-Street Parking

Buffers pedestrians from vehicle travel. Narrows the street in order to slow traffic to a safer, more livable speed. Provides convenient parking locations for nearby businesses. Allows businesses and residences to reduce the amount of off-street, on-site parking, which reduces the “heat island” effect and enhances urban vibrancy by improving the public realm.

Mixed Use

Reduces trip distances to the point where walking, bicycling, and bus trips are much more feasible for a number of different types of trips. Adds to neighborhood and urban vibrancy by increasing the number of places people can meet — such as a pub, on the way to work or a civic event, a grocery store, a fitness center, etc. Provides children with more of an awareness of community land uses other than parks, residences, and schools.

Resessed Garages

Enhances the neighborhood walking environment for the pedestrian. Houses appear people-oriented and interesting to walk along, instead of sending a strong message that “a car lives here.”

Narrow, Smaller Lots

Provides a more compact, walkable arrangement of houses. Provides a more pleasing alignment of houses along the streetside sidewalk, which enhances civic pride in the neighborhood and makes the residential street seem more “cozy.” Blocks are reduced in size, which makes the neighborhood more walkable. Narrower lots increase the frequency of front doors along the street, which greatly enhances the vibrancy of the street. Houses appear to be associated in a neighborly way, instead of isolated and cocooned from the neighborhood. Smaller lots also make home ownership in such a subdivision more affordable. In addition, the higher, yet livable, density that smaller lots provide makes transit more viable.

Connected Streets

Makes walking, bicycling, and using the bus more feasible by significantly reducing trip distances and increasing the number of safe and pleasant routes for such travellers. Provides motorists and emergency service vehicles with more “real time” route choices. A route that is impeded or blocked can be avoided in favor of a clear route, which is not possible on a cul-de-sac. In combination with the fact that connected streets distribute vehicle trips more evenly, real time route choices on connected streets reduce congestion on collector or arterial roads. As a result of this distribution, there is little or no need for neighborhood-hostile collectors or arterials, which, because of the volume and speed of vehicle trips they carry, are unpleasant for residences to locate along.

Terminated Vistas

A concept in which a prominent building is placed at the “visual termination” of a street. Provides dignity and prominence to important civic buildings, such as post offices, libraries, city halls, churches, convention centers and performing arts centers. Sends the message that the building is an important place for the community. In addition, terminated vistas make walking more pleasant by giving the pedestrian a “goal” to walk toward. The walk therefore does not seem endless. It also provides an impressive view to strive to reach. Such vistas also make trips more memorable by helping to orient a person as to their location in the community.

Livable, higher densities

The conventional way in which we address land use conflicts is to put distance between conflicting activities, and minimize the number of dwelling units per acre. But this does little to encourage land users to reduce the damage they do to the environment. Also, by segregating uses, we increase the amount people have to travel by car, which itself reduces the quality of the urban and natural environment.

By contrast, the more compact, higher density “new urbanist” development reduces trip length; and makes bicycling, transit, and walking more viable. For these reasons, compact development generates about half as much vehicle travel as does sprawl development, making such a land use strategy one of the most effective in reducing auto dependence.

Minimum densities necessary for a viable bus system are approximately eight dwelling units per acre. Newman and Kenworthy indicate that only when densities exceed 7,000 to 8,000 persons per square mile (Gainesville’s density is currently 2,000 per square mile) do mixed land uses and shorter travel distances become predominant enough to significantly reduce auto dependence. These researchers note that a dramatic reduction in per capita gasoline consumption occurs when population density reaches 12 to 16 persons per acre. “Low density land use ensures almost total dependence on automobiles, enormous travel distances, no effective public transit, and little possibility of walking or [bi]cycling. Below five or six people per acre, a city almost ceases to exist, and requires enormous transportation energy to hold the scattered parts together.”

A recent study found that distance is the most widely cited reason for not walking more often, thereby showing the importance of compact development as a strategy to encourage walking. People living in high-density areas are much more likely to walk than those living in low-density suburbs, even when suburban trips are less than one mile (note that higher population densities seem to be more strongly correlated with higher walking rates than does a compact land use pattern). There also seems to be a correlation between the shorter commute distances associated with compact cities and higher bicycling rates. Compact, mixed-use development has been cited as much more likely than improved bicycle facilities, congestion fees, or fuel price increases to recruit motorists to bicycling.

Residential development that averages 14 dwelling units per acre requires half as much road mileage to serve vehicle trips than development at 3.5 dwelling units per acre. Another study found that for each doubling of residential density, vehicle miles traveled is reduced 30 percent. Thus, if the population of an area doubled due to infill development, vehicle miles traveled would probably increase by only 40 to 60 percent, rather than the 100 percent it would increase if the population increase occurred in dispersed suburbs.

A recent study has confirmed that the shift from car trips to transit and walking does not occur until certain job and housing densities are achieved. For work trips, the thresholds are 50 to 75 employees per gross acre, or 12 dwellings per net acre. For shopping trips, it is 75 employees per gross acre and 20 dwellings per acre.

One way to increase development densities is to remove land development policies that reduce development densities, such as minimum lot size zoning and minimum parking requirements.

Public service vehicles scaled small enough so that they do not dictate unsafe, wide streets

New urbanism encourages the use of public service and emergency vehicles (such as fire trucks) that are scaled to be compatible with neighborhoods. Increasingly, such vehicles are quite large, and their size often dictates rather wide streets and unsafe turning radii. Yet studies show that the dangers of such street design typically far outweigh the safety benefits that larger streets and turns will provide for emergency vehicles. In general, this is because the probability of traffic injury or death due to over-sized streets is much higher than the chance that injury or death would be averted because the emergency vehicle can shave a few seconds off of a trip. Therefore, smaller service vehicles can help a City keep average neighborhood vehicle speeds lower, make the streets safer and less noisy, make the neighborhood more walkable and, in general, more livable and sociable.

Streets and sidewalks straight, not curvilinear

Streets are more memorable and less disorienting when they are straight. They are more dignified, and can be terminated with a prominent vista. It is important that sidewalks be straight, since pedestrians have a strong desire to walk the distance that provides the minimum trip length. Curving sidewalks promote the creation of “cow paths,” as pedestrians take short cuts along their route. In general, curvilinear sidewalks are only appropriate when needed to avoid a large tree or other important physical feature, or in an area in which most pedestrians are walking strictly for optional recreation or exercise. This is generally not the case in an urban area, where almost all trips are utilitarian. Mostly, curving sidewalks are intended to improve the view of motorists driving along a road, and provide no important benefits for the pedestrian.

One-quarter mile walking distance

It is generally recognized that the convenient walking distance ranges up to one-quarter mile, or roughly a five- to ten minute walk. It is therefore important that for a neighborhood to be walkable, most homes should be within one-quarter mile of public parks, schools, civic buildings, retail, office, and various forms of culture. The one-quarter mile design yardstick also enhances the viability of transit.

Short, walkable block faces

In general, a neighborhood or commercial block face length should not exceed approximately 500 feet. Longer blocks tend to create inconvenient walking distances. When long blocks must be created, they should be shorted with cross-access walkways.

Ground-floor retail. Offices and residential above.

This form of mixed use enhances vibrancy and provides more affordable housing choices. It reduces the need for trips by car, since employees of the retail establishment can live above the shop. It is important that such “vertical mixing” of uses not place residential on the first floor, since it is disruptive for the residence when users of the office or retail must walk through the residence. It is also important that such mixed use include retail on the first floor so that more energy and interest is at the street level – -thereby benefiting pedestrians.

Eyes on the street. Citizen surveillance

Law enforcement agencies increasingly see the merits of citizen policing, in which citizens are able to watch out for their collective security. Such “eyes on the street” are promoted when buildings, windows, entrances and porches are near the street and sidewalk. Citizen surveillance is also promoted when the neighborhood or commercial areas are designed for regular, frequent pedestrian activity. Areas without pedestrian activity are areas where illegal, inappropriate, or unsafe behavior can occur more easily since there is no one to observe the deed and report it or intervene.

Diagonal usually the shortest walking distance

In general, the shortest walking distance is a diagonal route. Frequently, sidewalks are designed with right angle turns, which increases the walking distance and increases the likelihood of “cow path” shortcuts.

Centrally-located schools, parks, squares, civic w/in walking distance of most homes

When schools, parks, squares, and civic buildings are within easy walking distance of most residents, a sense of community and neighborliness is promoted, and vehicle trips are greatly reduced. If children are able to walk to school or a park, such areas can become social and recreational gathering places for students, because they are able to go to the school or return home on their own, as opposed to being required to leave when the bus leaves at the end of the class day.

Parks, squares and civic uses are more frequently used when residents have easy, non-vehicular access to them. When centrally located, they become the focal point of the neighborhood, and maximize the number of residences that are within walking distance.

Square street curbs

Square street curbs provide more safety for pedestrians, and provide a more attractive, urban appearance for the neighborhood.

Modest curb radius

A larger curb turning radius at an intersection or a parking area ingress and egress point allows vehicles to negotiate a turn rapidly, whereas a smaller radius forces a vehicle to slow down. Conventional traffic engineers often prefer a larger radius for vehicle convenience and curb protection, but such a radius makes life more inconvenient and dangerous for pedestrians. A larger radius also significantly increases the distance for crossing the street, which exposes the pedestrian to more danger from moving vehicles.

Note that large garbage trucks or delivery trucks or buses or fire trucks should not dictate the design of neighborhood curb radii. To do so is equivalent to obligating an architect to increase the size of the front door opening so that an overly large TV set can be brought into the house. No, the correct solution is to request that service and emergency vehicles be scaled for neighborhoods…

 

Enrique Penalosa on How to Design Cities

Former Bogotà mayor Enrique Peñalosa interviewed by Susan Ives (U.S.A.)

If you could wave a magic wand and create the perfect city, what would that city be like?

We really have to admit that over the past hundred years we have been building cities much more for mobility than for people’s well-being. Every year thousands of children are killed by cars. Isn’t it time we build cities that are more child-friendly? Over the last 30 years, we’ve been able to magnify environmental consciousness all over the world. As a result, we know a lot about the ideal environment for a happy whale or a happy mountain gorilla. We’re far less clear about what constitutes an ideal environment for a happy human being. One common measure for how clean a mountain stream is is to look for trout. If you find the trout, the habitat is healthy. It’s the same way with children in a city. Children are a kind of indicator species. If we can build a successful city for children we will have a successful city for all people.

Given the rapid growth of Third World cities, is this possible?

Many Third World cities today are really only half built. Many are still surrounded by undeveloped land that will be overtaken by the city very soon. We still have the opportunity to learn from the successes and mistakes of other cities around the world. We need to think about how to create cities that produce more convivial, creative, and happy human beings. Where is the urban expert who decided that cities had to be structured around cars? Why not begin to think differently? Why not dream of a city where half the streets would be for pedestrians, where the heart of the city would be a giant avenue lined with benches and trees, a meeting place for the community, where people go to jog, ride bicycles, talk, kiss, eat in cafes? A city doesn’t have to be a bunch of roads for cars with some buildings around them.

As mayor, you made it your platform to transform the city’s transportation system.

When I got to city hall, I was a handed a transportation study that said the most important thing the city could do was to build an elevated highway at a cost of $600 million. Instead, we installed a bus system that carries 700,000 people a day at a cost of $300 million. We created hundreds of pedestrian-only streets, parks, plazas, and bike paths, planted trees, and got rid of cluttering commercial signs. We constructed the longest pedestrian-only street in the world. It may seem crazy, because this street goes through some of the poorest neighborhoods in Bogotá, and many of the surrounding streets aren’t even paved. But we chose not to improve the streets for the sake of cars, but instead to have wonderful spaces for pedestrians. All this pedestrian infrastructure shows respect for human dignity. We’re telling people, “You are important–not because you’re rich or because you have a Ph.D., but because you are human.” If people are treated as special, as sacred even, they behave that way. This creates a different kind of society.

How was your idea of putting pedestrians needs ahead of cars received?

I was nearly impeached when I said that cars shouldn’t be allowed to park on the sidewalks. My opponents were business owners who said there was enough space on the sidewalks for cars to park and for people to still walk by. In Bogotá only 25 to 30 percent of the households have cars.

Yet we use public money to build roads for the cars that so few people can afford, while the majority walk or use public transit. Democracy isn’t just about casting a vote. It’s about public good over private. If we can ban cars, isn’t the majority better off?

What steps were you able to take?

We began to experiment by instituting a car-free day on a weekday. In a city of about 7 million people, just about everybody managed to get to work by walking, bicycling, bus, even on horseback– and everybody was better off. There was less air pollution, less time sitting in traffic, more time for people to be productive and enjoy themselves. Every Sunday we close 120 kilometers of roads to motor vehicles for seven hours. A million and a half people of all ages and incomes come out to ride bicycles, jog, and simply gather with others in community. We took a vote, and 83 percent of the public told us they wanted to have car-free days more often. Getting people out of their cars is a means of social integration. You have the upper-income person sitting next to the cleaning lady on the bus. This may be something you take for granted in your country. But in the Third World, society isn’t so integrated. This is extremely powerful and revolutionary.

 

Source: CHILD- AND YOUTH-FRIENDLY LAND-USE AND TRANSPORT PLANNING GUIDELINES FOR BRITISH COLUMBIA by Richard Gilbert and Catherine O’Brien, April 30, 2005

 

On the Importance of Ratcheting Down Size and Speed

By Dom Nozzi, AICP

Dangerous, high-speed, reckless, inattentive driving is now of epidemic proportions in nearly every community in America. Motor vehicle collisions with bicyclists and pedestrians have remained at unacceptably high levels for several decades. The hostile, high-decibel conditions delivered by high motor vehicle speeds on American roads has led to costly, growing efforts to “buffer” homes and businesses from these frenzied, perilous, increasingly wide suburban highways. Fortressing efforts such as berms, masonry walls, large building setbacks, thick vegetation, and grade separations have all been tried. Those houses and commercial establishments which are unable to tolerate these increasingly roaring raceways are being abandoned or relocated to outlying, sprawling locations. Much of this abandonment explains the widespread decline of American Main Streets in the 60s, 70s and 80s.

The quandary is vividly clear: More and more, we are horrified to discover that high-speed motor vehicles are simply incompatible with a livable community for humans, despite all our efforts to separate ourselves from the growing speedways that are engulfing us.

High-speed roads are not only inhospitable to houses and businesses. They also create a “barrier effect” in which it is increasingly difficult to use such roads for bicycling and walking (or even transit). Consequently, per capita motor vehicle trips grow in the community. In combination with the higher speeds, fuel consumption and air pollution rise significantly.

As an aside, it should be noted that perhaps the most important reason that high-speed roads discourage and endanger bicycle and pedestrian trips is the “speed differential” between motor vehicles and those bicycling or walking. When motor vehicles move at modest speeds of, say, 15 mph, the speed differential between vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians is relatively small. Motorists have more reaction time. Bicyclists and pedestrians feel more comfortable next to slower speed cars. Collisions with cars are more likely to result in survival.

These super-fast highways are not only deadly for pedestrians and bicyclists. They also become death traps for crossing wildlife, as higher speeds lead to a dramatic growth in “road kills.”

What are the origins of high-speed roads?

Motor vehicles, by their nature, require an enormous amount of space. Indeed, a car takes up so much space that roads become congested with cars with only a modest number of cars on the road. Because roads become congested so quickly when the car is used for transportation, the advent of the car in the early part of the 20th Century soon led road planners to push for wider road lanes (from, say, 8 ft wide to 12 ft wide) and an increase in the number of travel lanes (from, say, 2 lanes to 4 lanes).

The growth in the size of roads led to an inexorable, vicious cycle. Because an emphasis on expanding and promoting the car “habitat” (roads and parking lots) inevitably leads to a decline in the quality of the human “habitat” (neighborhoods and Main Streets), the early part of the 20th Century witnessed a growing desire to flee the increasingly congested, dirty, degraded in-town locations for the “greener pastures” of suburban life in peripheral locations.

Most humans lead busy lives. They have what is known as a “travel time budget”, wherein there is a desire to maintain an equilibrium in the amount of time devoted each day to regular travel (such as the commute to work). Cross-culturally and throughout history, we have learned that this travel time budget, on average, is approximately 1.1 hours per day.

The growing desire to escape the cities being degraded by aggressive, high-speed motor vehicle travel meant, primarily, that there was a pressing need to widen roads to enable a growing number of cars to travel at high speeds for greater distances (in order to maintain the 1.1-hour travel time). Unfortunately, this sets into motion a downwardly spiraling vicious cycle in which high-speed motor vehicles bring us toward increasingly degraded cities, which pushes a growing number of us to flee to peripheral locations. The growth in peripheral residences leads to a growing popular demand for bigger, faster roads.

And each time we build bigger, faster roads, we degrade that ring of city growth (by creating a congested, unpleasant car habitat), which pushes a growing number of us to flee to a even MORE peripheral location in a never-ending process.

What can a community do to escape this downward spiral?

To escape this spiraling community dispersal (driven by a declining quality of life), the path is clear.

Slow down motor vehicle travel.

We are fortunate that while nearly all American adults now use a car for nearly every trip, it is not at all necessary for us to strive for the impossible, undesirable objective of “getting rid of all cars.” The good news is that we can keep our cars. But we need to become more the masters of our cars rather than their slaves. That means we need to design our communities and our roads to obligate motorists to be better behaved (primarily by driving at more modest speeds and doing so more attentively). When motor vehicle speeds decline, and motorists drive more attentively, we find that community quality of life can be maintained, and even improved, DESPITE the presence of cars.

Another crucial aspect of “well-behaved” motor vehicles is to return to the tradition of building communities that provide travel choices, so that folks are not required to make ALL trips by motor vehicle. Creating travel choice means a return to the tradition of establishing “mixed use,” higher density neighborhoods. Homes are co-mingled with modest shops, offices, civic buildings, and pocket parks. This sort of traditional, mixed use neighborhood design substantially reduces trip distances, which means that walking, bicycling and transit use become more feasible and likely. The short distances and mixed uses also means that streets do not need to be over-sized with 11- or 12-foot wide travel lanes or 4- and 6-lane roads.

And these factors contribute to a crucial, inevitable result: slower, more attentive motor vehicle travel (which leads to safer, more livable driving — and driving that is OPTIONAL rather than REQUIRED).

For most communities, design imperatives are therefore as follows:

First, neighborhood residential densities in community core areas need to be high enough to support a healthy, frequent transit service, and smaller, neighborhood-based retail shops. A general rule of thumb is that this density needs to be at least 6 to 8 dwelling units per acre. Higher-density, mixed use communities promote more modestly sized neighborhoods and communities.

Second, communities need to continue the nation-wide trend of installing traffic calming designs, and doing so throughout the community. Traffic calming has been found to deliver extremely cost-effective benefits to communities that employ them. Slower (“calmed”) cars means healthier, quieter neighborhoods that are particularly safer for children, seniors and pets. Air pollution declines. Walking and bicycling are encouraged (due, in part, to a reduced speed differential). Neighborhoods, therefore, with stable (or improving) property values.

Preferably, calming is done by reducing HORIZONTAL dimensions rather than using VERTICAL interventions. Desirable horizontal street modifications include reducing in the width of travel lanes, reducing the NUMBER of lanes (sometimes known as road “dieting”), using landscaped or hardscaped sidewalk bulb-outs, using modest intersection turning radii, installing chicanes, restoring on-street parking, putting in roundabouts, and installing traffic circles. Each of these treatments can effectively reduce average motor vehicle speeds while still allowing for needed, higher-speed emergency response by fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances. Undesirable vertical treatments mostly include speed humps, which are commonly used due to low cost, but which can create significant problems for emergency vehicles.

As I note above, it is important that a community seeking to slow average vehicle speeds do so throughout the community, to the extent possible.

Over the course of the past several decades, American motorists have been given the opportunity to drive mostly on what are called “forgiving streets.” The forgiving street design was born in the minds of engineers who observed car collisions with trees, other cars, and bicyclists. The “solution” seemed obvious: Remove trees, parked cars, buildings and other “obstacles” from the shoulders of the street. Increase lane width. Add additional travel lanes.

The theory was that such treatments would mean that incompetent, inattentive, higher-speed motorists would be “forgiven” if they, say, drove too fast or drove off the roadway, because there would be less “obstacles” to crash into.

What they forgot about was human nature. Humans, by nature, tend to drive at the highest possible speed that can be driven safely. Traditionally, narrow streets with on-street parked cars, buildings pulled up to the street, and street trees meant that a street could only be driven safely at, say, 20 mph. Drivers needed to drive relatively slowly, courteously and attentively (read: carefully) to safely negotiate such streets. But today, with the advent of the theory that forgiving street design increases safety, we now find ourselves, ironically, with LESS safe streets. Forgiving streets allow even inattentive, high-speed, reckless, low-skill drivers to drive safely at, say, 40 mph without crashing into “obstacles.”

The result of the forgiving street paradigm should have been predictable. Less safe, higher-speed streets increasingly filled by motorists who are using cell phones or putting on make-up as they drive. And it should come as no surprise that the forgiving street is breeding an army of incompetent drivers, since they require less skill to drive than the traditional street.

Conventional traffic engineers and elected officials were happy to learn that forgiving streets provided an additional “benefit.” Not only did we expect them to increase safety. They would also SPEED UP TRAFFIC. So support for the forgiving street was found from not only those seeking more road “safety,” but also those who live in and benefited from the construction of peripheral, sprawl housing (which is enabled by higher-speed roads).

Because nearly all of our roads have now been built to be “forgiving,” the vast majority of American drivers now have the EXPECTATION of being able to drive at high speeds AT ALL TIMES. As a result, it is essential that we ratchet down these high speed expectations by incrementally calming our roads community-wide. Having only one or a handful of calmed roads in a community does not typically work well, as most drivers in such a community will retain the expectation of high-speed driving because only rarely (if ever) will such drivers be obligated to slow down. If the expectation of high-speed driving persists, the infrequent instances of calming can result in a significant level of “road rage” (and non-compliance) by motorists who believe they have an entitlement to driving 60 mph on community roads.

Finally, it is essential to recognize that there is a growing trend by citizens and fire departments to purchase increasingly large vehicles, and doing so creates enormous obstacles for a community striving to use the important designs called for above. Why? Because large vehicles — particularly large fire trucks — almost always prevents even an informed, well-meaning community from establishing the modest street design treatments needed for livability and safety. Large vehicles stand in the way of the use of modest travel lane widths, modest turning radii, and many effective traffic calming techniques.

It is therefore essential that communities do what they can to control the growing size of fire trucks and other vehicles used in the community.

In sum, the critical needs for community protection and improvement are to design communities and their streets to create modest motor vehicle SPEEDS.

And doing so is most effectively achieved by emphasizing a control in the SIZE of motor vehicles, emergency vehicles, roads, and neighborhoods.

Charter of the Congress for the New Urbanism

The Congress for New Urbanism views disinvestment in central cities, the spread of placeless sprawl, increasing separation by race and income, environmental deterioration, loss of agricultural lands and wilderness, and the erosion of society’s built heritage as one interrelated community-building challenge.

We stand for the restoration of existing urban centers and towns within coherent metropolitan regions, the reconfiguration of sprawling suburbs into communities of real neighborhoods and diverse districts, the conservation of natural environments, and the preservation of our built legacy.

We recognize that physical solutions by themselves will not solve social and economic problems, but neither can economic vitality, community stability, and environmental health be sustained without a coherent and supportive physical framework.

We advocate the restructuring of public policy and development practices to support the following principles: neighborhoods should be diverse in use and population; communities should be designed for the pedestrian and transit as well as the car; cities and towns should be shaped by physically defined and universally accessible public spaces and community institutions; urban places should be framed by architecture and landscape design that celebrate local history, climate, ecology, and building practice.

We represent a broad-based citizenry, composed of public and private sector leaders, community activists, and multidisciplinary professionals.

We are committed to reestablishing relationship between the art of building and the making of community, through citizen-based participatory planning and design.

We dedicate ourselves to reclaiming our homes, blocks, streets, parks, neighborhoods, districts, towns, cities, regions, and environment.

We assert the following principles to guide public policy, development practice, urban planning, and design:

The region: Metropolis, city, and town

Metropolitan regions are finite places with geographical boundaries derived from topography, watersheds, coastlines, farmlands, regional parks, and river basins. The metropolis is made of multiple centers that are cities, towns, and villages, each with its own identifiable center and edges.

The metropolitan region is a fundamental economic unit of the contemporary world. Governmental cooperation, public policy, physical planning, and economic strategies must reflect this new reality.

The metropolis has a necessary and fragile relationship to its agrarian hinterland and natural landscapes. The relationship is environmental, economic, and cultural. Farmland and nature are as important to the metropolis as the garden is to the house.

Development patterns should not blur or eradicate the edges of the metropolis. Infill development within existing urban areas conserves environmental resources, economic investment, and social fabric, while reclaiming marginal and abandoned areas. Metropolitan regions should develop strategies to encourage such infill development over peripheral expansion.

Where appropriate, new development contiguous to urban boundaries should be organized as neighborhoods and districts, and be integrated with the existing urban pattern. Noncontiguous development should be organized as towns and villages with their own urban edges, and planned for a jobs/housing balance, not as bedroom suburbs.

The development and redevelopment of towns and cities should respect historical patterns, precedents, and boundaries. Cities and towns should bring into proximity a broad spectrum of public and private uses to support a regional economy that benefits people of all incomes. Affordable housing should be distributed throughout the region to match job opportunities and to avoid concentrations of poverty.

The physical organization of the region should be supported by a framework of transportation alternatives. Transit, pedestrian, and bicycle systems should maximize access and mobility throughout the region while reducing dependence upon the automobile. Revenues and resources can be shared more cooperatively among the municipalities and centers within regions to avoid destructive competition for tax base and to promote rational coordination of transportation, recreation, public services, housing, and community institutions.

The neighborhood, the district, and the corridor

The neighborhood, the district, and the corridor are essential elements of development and redevelopment in the metropolis. They form identifiable areas that encourage citizens to take responsibility for their maintenance and evolution.

Neighborhoods should be compact, pedestrian-friendly, and mixed-use. Districts generally emphasize a special single use, and should follow the principles of neighborhood design when possible.

Corridors are regional connectors of neighborhoods and districts; they range from boulevards and rail lines to rivers and parkways.

Many activities of daily living should occur within walking distance, allowing independence to those who do not drive, especially the elderly and the young. Interconnected networks of streets should be designed to encourage walking, reduce the number and length of automobile trips, and conserve energy.

Within neighborhoods, a broad range of housing types and price levels can bring people of diverse ages, races, and incomes into daily interaction, strengthening the personal and civic bonds essential to an authentic community.

Transit corridors, when properly planned and coordinated, can help organize metropolitan structure and revitalize urban centers. In contrast, highway corridors should not displace investment from existing centers.

Appropriate building densities and land uses should be within walking distance of transit stops, permitting public transit to become a viable alternative to the automobile.

Concentrations of civic, institutional, and commercial activity should be embedded in neighborhoods and districts, not isolated in remote, single-use complexes. Schools should be sized and located to enable children to walk or bicycle to them.

The economic health and harmonious evolution of neighborhoods, districts, and corridors can be improved through graphic urban design codes that serve as predictable guides for change.

A range of parks, from tot-lots and village greens to ballfields and community gardens, should be distributed within neighborhoods. Conservation areas and open lands should be used to define and connect different neighborhoods and districts.

The block, the street, and the building

A primary task of all urban architecture and landscape design is the physical definition of streets and public spaces as places of shared use.

Individual architectural projects should be seamlessly linked to their surroundings. This issue transcends style;

The revitalization of urban places depends on safety and security. The design of streets and buildings should reinforce safe environments, but not at the expense of accessibility and openness.

In the contemporary metropolis, development must adequately accommodate automobiles. It should do so in ways that respect the pedestrian and the form of public space.

Streets and squares should be safe, comfortable, and interesting to the pedestrian. Properly configured, they encourage walking and enable neighbors to know each other and protect their communities.

Architecture and landscape design should grow from local climate, topography, history, and building practice.

Civic buildings and public gathering places require important sites to reinforce community identity and the culture of democracy. They deserve distinctive form, because their role is different from that of other buildings and places that constitute the fabric of the city.

All buildings should provide their inhabitants with a clear sense of location, weather and time. Natural methods of heating and cooling can be more resource-efficient than mechanical systems.

Preservation and renewal of historic buildings, districts, and landscapes affirm the community and evolution of urban society.

 

Good Community Design is Good for You

by Neal Kaufman

 

December 5, 2004 Los Angeles Times

Are our cities making us sick? Will children born today die fatter, more sugar-saturated and at a younger age than their parents?

Cities were sickly places 150 years ago. Dysentery, typhoid, measles, influenza and other diseases thrived in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. It took heroic and creative leadership by city planners, architects and health advocates to create healthier cities.

Political will and professional expertise helped drive improvements in housing codes, sanitation ordinances and work-site conditions. Locating cemeteries on the outskirts of cities and placing green space in the center minimized pollution and encouraged outdoor physical activity. Such changes fueled the health advances in the first half of the 20th century. Life expectancy rose from 39 years in 1850 to 50 years in 1900 and to 68 years in 1950.

Today’s cities are plagued with traffic, violence and overcrowding. People are isolated from each other, spending too much time indoors and bombarded with unhealthy food, cigarettes, alcohol and drugs. Homicide and fatal car crashes may be the swiftest urban killers, but bad living conditions and unhealthy choices contribute to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, asthma, depression and violence-related injuries.

Sound urban design and smart architecture create bustling streets and people-filled parks where young and old safely walk and talk, see old friends and feel confident they will not be attacked. Well-planned cities create communities where neighbors can meet in the local cafe, talk about their concerns, say hi to the other patrons and feel connected to the shared public spaces filled with old and new friends.

Homes close to businesses allow people to shuttle back and forth easily, running out to get what they need, while still having leisure time to mow the lawn or read a book.

Neighborhoods where services are located close to each other make it easier for a mother with four children to see the doctor, the teacher and the counselor and still have time to go grocery shopping to get nutritious, fresh food for her family. Communities where residents are actively involved create spaces where a group of seniors can play cards, where grandmothers can walk their grandchildren to the store, and where fathers can teach their children to ride a bike or throw a

ball.

When health-oriented approaches to planning and design are embraced, such as the Health Impact Assessment used in Europe, Australia and Canada, health planners can guide development by predicting and measuring the health effects of a policy or a proposed construction project. When developers, builders and school boards guided by appropriate zoning regulations, building codes and performance standards work with residents, they create vibrant and health-promoting

neighborhoods. When we cluster a useful mix of schools, parks, libraries, mixed-income housing, healthcare, adult education and social services, neighborhoods become more vital, people more healthy and fit. That’s good for waistlines and the civic bottom line.

 

Dr. Neal Kaufman is co-director of the UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families & Communities, a member of the First 5 LA commission and director of primary care pediatrics at Cedars-Sinai Med

 

By Jeffrey Tumlin and Adam Millard-Ball

 

 

Line Magazine, Dec. 2004

Parking is the poor relation of architecture and design. Unglamorous and often downright ugly, it tends to be treated as a necessary evil. If the parking system works well, nobody notices. If it doesn’t, it can work against a city’s best efforts to improve urban design, manage traffic, and achieve a wide array of other goals.

Parking can determine the success of both a particular development and the entire urban neighborhood around it. Parking requirements imposed by local jurisdictions, when coupled with height, bulk and floor area restrictions, often dictate the type of building that is possible on a constrained site. The amount of parking and the way it is designed and managed control the traffic, congestion, and quality of the pedestrian environment in a neighborhood. Meanwhile, the cost of parking–often $50,000 per space and up–can determine the project’s financial feasibility, and the scope to include additional neighborhood amenities.

At the same time, planners, designers and architects often fail to understand how parking works and how to use it to achieve their goals.

Often, they fall prey to myths that are well established, not only among the public at large but also among specialist transportation planners schooled in conventional traffic engineering. This article seeks to clarify some of the most common misconceptions, presenting ten widely circulated parking myths.

Myth 1: Successful cities have abundant parking.

Compared to cities, the suburbs will always have more free, front-door parking than any urban neighborhood can match–and the roadway infrastructure to go with it.

No great city is known for its cheap, abundant parking. Monthly parking costs in San Diego and Seattle are more than three times those in Phoenix and Reno. Santa Monica and Palo Alto have just 2.4 spaces per 1,000 square feet of commercial space in their downtowns–less than two-thirds of the ratio for a typical suburban center.

Places such as Santa Monica compete on the basis of qualities such as historic architecture, transit access, and the sheer vitality of their urban life–qualities that large supplies of parking tend to dampen.

Cheap, abundant parking is often a sign of a downtown’s failure–after all, half of downtown Buffalo is given over to parking.

Myth 2: It’s difficult to find parking in the neighborhood. We need to build more.

Motorists aren’t interested in how many parking spaces a neighborhood has. What matters is how easily they can find one. Maintaining availability is therefore a key goal, but building more spaces is only one way to achieve it–and usually an expensive one.

Most of the time, it will be far cheaper to free up spaces by using demand management strategies. Charging for parking or increasing the rate will encourage some motorists to carpool, take transit, walk, or bike. Car-sharing programs allow people to sell their cars–studies show that each City CarShare vehicle takes seven private cars off the streets, at a fraction of the cost of building new garages.

It’s also important to combat perceptions of parking shortages. Often, people complain of parking problems when actual counts show that only 60 to 75 percent of spaces are occupied. The key is to use pricing and time limits to free up the most visible spaces–particularly the “front door”

spots at the curb and in entrances to garages. Advanced information systems such as those in San Francisco’s Financial District can offer motorists real-time information about where spaces are available.

Myth 3: Free parking–the 28th Amendment.

Parking is often provided free of charge to motorists. Every space, however, entails significant costs for developers, owners, tenants, and/or taxpayers. So while parking fees are often subsumed (“bundled”) into rents, lease fees, or sale prices, the costs are borne by everyone, including those who choose to walk, bike or take transit.

These costs are substantial. For residential developments in San Francisco, parking accounts for about 20 percent of the total project cost. A typical parking space occupies 375 square feet, including space for aisles–about $43,000 assuming a land value of $5 million per acre.

Parking garages use less land per space, but construction costs are typically at least $40,000 per space in the Bay Area. (San Jose recently built a new downtown garage on an existing surface lot at a cost of $77,000 per net space.) Add in maintenance, cleaning, lighting, security, interest, and financing costs, and the total cost amounts to an amortized $4,000 per space per year.

 

Myth 4: All motorists are created equal.

In many cases–particularly neighborhood commercial centers–providing convenient, visible, front door parking is critical for economic success. In some cases, cheap or free parking is desirable to compete with other commercial centers nearby.

This doesn’t mean, however, that employees and park-and-ride commuters also need this benefit. Rather than treating all parkers equally, it is essential to segment them into different groups of users and prioritize them accordingly. Typically, customers and shoppers are the highest priority, since they generate the greatest benefits (sales tax dollars) with the highest turnover and the lowest costs (fewer peak period auto trips). Other visitors, residents, employees, and park-and-ride commuters follow in importance.

Public garages in San Francisco provide an excellent example of how this prioritization can be easily implemented in practice. Prices are set to favor short-term visitors who stay just a couple of hours. Parking at the Fifth and Mission garage for an hour will set a shopper back $2, but an eight-hour stay for a commuter costs $18. Garages in some suburban downtowns provide the first hour free, with hourly fees rising for additional hours.

Other techniques include time limits (one- or two-hour maximums), validation stickers given by merchants to their customers, and permits issued to particular groups, such as residents. These strategies prioritize those who bring in sales tax dollars to a neighborhood, while helping manage traffic congestion by discouraging all-day employee parking. They also steer employees to public transit–since commuters make the same trip every day, they can research different transit options, and they are also unlikely to choose a different job based on the availability and cost of parking alone.

 

Myth 5: Even in the Bay Area, people don’t like to walk. Parking needs to be right outside the front door.

Front-door parking is important for many users, particularly shoppers or people with disabilities. However, there is no reason why most motorists cannot park a block or two away from their destination, much as they might prefer the most convenient spaces.

The key is to manage the most convenient spaces by reserving them for either the desired users (e.g. with time limits), or those willing to pay a premium. Just as people pay more for the theater seats with the best view, the most desirable parking spaces should attract a premium.

 

Myth 6: Having fewer parking spaces means that people will just drive around looking for a space.

Often, congestion caused by motorists looking for a parking space is an important concern. However, this often reflects poor management, rather than the number of spaces available. Even if plentiful space is available in off-street garages–as in San Francisco’s Mission District–motorists will often prefer to circle looking for a free on-street space.

In this situation, building more parking will obviously do nothing to alleviate the problem. The solution is a rational pricing policy that charges more for the most desirable, most scarce parking spaces.

Real-time information that directs motorists to facilities with available space is also an effective way to reduce traffic.

 

Myth 7: Parking ratios can be easily looked up in a manual.

Traditionally, parking requirements are set by local jurisdictions using two convenient reference sources: parking generation rates published by the Institute of Transportation Engineers and other jurisdictions’ parking standards compiled by the Planning Advisory Service. The average national minimum requirement for offices is four spaces per 1,000 square feet; for commercial, four or five spaces per 1,000 square feet is a typical ratio.

These ratios, however, are based on demand at single-use suburban sites, where ample free parking exists and few or no alternatives to driving are provided. The highest peak demand observed is then often used to set the minimum requirement. While this approach prevents spillover parking in all but extreme cases, it will often mean that a large supply sits vacant almost every day of the year. Conventional parking standards are simply not appropriate in urban communities.

More importantly, the amount of parking needed is primarily a value judgment, rather than a technical exercise. Developers and local elected officials must ask, at what point do the benefits of ample parking outweigh the negative consequences? Is there enough roadway capacity to serve an increase in parking? Is it cheaper to do something else instead of providing parking? Does additional parking or greater investment in transit fit better with the values of the community?

 

Myth 8: All households, even low-income ones, need parking.

Nearly 30 percent of San Francisco households–and 38 percent of renters–do not own a vehicle. In some census tracts, such as Chinatown, this proportion rises to 90 percent. Low-income households also tend to own far fewer vehicles. Rather than assume that every household will have a car–and therefore need to pay for a parking space–planners and developers should be sensitive to these variations.

There is no shortage of demand for housing without parking or with less than one space per unit. This means that we can be aggressive in seeking to capitalize on our investments in transit. Concentrating housing with less parking around Muni and BART stations and along frequent bus routes brings a double benefit–it maximizes the amount of housing while minimizing the traffic that the development generates.

 

Myth 9: Fewer parking spaces would be fine, if only we had decent transit.

Better transit is sorely needed everywhere in the US, not least the San Francisco Bay Area. But even current Muni and BART service is enough to persuade many households not to own a car. Along with density, household size, and income, transit access is one of the four most important determinants of how many vehicles a household owns.

Take the Market/Octavia neighborhood, for example, where census data show that there are just 0.46 to 0.70 vehicles per household. Parts of the South Mission and Bayview, with similar incomes but far poorer transit service, have more than double the number of cars per household, from 1.06 to 1.28.

What’s more, the density and pedestrian-friendliness of an area, as well as management strategies such as charging for parking, are just as important in determining how much parking is needed. Parking management is equally applicable in the suburbs, as places such as Walnut Creek and Palo Alto have demonstrated. Demand has been reduced by up to 28 percent in other parts of California, such as the Los Angeles region, where employers have charged for parking.

 

Myth 10: Parking isn’t just unglamorous, it’s unimportant.

Parking is one of the most important tools at the disposal of planners.

Parking supply and management is critical to achieving goals in a diverse array of fields–producing affordable housing, relieving traffic congestion, promoting neighborhood retail, and maintaining the integrity of the urban fabric. Poor parking management can destroy the urban qualities that cities such as San Francisco depend on for their success.

Parking matters!

 

Jeffrey Tumlin is a partner at NelsonNygaard, a San Francisco-based firm specializing in transportation planning for livable communities. Adam Millard-Ball is a senior associate at the firm.

 

 

London’s Congestion Fee a Success

by Ken Livingstone

December 2004

The 2004 World Technology Winners and Finalists Winner: Ken Livingstone, Mayor, London, United Kingdom

Winner Commentary:

Central London had historically suffered from one of the worst levels of traffic congestion in the United Kingdom. Average traffic speeds were less than 10 miles per hour throughout much of the working day. This congestion was damaging London’s economy as people and goods spend unnecessary time in traffic rather than in productive activities. This congestion worsened the environment of London and made conditions unpleasant for other road users, in particular for walkers and cyclists. Something drastic needed to be done.

As new roads generate more traffic and in any case it is completely impractical to build new roads in such a densely developed area as London, a novel solution to rectifying this problem was required. As part of his 2000 election campaign the Mayor put forward his proposals for the central London congestion charge.

The scheme relies on people purchasing the charge, which can be obtained from shops and petrol stations, over the phone, via the web, 100 pay stations in car parks or by mobile phone text messaging. We also provide a fleet scheme used by 11,000 fleet vehicles per day. Their registration number is entered onto a database for that day. The scheme is enforced by cameras, which record the vehicle registration mark of all vehicles entering the zone. These are checked against the database of those that have paid, and if the registration mark is not included the owner of that vehicle will receive a fine. The technological issues in providing an efficient, reliable and integrated payment, monitoring and enforcement system were immense.

However, it was essential for this to work well, otherwise it could jeopardise the scheme itself, and given the world-wide scrutiny of this initiative, could lead other towns and cities deciding not to take forward similar schemes for their areas.

The scheme has been an enormous success. No other transport scheme has had such a positive impact on the traffic of a city. Detailed monitoring of its effects has been undertaken, with the key impacts being:

• An immediate 30% reduction in congestion within the charging zone, which has been sustained since
• An 18% reduction in traffic entering the zone, with the number of cars down by a third
• An encouragement of other modes of travel – both cycling and travel by bus is up by 20%
• A 60% reduction in delays to buses due to traffic impacts and a 30% improvement in overall bus reliability
• A 12% reduction in emissions of oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and fine particles (PM10)
• A reduction in road accidents (although too early to quantify)
• No detrimental traffic impact on the boundary road or surrounding areas
• On-street surveys show that people perceive the charge to have improved the environmental quality of the area

 

The lessons we learnt for the successful introduction of Congestion Charging

were:

* The political commitment from Ken Livingstone, the Mayor was essential.

* Consultation was genuine with a readiness to amend the scheme in the light of reasonable representations.

* Public transport, especially buses (as we did not control the trains), was greatly improved.

* *Traffic management was utilised to ensure the inner ring road around the zone ran freely.

* Residential parking restrictions were introduced where it was thought motorists might park just outside the zone.

* Extensive public information using most media (including local radio and

TV) to inform motorists of the practicalities for how to pay the charge and also to keep the public informed on progress. (We did not want the communication channels swamped on the first day with motorists asking basic questions).

* First class project management.

A key test of the scheme’s success is the degree to which the public support it. Ahead of the introduction of the charge there was a massive and sustained media campaign against the charge, although the balance of public opinion remained fairly even, with around 40% for and 40% against the charge. After 6 months of its operation almost 60% were in favour of the scheme compared with around 25% against. Probably the best test is that on 4 June 2004 Ken Livingstone was re-elected Mayor of London for another 4 years with more votes than previously and a margin of 11% above his main rival who threatened to abolish the Congestion Charge.

 

New York City is the Greenest City in America

GREEN MANHATTAN

Why New York is the greenest city in the U.S.

By David Owen

Published in The New Yorker

10/18/04

 

My wife and I got married right out of college, in 1978. We were young and naïve and unashamedly idealistic, and we decided to make our first home in a utopian environmentalist community in New York State. For seven years, we lived, quite contentedly, in circumstances that would strike most Americans as austere in the extreme: our living space measured just seven hundred square feet, and we didn’t have a dishwasher, a garbage disposal, a lawn, or a car. We did our grocery shopping on foot, and when we needed to travel longer distances we used public transportation. Because space at home was scarce, we seldom acquired new possessions of significant size. Our electric bills worked out to about a dollar a day.

The utopian community was Manhattan. (Our apartment was on Sixty-ninth Street, between Second and Third.) Most Americans, including most New Yorkers, think of New York City as an ecological nightmare, a wasteland of concrete and garbage and diesel fumes and traffic jams, but in comparison with the rest of America it’s a model of environmental responsibility. By the most significant measures, New York is the greenest community in the United States, and one of the greenest cities in the world. The most devastating damage humans have done to the environment has arisen from the heedless burning of fossil fuels, a category in which New Yorkers are practically prehistoric. The average Manhattanite consumes gasoline at a rate that the country as a whole hasn’t matched since the mid-nineteen-twenties, when the most widely owned car in the United States was the Ford Model T. Eighty-two per cent of Manhattan residents travel to work by public transit, by bicycle, or on foot. That’s ten times the rate for Americans in general, and eight times the rate for residents of Los Angeles County. New York City is more populous than all but eleven states; if it were granted statehood, it would rank 51st in per-capita energy use.

“Anyplace that has such tall buildings and heavy traffic is obviously an environmental disaster-except that it isn’t,” John Holtzclaw, a transportation consultant for the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, told me. “If New Yorkers lived at the typical American sprawl density of three households per residential acre, they would require many times as much land. They’d be driving cars, and they’d have huge lawns and be using pesticides and fertilizers on them, and then they’d be overwatering their lawns, so that runoff would go into streams.” The key to New York’s relative environmental benignity is its extreme compactness. Manhattan’s population density is more than eight hundred times that of the nation as a whole. Placing one and a half million people on a twenty-three-square-mile island sharply reduces their opportunities to be wasteful, and forces the majority to live in some of the most inherently energy efficient residential structures in the world: apartment buildings. It also frees huge tracts of land for the rest of America to sprawl into.

My wife and I had our first child in 1984. We had both grown up in suburbs, and we decided that we didn’t want to raise our tiny daughter in a huge city. Shortly after she learned to walk, we moved to a small town in northwestern Connecticut, about 90 miles north of midtown Manhattan. Our house, which was built in the late 1700s, is across a dirt road from a nature preserve and is shaded by tall white-pine trees. After big rains, we can hear a swollen creek rushing by at the bottom of the hill. Deer, wild turkeys, and the occasional black bear feed themselves in our yard. From the end of our driveway, I can walk several miles through woods to an abandoned nineteenth-century railway tunnel, while crossing only one paved road.

Yet our move was an ecological catastrophe. Our consumption of electricity went from roughly four thousand kilowatt-hours a year, toward the end of our time in New York, to almost thirty thousand kilowatt-hours in 2003-and our house doesn’t even have central air-conditioning. We bought a car shortly before we moved, and another one soon after we arrived, and a third one ten years later. (If you live in the country and don’t have a second car, you can’t retrieve your first car from the mechanic after it’s been repaired; the third car was the product of a mild midlife crisis, but soon evolved into a necessity.) My wife and I both work at home, but we manage to drive thirty thousand miles a year between us, mostly doing ordinary errands. Nearly everything we do away from our house requires a car trip. Renting a movie and later returning it, for example, consumes almost two gallons of gasoline, since the nearest Blockbuster is ten miles away and each transaction involves two round trips. When we lived in New York, heat escaping from our apartment helped to heat the apartment above ours; nowadays, many of the BTUs produced by our brand-new, extremely efficient oil-burning furnace leak through our 200-year-old roof and into the dazzling star-filled winter sky above.

When most Americans think about environmentalism, they picture wild, unspoiled landscapes-the earth before it was transmogrified by human habitation. New York City is one of the most thoroughly altered landscapes imaginable, an almost wholly artificial environment, in which the terrain’s primeval contours have long since been obliterated and most of the parts that resemble nature (the trees on side streets, the rocks in Central Park) are essentially decorations. Ecology-minded discussions of New York City often have a hopeless tone, and focus on ways in which the city might be made to seem somewhat less oppressively man-made: by increasing the area devoted to parks and greenery, by incorporating vegetation into buildings themselves, by reducing traffic congestion, by easing the intensity of development, by creating open space around structures. But most such changes would actually undermine the city’s extraordinary energy efficiency, which arises from the characteristics that make it surreally synthetic.

Because densely populated urban centers concentrate human activity, we think of them as pollution crisis zones. Calculated by the square foot, New York City generates more greenhouse gases, uses more energy, and produces more solid waste than most other American regions of comparable size. On a map depicting negative environmental impacts in relation to surface area, therefore, Manhattan would look like an intense hot spot, surrounded, at varying distances, by belts of deepening green.

If you plotted the same negative impacts by resident or by household, however, the color scheme would be reversed. My little town has about four thousand residents, spread over 38.7 thickly wooded square miles, and there are many places within our town limits from which no sign of settlement is visible in any direction. But if you moved eight million people like us, along with our dwellings and possessions and current rates of energy use, into a space the size of New York City, our profligacy would be impossible to miss, because you’d have to stack our houses and cars and garages and lawn tractors and swimming pools and septic tanks higher than skyscrapers. (Conversely, if you made all eight million New Yorkers live at the density of my town, they would require a space equivalent to the land area of the six New England states plus Delaware and New Jersey.)

Spreading people out increases the damage they do to the environment, while making the problems harder to see and to address.

Of course, living in densely populated urban centers has many drawbacks. Even wealthy New Yorkers live in spaces that would seem cramped to Americans living almost anywhere else. A well-to-do friend of mine who grew up in a town house in Greenwich Village thought of his upbringing as privileged until, in prep school, he visited a classmate from the suburbs and was staggered by the house, the lawn, the cars, and the swimming pool, and thought, with despair, You mean I could live like this? Manhattan is loud and dirty, and the subway is depressing, and the fumes from the cars and cabs and buses can make people sick. Presumably for environmental reasons, New York City has one of the highest childhood-asthma rates in the country, with an especially alarming concentration in East Harlem.

Nevertheless, barring an almost inconceivable reduction in the earth’s population, dense urban centers offer one of the few plausible remedies for some of the world’s most discouraging environmental ills. To borrow a term from the jargon of computer systems, dense cities are scalable, while sprawling suburbs are not. The environmental challenge we face, at the current stage of our assault on the world’s non-renewable resources, is not how to make our teeming cities more like the pristine countryside. The true challenge is how to make other settled places more like Manhattan. This notion has yet to be widely embraced, partly because it is counterintuitive, and partly because most Americans, including most environmentalists, tend to view cities the way Thomas Jefferson did, as “pestilential to the morals, the health, and the liberties of man.” New York is the place that’s fun to visit but you wouldn’t want to live there. What could it possibly teach anyone about being green?

New York’s example, admittedly, is difficult for others to imitate, because the city’s remarkable population density is the result not of conscientious planning but of a succession of serendipitous historical accidents. The most important of those accidents was geographic: New York arose on a smallish island rather than on the mainland edge of a river or a bay, and the surrounding water served as a physical constraint to outward expansion. Manhattan is like a typical seaport turned inside out-a city with a harbor around it, rather than a harbor with a city along its edge. Insularity gave Manhattan more shoreline per square mile than other ports, a major advantage in the days when one of the world’s main commercial activities was moving cargoes between ships. It also drove early development inward and upward.

A second lucky accident was that Manhattan’s street plan was created by merchants who were more interested in economic efficiency than in boulevards, parks, or empty spaces between buildings. The resulting crush of architecture is actually humanizing, because it brings the city’s commercial, cultural, and other offerings closer together, thereby increasing their accessibility-a point made forty-three years ago by the brilliantly iconoclastic urban thinker Jane Jacobs, in her landmark book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.”

A third accident was the fact that by the early nineteen-hundreds most of Manhattan’s lines had been filled in to the point where not even Robert Moses could easily redraw them to accommodate the great destroyer of American urban life, the automobile. Henry Ford thought of cars as tools for liberating humanity from the wretchedness of cities, which he viewed with as much distaste as Jefferson did. In 1932, John Nolen, a prominent Harvard-educated urban planner and landscape architect, said, “The future city will be spread out, it will be regional, it will be the natural product of the automobile, the good road, electricity, the telephone, and the radio, combined with the growing desire to live a more natural, biological life under pleasanter and more natural conditions.” This is the idea behind suburbs, and it’s still seductive. But it’s also a prescription for sprawl and expressways and tremendous waste.

New York City’s obvious urban antithesis, in terms of density and automobile use, is metropolitan Los Angeles, whose metastatic outward growth has been virtually unimpeded by the lay of the land, whose early settlers came to the area partly out of a desire to create space between themselves and others, and whose main development began late enough to be shaped by the needs of cars. But a more telling counterexample is Washington, D.C., whose basic layout was conceived at roughly the same time as Manhattan’s, around the turn of the nineteenth century. The District of Columbia’s original plan was created by an eccentric French-born engineer and architect named Pierre-Charles L’Enfant, who befriended General Washington during the Revolutionary War and asked to be allowed to design the capital. Many of modern Washington’s most striking features are his: the broad, radial avenues; the hublike traffic circles; the sweeping public lawns and ceremonial spaces.

Washington is commonly viewed as the most intelligently beautiful-the most European-of large American cities. Ecologically, though, it’s a mess. L’Enfant’s expansive avenues were easily adapted to automobiles, and the low, widely separated buildings (whose height is limited by law) stretched the distance between destinations.

There are many pleasant places in Washington to go for a walk, but the city is difficult to get around on foot: the wide avenues are hard to cross, the traffic circles are like obstacle courses, and the grandiloquent empty spaces thwart pedestrians, by acting as what Jane Jacobs calls “border vacuums.” (One of Jacobs’s many arresting observations is that parks and other open spaces can reduce urban vitality, by creating dead ends that prevent people from moving freely between neighborhoods and by decreasing activity along their edges.) Many parts of Washington, furthermore, are relentlessly homogeneous. There are plenty of dignified public buildings on Constitution Avenue, for example, but good luck finding a dry cleaner, a Chinese restaurant, or a grocery store. The city’s horizontal, airy design has also pushed development into the surrounding countryside. The fastest growing county in the United States is Loudoun County, Virginia, at the rapidly receding western edge of the Washington metropolitan area.

The Sierra Club, an environmental organization that advocates the preservation of wilderness and wildlife, has a national campaign called Challenge to Sprawl. The aim of the program is to arrest the mindless conversion of undeveloped countryside into subdivisions, strip malls, and S.U.V.-clogged expressways. The Sierra Club’s Web site features a slide-show-like demonstration that illustrates how various sprawling suburban intersections could be transformed into far more appealing and energy-efficient developments by implementing a few modifications, among them widening the sidewalks and narrowing the streets, mixing residential and commercial uses, moving buildings closer together and closer to the edges of sidewalks (to make them more accessible to pedestrians and to increase local density), and adding public transportation-all fundamental elements of the widely touted anti-sprawl strategy known as Smart Growth.

In a recent telephone conversation with a Sierra Club representative involved in Challenge to Sprawl, I said that the organization’s anti-sprawl suggestions and the modified streetscapes in the slide show shared many significant features with Manhattan-whose most salient characteristics include wide sidewalks, narrow streets, mixed uses, densely packed buildings, and an extensive network of subways and buses. The representative hesitated, then said that I was essentially correct, although he would prefer that the program not be described in such terms, since emulating New York City would not be considered an appealing goal by most of the people whom the Sierra Club is trying to persuade.

An obvious way to reduce consumption of fossil fuels is to shift more people out of cars and into public transit. In many parts of the country, though, public transit has been stagnant or in decline for years. New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Department of Transportation account for nearly a third of all the transit passenger miles traveled in the United States and for nearly four times as many passenger miles as the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority combined.

New York City looks so little like other parts of America that urban planners and environmentalists tend to treat it as an exception rather than an example, and to act as though Manhattan occupied an idiosyncratic universe of its own. But the underlying principles apply everywhere. “The basic point,” Jeffrey Zupan, an economist with the Regional Planning Association, told me, “is that you need density to support public transit. In all cities, not just in New York, once you get above a certain density two things happen. First, you get less travel by mechanical means, which is another way of saying you get more people walking or biking; and, second, you get a decrease in the trips by auto and an increase in the trips by transit. That threshold tends to be around seven dwellings per acre. Once you cross that line, a bus company can put buses out there, because they know they’re going to have enough passengers to support a reasonable frequency of service.”

Phoenix is the sixth-largest city in the United States and one of the fastest growing among the top ten, yet its public transit system accounts for just one per cent of the passenger miles that New York City’s does. The reason is that Phoenix’s burgeoning population has spread so far across the desert-greater Phoenix, whose population is a little more than twice that of Manhattan, covers more than two hundred times as much land-that no transit system could conceivably serve it. And no amount of browbeating, public-service advertising, or federal spending can change that.

Cities, states, and the federal government often negate their own efforts to nurture public transit by simultaneously spending huge sums to make it easier for people to get around in cars. When a city’s automobile traffic becomes congested, the standard response has long been to provide additional capacity by building new roads or widening existing ones. This approach eventually makes the original problem worse, by generating what transportation planners call “induced traffic”: every mile of new highway lures passengers from public transit and other more efficient modes of travel, and makes it possible for residential and commercial development to spread even farther from urban centers. And adding public transit in the hope of reducing automobile congestion is as self-defeating as building new highways, because unclogging roads, if successful, just makes driving seem more attractive, and the roads fill up again. A better strategy would be to eliminate existing traffic lanes and parking spaces gradually, thereby forcing more drivers to use less environmentally damaging alternatives-in effect, “induced transit.”

One reason New Yorkers are the most dedicated transit users in America is that congestion on the city’s streets makes driving extraordinarily disagreeable. The average speed of crosstown traffic in Manhattan is little more than that of a brisk walker, and in midtown at certain times of the day the cars on the side streets move so slowly that they appear almost to be parked. Congestion like that urges drivers into the subways, and it makes life easier for pedestrians and bicycle riders by slowing cars to a point where they constitute less of a physical threat.

Even in New York City, the relationship between traffic and transit is not well understood. A number of the city’s most popular recent transportation-related projects and policy decisions may in the long run make the city a worse place to live in by luring passengers back into their cars and away from public transportation: the rebuilding and widening of the West Side Highway, the implementation of EZ-Pass on the city’s toll bridges, the decision not to impose tolls on the East River bridges, and the current renovation of the F.D.R. Drive (along with the federally funded $139 million Outboard Detour Roadway, which is intended to prevent users of the F.D.R. from being inconvenienced while the work is under way).

Public transit itself can be bad for the environment if it facilitates rather than discourages sprawl. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority is considering extensions to some of the most distant branches of its system, and those extensions, if built, will allow people to live even farther from the city’s center, creating new, non-dense suburbs where all other travel will be by automobile, much of it to malls and schools and gas stations that will be built to accommodate them. Transit is best for the environment when it helps to concentrate people in dense urban cores. Building the proposed Second Avenue subway line would be environmentally sound, because it would increase New Yorkers’ ability to live without cars; building a bullet train between Penn Station and the Catskills (for example) would not be sound, because it would enable the vast, fuel-squandering apparatus of suburbia to establish itself in a region that couldn’t support it otherwise.

On the afternoon of August 14, 2003, I was working in my office, on the third floor of my house, when the lights blinked, my window air-conditioner sputtered, and my computer’s backup battery kicked in briefly. This was the beginning of the great blackout of 2003, which halted electric service in parts of eight Northeastern and Midwestern states and in southeastern Canada. The immediate cause was eventually traced to Ohio, but public attention often focused on New York City, which had the largest concentration of affected power customers. Richard B. Miller, who resigned as the senior energy adviser for the city of New York six weeks before the blackout, reportedly over deep disagreements with the city’s energy policy, told me, “When I was with the city, I attended a conference on global warming where somebody said, ‘We really need to raise energy and electricity prices in New York City, so that people will consume less.’ And my response at that conference was ‘You know, if you’re talking about raising energy prices in New York City only, then you’re talking about something that’s really bad for the environment. If you make energy prices so expensive in the city that a business relocates from Manhattan to New Jersey, what you’re really talking about, in the simplest terms, is a business that’s moving from a subway stop to a parking lot. And which of those do you think is worse for the environment?’ ”

People who live in cities use only about half as much electricity as people who don’t, and people who live in New York City generally use less than the urban average. A truly enlightened energy policy would reward city dwellers and encourage others to follow their good example. Yet New York City residents pay more per kilowatt-hour than almost any other American electricity customers; taxes and other government charges, most of which are not enumerated on electricity bills, can constitute close to 20 percent of the cost of power for residential and commercial users in New York. Richard Miller, after leaving his job with New York City, went to work as a lawyer in Consolidated Edison’s regulatory affairs department, spurred by his thinking about the environment. He believes that state and local officials have historically taken unfair advantage of the fact that there is no political cost to attacking a big utility. Con Ed pays more than six hundred million dollars a year in property taxes, making it by far the city’s largest property-tax payer, and those charges inflate electric bills. Meanwhile, the cost of driving is kept artificially low. (Fifth Avenue and the West Side Highway don’t pay property taxes, for example.) “In addition,” Miller said, “the burden of improving the city’s air has fallen far more heavily on power plants, which contribute only a small percentage of New York City’s air pollution, than it has on cars-even though motor vehicles are a much bigger source.”

Last year, the National Building Museum, in Washington, D.C., held a show called “Big & Green: Toward Sustainable Architecture in the 21st Century.” A book of the same name was published in conjunction with the show, and on the book’s dust jacket was a photograph of 4 Times Square, also known as the Condé Nast Building, a 48-story glass-and-steel tower between Forty-second and Forty-third Streets, a few blocks west of Grand Central Terminal. (The New Yorker’s offices occupy two floors in the building.) When 4 Times Square was built, in 1999, it was considered a major breakthrough in urban development. As Daniel Kaplan, a principal of Fox & Fowle Architects, the firm that designed it, wrote in an article in Environmental Design & Construction in 1997, “When thinking of green architecture, one usually associates smaller scale,” and he cited as an example the headquarters of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonprofit environmental research and consulting firm based in Snowmass, Colorado. The R.M.I. building is a four-thousand-square-foot, super-insulated, passive solar structure with curving sixteen-inch-thick walls, set into a hillside about 15 miles north of Aspen. It was erected in the early eighties and serves partly as a showcase for green construction technology. (It is also the home of Amory Lovins, who is R.M.I.’s cofounder and chief executive officer.) R.M.I. contributed to the design of 4 Times Square, which has many innovative features, among them collection chutes for recyclable materials, photovoltaic panels incorporated into parts of its skin, and curtain-wall construction with exceptional shading and insulating properties.

These are all important innovations. In terms of the building’s true ecological impact, though, they are distinctly secondary. (The power generated by the photovoltaic panels supplies less than one per cent of the building’s requirements.) The two greenest features of 4 Times Square are ones that most people never even mention: it is big, and it is situated in Manhattan.

Environmentalists have tended to treat big buildings as intrinsically wasteful, because large amounts of energy are expended in their construction, and because the buildings place intensely localized stresses on sewers, power lines, and water systems. But density can create the same kinds of ecological benefits in individual structures that it does in entire communities. Tall buildings have much less exposed exterior surface per square foot of interior space than smaller buildings do, and that means they present relatively less of themselves to the elements, and their small roofs absorb less heat from the sun during cooling season and radiate less heat from inside during heating season.

(The beneficial effects are greater still in Manhattan, where one building often directly abuts another.) A study by Michael Phillips and Robert Gnaizda, published in CoEvolution Quarterly in 1980, found that an ordinary apartment in a typical building near downtown San Francisco used just a fifth as much heating fuel as a new tract house in Davis, a little more than seventy miles away. Occupants of tall buildings also do a significant part of their daily coming and going in elevators, which, because they are counterweighted and thus require less motor horsepower, are among the most energy efficient passenger vehicles in the world.

Bruce Fowle, a founder of Fox & Fowle, told me, “The Condé Nast Building contains 1.6 million square feet of floor space, and it sits on one acre of land. If you divided it into 48 one-story suburban office buildings, each averaging 33,000 square feet, and spread those one-story buildings around the countryside, and then added parking and some green space around each one, you’d end up consuming at least a 150 acres of land. And then you’d have to provide infrastructure, the highways and everything else.” Like many other buildings in Manhattan, 4 Times Square doesn’t even have a parking lot, because the vast majority of the six thousand people who work inside it don’t need one. In most other parts of the country, big parking lots are not only necessary but are required by law. If my town’s zoning regulations applied in Manhattan, 4 Times Square would have needed sixteen thousand parking spaces, one for every hundred square feet of office floor space. The Rocky Mountain Institute’s showcase headquarters has double-paned krypton-filled windows, which admit 75 per cent as much light as ordinary windows while allowing just 10 per cent as much heat to escape in cold weather. That’s a wonderful feature, and one of many in the building which people ought to copy. In other ways, though, the R.M.I. building sets a very poor environmental example. It was built in a fragile location, on virgin land more than seven thousand feet above sea level. With just four thousand square feet of interior space, it can hold only six of R.M.I.’s 18 full-time employees; the rest of them work in a larger building a mile away. Because the two buildings are in a thinly populated area, they force most employees to drive many miles-including trips between the two buildings-and they necessitate extra fuel consumption by delivery trucks, snowplows, and other vehicles. If R.M.I.’s employees worked on a single floor of a big building in Manhattan (or in downtown Denver) and lived in apartments nearby, many of them would be able to give up their cars, and the thousands of visitors who drive to Snowmass each year to learn about environmentally responsible construction could travel by public transit instead.

Picking on R.M.I.-which is one of the world’s most farsighted environmental organizations-may seem unfair, but R.M.I., along with many other farsighted environmental organizations, shares responsibility for perpetuating the powerful anti-city bias of American environmentalism. That bias is evident in the technical term that is widely used for sprawl: “urbanization.” Thinking of freeways and strip malls as “urban” phenomena obscures the ecologically monumental difference between Phoenix and Manhattan, and fortifies the perception that population density is an environmental ill. It also prevents most people from recognizing that R.M.I.’s famous headquarters-which sits on an isolated parcel more than a hundred and eighty miles from the nearest significant public transit system-is sprawl.

When I told a friend recently that I thought New York City should be considered the greenest community in America, she looked puzzled, then asked, “Is it because they’ve started recycling again?” Her question reflected a central failure of the American environmental movement: that too many of us have been made to believe that the most important thing we can do to save the earth and ourselves is to remember each week to set our cans and bottles and newspapers on the curb. Recycling is popular because it enables people to relieve their gathering anxieties about the future without altering the way they live. But most current recycling has, at best, a neutral effect on the environment, and much of it is demonstrably harmful. As William McDonough and Michael Braungart point out in “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things,” most of the materials we place on our curbs are merely “downcycled”-converted to a lower use, providing a pause in their inevitable journey to a landfill or an incinerator-often with a release of toxins and a net loss of fuel, among other undesirable effects.

By far the worst damage we Americans do to the planet arises not from the newspapers we throw away but from the eight hundred and fifty million or so gallons of oil we consume every day. We all know this at some level, yet we live like alcoholics in denial. How else can we explain that our cars have grown bigger, heavier, and less fuel efficient at the same time that scientists have become more certain and more specific about the consequences of our addiction to gasoline?

On a shelf in my office is a small pile of recent books about the environment which I plan to reread obsessively if I’m found to have a terminal illness, because they’re so unsettling that they may make me less upset about being snatched from life in my prime. At the top of the pile is “Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil,” by David Goodstein, a professor at the California Institute of Technology, which was published earlier this year. “The world will soon start to run out of conventionally produced, cheap oil,” Goodstein begins. In succeeding pages, he lucidly explains that humans have consumed almost a trillion barrels of oil (that’s forty-two trillion gallons), or about half of the earth’s total supply; that a devastating global petroleum crisis will begin not when we have pumped the last barrel out of the ground but when we have reached the halfway point, because at that moment, for the first time in history, the line representing supply will fall through the line representing demand; that we will probably pass that point within the current decade, if we haven’t passed it already; that various well-established laws of economics are about to assert themselves, with disastrous repercussions for almost everything; and that “civilization as we know it will come to an end sometime in this century unless we can find a way to live without fossil fuels.”

Standing between us and any conceivable solution to our energy nightmare are our cars and the asphalt-latticed country we have built to oblige them. Those cars have defined our culture and our lives. A car is speed and sex and power and emancipation. It makes its driver a self-sufficient nation of one. It is everything a city is not.

Most of the car’s most tantalizing charms are illusory, though. By helping us to live at greater distances from one another, driving has undermined the very benefits that it was meant to bestow. Ignacio San Martín, an architecture professor and the head of the graduate urban-design program at the University of Arizona, told me, “If you go out to the streets of Phoenix and are able to see anybody walking-which you likely won’t-they are going to tell you that they love living in Phoenix because they have a beautiful house and three cars. In reality, though, once the conversation goes a little bit further, they are going to say that they spend most of their time at home watching TV, because there is absolutely nothing to do.” One of the main attractions of moving to the suburbs is acquiring ground of your own, yet you can travel for miles through suburbia and see no one doing anything in a yard other than working on the yard itself (often with the help of a riding lawnmower, one of the few four-wheeled passenger vehicles that get worse gas mileage than a Hummer). The modern suburban yard is perfectly, perversely self-justifying: its purpose is to be taken care of.

In 1801, in his first Inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson said that the American wilderness would provide growing room for democracy-sustaining agrarian patriots “to the thousandth and thousandth generation.” Jefferson didn’t foresee the interstate highway system, and his arithmetic was off, in any case, but he nevertheless anticipated (and, in many ways, embodied) the ethos of suburbia, of anti-urbanism, of sprawl. The standard object of the modern American dream, the single-family home surrounded by grass, is a mini-Monticello. It was the car that put it within our reach. But what a terrible price we have paid-and have yet to pay-for our liberation from the city.