Seven principles for better cities
As we approach big decisions about urban character and housing, and how to move in the city and things to get to, here are some guiding stars
This TED talk with Peter Calthorpe is a great watch.
It talks about how the best cities to live in foster community through their design – by creating spaces for people to shop close to home, and to interact with their neighbours.
Less moving about: less driving, less CO2 emitted, less time eaten up.
More incidental human exchange: more bumping into, more short interactions, more glimpses 50 metres away – of the same few hundred faces over a regular week, along with all those genuine strangers we otherwise see.
People want this kind of city and – even where the environment is inhospitable to it – will try in tiny ways to create it for themselves.
One thing that struck me was that you can hear how excited people get in the audience when he mentions car-free roads (or roads where no more than 30% of the streets belongs to cars). It makes you think: if only 30% of people in a city have cars why give 100% of our public streets to them?
The principles are…
- PRESERVE – the natural environment, rich history, and critical agriculture (those highly productive soils)
- MIX – different economic classes and income levels, ethnic and life-stage diversity, have lots of mixed-use blocks
- WALKING – neighbourhoods privilege walking and are human-scale by design
- BIKING – prioritise bikeways and motor-vehicle-free streets
- CONNECT – create cities with many options for routes to your destination by walking and biking rather than one, and create many kinds of streets
- RIDE – develop high-quality public transport. Autonomous cars are not the answer, in fact they’ll only make congestion worse
- FOCUS – match density and the mix of uses to transit capacity
Other interesting things: at about six minutes there’s a great visual transformation of a stroad (look familiar?) by retrofitting it to serve the city. Also, what is “high density sprawl” – as in this post’s banner picture? Isn’t that a contradiction?
Anyway I’d recommend watching it and finding out.
Further reading:
- Smart Growth principles – remarkably similar. Not a coincidence!
- How to retrofit sprawly, monocultural suburbs: Build A Better Burb
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