Vox Civitatis the New Colonist weblog
Tuesday, February 9th
Trapped by Snow
Snow has left a half dozen cities in the Mid-Atlantic and East Coast paralyzed. Watching video clips on CNN.com and elsewhere, we're shown families in large suburban homes trapped for several days without access to the world beyond their driveway. Without a car, the basic necessities of food, medical care, etc. of life are out of reach. My sister lives at the end of a cul-de-sac outside of Pittsburgh. It took more than a day for a plow to come through, but even when it did, there's no where for the snow to go at the end, except in a big pile that blocks someone's driveway. In Pittsburgh the same problem of no where to put the snow exists, but at least in many neighborhoods one can set out on foot.
Faced with relocating to suburban Texas, I found most of the suburbs have the same lack of access to basic necessities without a car. Several feet of snow in Dallas is not a likelihood, but snow isn't the only thing that can limit mobility. The price of fuel will likely continue to rise, and even without natural disaster, access to food, entertainment, medical care, etc. will become more limited by the cost of travel.
Today new communities are being built to be more walkable, but in most cases the commercial components are still not there. In many cases that's because the density is still too low to support pedestrian-oriented retail. It's important to begin to change this and to adapt existing communities to have access to amenities within a short stroll through rain, sleet or snow.
Eric Miller on 02.09.10 @ 04:07 AM PST [link]
Thursday, February 4th
Abandoned streets: an Urban Salvation?
Allison Arieff, writing in the New York Times, explores a new methodology, developed by Nicholas de Monchaux as "Local Code," for using GIS (geographic information systems) to discover, catalogue, and re-visualize abandoned streets and lots in our cities and reclaim them for environmental and social mitigation of ills caused, very often, by excessive paving and unintelligent development in the first place. Says Arieff:Indeed, this article elaborates on a new way of exploring urban structures that could make the redevelopment of our cities into living territories that nurture, rather than degrade, both the people who inhabit them and the earth they stand upon."Our beds are empty two-thirds of the time.That quote is 40 years old, but I continue to be amazed by the extent to which we haven't begun to address the problem Fuller highlighted. There's a staggering glut of empty space around the country right now, unused space that's not doing anyone much good.
Our living rooms are empty seven-eighths of the time.
Our office buildings are empty one-half of the time.
It's time we gave this some thought."
--R. Buckminster Fuller
[...]
The era of massive, expensive, centralized projects like the Big Dig in Boston has passed. "Now, with the ability to model dynamic systems, we can show a much more decentralized collection of resources could provide greater benefit. If, in the 19th century, it was a biological metaphor that fueled the creation of Central and Golden Gate parks, the idea that a city needs hearts and lungs to grow, there’s now a networked metaphor. The city is a dense network of relationships. The best way to provide infrastructure is to not go in with a meat ax but to practice urban acupuncture, finding thousands of different spots to go into."
Read the entire article at the New York Times: Space: It's Still a Frontier.
Richard Risemberg on 02.04.10 @ 09:51 AM PST [link]
Thursday, January 28th
Cycling & Walking Report Released
The Alliance for Biking & Walking has released a comprehensive report summarizing the state of bicycling and walking in the US, with some familiar conclusions and some that might be surprising:In these times of high gas prices, a warming climate, increasing traffic congestion, and expanding waistlines, increasing bicycling and walking are goals that are clearly in the public interest. As this report shows, where bicycling and walking levels are higher, obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes levels are lower. Higher levels of bicycling and walking also coincide with increased bicycle and pedestrian safety and higher levels of physical activity. Increasing bicycling and walking can help solve many of the largest problems facing our nation. As this report indicates, many states and cities are making progress toward promoting safe access for bicyclists and pedestrians, but much more remains to be done.The report also points out that bicycling and walking, the most responsible as well as most efficient forms of urban transit, receive federal money at levels far below even their present low levels of mode share, which may be a good reason why the cycling-walking mode share has not increased as rapidly as the lavishly-subsidized auto portion.
Read a summary of the report, with links to the full version at the Alliance for Biking and Walking website
Richard Risemberg on 01.28.10 @ 06:15 AM PST [link]
Sunday, January 24th
UP's Famous "Monster Train"
Here is a video shot by Joe Perry of California, showing the Union Pacific "monster train" that raised a ruckus when it ran through the southern part of the state recently. It's 3½ miles (about 5½ kms) long, and uses nine locomotives spaced along the length of the train. This is about a mile (1.6kms) longer than the more usual very long trains.it took a little over four minutes to pass the camera stand, and there were the inevitable complaints about motorists having to wait so very long at intersections, but all I could think of was that every one of those double stacks of shipping containers was one and possibly two trucks off the roads, a good thing for traffic anywhere along its route!
Not to mention that trains use one-third to one-quarter the fuel per ton-mile that trucks do, and far, far less space...people should just shut up until they've thought about something a little bit before complaining.
Oh, yeah, and the railroads build their own "highways" and pay property tax on them; trucking requires (and destroys as it uses it) roads built at the public's expense.
Richard Risemberg on 01.24.10 @ 05:22 AM PST [link]
Wednesday, January 20th
Disaster and Development
A few musings brought on by the aftermath of the terrible earthquake in Haiti....As David Brooks pointed out in a recent New York Times column, an earthquake of similar force struck San Francisco in 1989, yet only 63 persons were killed, and infrastructure damage was much less.
In this era of knee-jerk distrust of government services and regulation, it pays to think about some of the reasons for this difference.
- In Haiti, building codes and regulations are nonexistent or widely ignored. This laissez-faire attitude towards construction means that only the bottom line counts--and that counts for nothing when the real bottom line becomes significant. Even the houses of the rich, even government buildings themselves, collapsed.
- Water, sanitation, and most security are provided through informal networks of private entities, uncoordinated, uncaring, and uncontrolled. At the first hint of trouble this all fell away.
- The poor are left to themselves, and the social structure ensures that there are plenty of poor to ignore. Now they are dying, because there are no networks of what I might call "structured neighborliness" to help them out.
- Transport is haphazard, and is utterly dependent on the automobile. If roads are blocked, nothing can get through. In San Francisco in '89, lanes collapsed on the Oakland Bay Bridge, but BART was running four hours after the first temblor.
The same goes for the lending and aid conditions imposed over the past two decades, which forced Haitian governments to privatise, hold down the minimum wage and cut back the already minimal health, education and public infrastructure. The impact can be seen in the helplessness of the Haitian state to provide the most basic relief to its own people. Even now, new IMF loans require Haiti to raise electricity prices and freeze public sector pay in a country where most people live on less than two dollars a day.This of course compares two extremes, a totally chaotic system in Haiti with a rigidly centralized one in Cuba; but both are poor and practically within sight of each other, both are subject to repeated natural disasters. Leaving everything to the privateers in Haiti seems not to have done most Haitians much good.
What this saga translates into in real life can be seen in the stark contrast between Haiti, which has taken its market medicine, with nearby Cuba, which hasn't, but suffers from a 50-year US economic blockade. While Haiti's infant mortality rate is around 80 per 1,000, Cuba's is 5.8; while nearly half Haitian adults are illiterate, the figure in Cuba is around 3%. And while 800 Haitians died in the hurricanes that devastated both islands last year, Cuba lost four people.
Of course, you could go a lot farther than even California cities have in preparing for earthquakes and other disasters without having to set up a dictatorship. For example, imagine that, instead of trucks blockaded by rubble so that driving a mile takes three hours and then you're stuck, Port au Prince routinely employed cargo bikes for delivery functions, as is common in Northern Europe: all of a sudden, there's no need to wait for fuel, or for electricity to pump the fuel, or for heavy equipment to move rubble out of the streets so that trucks can pass. Supplies can move through any gap large enough for a single person to step through, but in quantities of 200 to 400 pounds, much more than a single person can carry.
Neither free-market madness nor the iron hand of an overblown paternalism are the answer, but a coherent balance of government and enterprise each providing what it is very good at, and which the other handles clumsily.
And some imaginative thinking, in short supply in the US and the countries within its sphere of influence these days, but more necessary than ever as the world strives for physical, social, and financial balance in the years to come.
Richard Risemberg on 01.20.10 @ 11:50 AM PST [link]
Thursday, January 14th
Fifty Years of Stupid Parking Tricks....
Saw a posting by my friend and colleague Josef Bray-Ali on parking, cycling, and driving in LA, and he has graciously let us post it here on The New Colonist....The City of LA already allows properties with over 10,000 active square feet of Commercial or Manufacturing uses to substitute 2% of their required car parking with bike parking (and has published an okay set of standards for bike parking facilities too). This is from Los Angeles Municipal Code Section 12.21 A.4(c) and 12.21 A.16.Specifically, the Los Angeles Municipal Code (and most of the US uses similar language) states that "there shall be at least one automobile parking space for each 500 square feet of combined floor area contained within all the office, business, commercial, research and development buildings, and manufacturing or industrial buildings on any lot."
If you're building a shopping center, 98% of your required parking will have to be for cars only--which is a lot of land (and money) to dedicate to free car parking.
When I worked for a developer, the costs of providing enough legally mandated car parking were enormous, and killed a great many infill projects we wanted to do within the urban core. I'm not talking about 8 story condo projects either. Two and three story conversions of a building into ground floor commercial with upstairs residential (just what most community and specific plans call for) were impossible to build due to stringent requirements to provide lots of car parking for both uses.
So, bicycle access issues aside, mandated car parking is keeping prices high at your local market and keeping quality development (and affordable units) out of the inner city. There is a reason most developments are so big--the only people who can pony up the cash and the connections to build are the big boys. Small, community-based developers are shut out due to the high capital costs of providing car parking for any new development.
We need to amend the municipal code to alllow a smaller square foot requirement (say, 500 square feet of active use) and to any and all zones (C, M, A, O, R, and others) to take part in this bike swap. We also need to allow the car parking to be reduced by a larger percentage--say, 70% or 90%, or why not 100%?
A 500 square foot area is just 20 x 25 feet...no wonder so much valuable land is wasted on parking! And this "free" parking also induces driving that might not otherwise have occurred. Half a century of specious lobbying and halfwitted planning have resulted in building a culture in which people are pretty much forced to drive, for lack of any feasible alternative.
Seems to me that what was "good for GM" didn't turn out to be too good for America after all....
As Walter Lippmann noted way back in 1939, "G.M. has spent a small fortune to convince the American public that if it wishes to enjoy the full benefit of private enterprise in motor manufacturing, it will have to rebuild its cities and highways by public enterprise." Nearly fifty years later, UCLA's Donald Shoup wrote, in The High Cost of Free Parking, that "parking requirements cause great harm: they subsidize cars, distort transportation choices, warp urban form, increase housing costs, burden low-income households, debase urban design, damage the economy, and degrade the environment."
Bray-Ali, for his part, has put his money where his mouth is, and opened a shop in Los Angeles that sells only commuting and cargo bikes...and people are flocking to it.
Time to take back America's streets...and garages!
Richard Risemberg on 01.14.10 @ 06:21 PM PST [link]
Sunday, January 10th
The Immigrant Advantage
It's always puzzling to me--myself an immigrant--that in this country of immigrants there are such regular outcries against the "evils" that immigrants bring with them. Often these outcries come from persons whose own grandparents were immigrants. It always makes me think of a fellow I used to work with, one of whose ancestors had landed from the Mayflower, and another of whose ancestors had met the boat.... The Jews, the Poles, the Irish, The Italians, and dozens of other groups have been denigrated by those who arrived in some cases not all that long before them, and have all contributed mightily to our culture and our economy. Now it's Latinos, Indians, Africans, and sometimes Asians who are decried as a menace...but are they really?Richard T. Herman thinks not. As he says, in a new article in these pages:
Ask people on the street what they think of when they hear the word "immigrant"--particularly with 10% unemployment in the country--and you will hear statements like: "They take our jobs," "They bring crime," "They steal our health care," "They don't learn English."Herman goes on to recount the great benefits that both historical and present immigrants have brought and will continue to bring to our country and our culture.
Americans hear the word "immigrant" and imagine the worst. They think of illegal immigrants, competition for jobs and the stamping out of American culture.
They don't think of the tendency of immigrants--especially today's immigrants--to create jobs, to revitalize communities, and to adopt and strengthen American culture, because no one is reminding them of this.
To hear it in his own words, read The Immigrant Advantage
Richard Risemberg on 01.10.10 @ 06:15 AM PST [link]
Wednesday, December 30th
Leave the Leaves
Leaves are one of nature's most miraculous creations. They tie it all together. They rise from the ground, reach to the sky, and bring life to the Earth. Leaves beauty and delight, thus meriting our praise for their abundant gifts. Children and animals love frolicing in fresh piles of leaves.Yet by the late 20th century human ingenuity, irritated by fallen leaves, created an industrial machine--the highly-polluting, gas-operated leaf blower--that disrupts leaves' natural cycle--and night-workers' sleeping cycle.
MORE
Eric Miller on 12.30.09 @ 02:48 AM PST [link]
Tuesday, December 22nd
It's Already There--Just Take It!
Here's a key quote from a wonderful article by Kris de Kecker in Low Tech Magazine:Creative minds have designed elevated bicycle roads inspired by the long gone CycleWay (but not nearly as sturdy if you ask me). Even more creative minds have designed elevated covered bicycle highways that protect bikers from rain, wind and pigeon poop. Some of these tunnels even have the potential to generate artificial tailwinds that would make you go twice as fast. They will be heated in winter and cooled in summer.While the entire article (rather ironically!) sprawls a bit, it's well worth reading, especially the latter half; see it at Cars: Out of the Way.
While all these ideas are substantially better than many other inventions that are being designed these days (carbon capture technology, algal fuel and nanotech batteries spring to mind) this is not the way to go.
The problem is not that there is a lack of good roads - enough of these exist to bike from here to Mars and beyond. The main problem is that these are occupied by automobiles that are not only dangerous but also very inefficient both in terms of energy use and floor space.
We don't need any new infrastructure, what we need is to clear the existing infrastructure of inefficient vehicles and replace them with efficient ones. In other words: give all streets, highways, cloverleaves and motorways exclusively to bicycles and all other human powered wheeled vehicles. Get rid of cars. Why make things so complicated if the solution is so simple?
Yes, I do want the motorway. It takes me more than an hour to pedal from my town to the city, because half of the time I am waiting in front of a traffic light watching cars passing me by.
Richard Risemberg on 12.22.09 @ 06:30 AM PST [link]
Wednesday, December 16th
Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transit
This is timely. It's been an ongoing email debate. Libertarians and conservatives seem to consistently "rail" against trains and trolleys, while supporting, or at least ignoring auto and highway subsidies. Watch this slide presentation. Click to watch webinar
Eric Miller on 12.16.09 @ 05:35 PM PST [link]
A Festival of Flood Lights?
This year the Menorah in Grand Army Plaza is far taller than the Christmas tree. It's shouldn't be a size issue--last year the tree towered above. What's bothersome may be the generator that runs for hours to shine floodlights on candles, creating significant noise and burning lots of fuel. Time for someone to light a symbolic candle of conservation.Eric Miller on 12.16.09 @ 03:51 AM PST [link]
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