Tram by Federico Venuda on 500px
My friend Alex Bozikovic of the Globe and Mail recently wrote a great article called: Expert advice on building the city of the 21st century. It’s a nice tie-in to a post I wrote a few weeks ago talking about the need for an urban agenda.
For Alex’s article, the Globe asked “prominent urbanists, architects, and scholars” from around the world to comment on what Canadian mayors should be focused on right now as we build the cities of tomorrow.
Here’s a list of what they said:
Make people, not cars, happy
Decrease speed limits
Empower city governments
Leverage density
Embrace the science of big data
Mix residences and workspace
Turn streets into destinations
Redevelop the inner suburbs
It’s a great set of recommendations. So I would encourage you to check out the full Globe and Mail article.
Early this morning, before the sun even came up here in Toronto, I had a video conference call with a sharp and talented entrepreneur in Luxembourg. His name is Fräntz Miccoli and he’s working on an interesting startup called KonnectR.
The idea is to create a platform to connect with new people at any point in time and wherever you might happen to be. It may sound like a “hook-up” app, but that’s not the intent. He came about the idea while traveling and looking for other smart and engaging people to hang out with.
When we started the video conference call this morning, I showed him my window so that he could see the sun just starting to rise. He then showed me his coworking space, which made it seem like he is working out of an old industrial steel mill. Turns out, he is.
The area of Luxembourg he’s working out of is called Belval, which is a neighborhood in the west end of the country’s second largest city, Esch-sur-Alzette. The neighborhood used to consist of the largest steelworks in the country. But with the decline of steel production in Luxembourg, the area fell into decline. Today, it’s being reborn as a 21st century mixed-use community.
The developer behind the project is called Agora. And the site – equal to about 120 soccer fields – will house everything from residences and offices to shopping and cultural institutions. The University of Luxembourg has also centralized their campus in the new neighborhood. Having institutions “anchor” a community is becoming quite common for urban renewal programs. Here in Toronto, we did a similar thing with George Brown College along the waterfront.
To give you a better sense of the transformation taking place in Belval, here’s a streetview photo from 2009:
Here’s another one from the same intersection in 2013 (notice the same tower in the background):
And here’s an aerial view from 2010:
I’m always fascinated by urban renewal projects of this scale because it so clearly speaks to the evolutionary nature of cities. Industries die. Businesses disappear. And new uses need to be found. In this case, the area has gone from steel production to tech startups. That’s not surprising.
But at the same time, I think it’s important that we don’t completely erase the past. Here, I think it’s great that they’re preserving some of the blast furnaces and other industrial structures. It gives the area character and a sense of place – which is oftentimes hard to manufacture and always better when it’s authentic.
Recently in the comment section of ATC, Lloyd Alter of Treehugger shared a great article talking about the 8 principles of Transit Oriented Development (TOD). “TOD” is one of those buzzwords (or buzz acronyms?) that gets thrown around a lot in city building and real estate circles. But I suspect that most people don’t exactly know what it takes to design and build successful TOD projects and neighborhoods.
Which is why the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy came up with these 8 standards:
WALK: Develop neighborhoods that promote walking
CYCLE: Prioritize non-motorized transport networks
CONNECT: Create dense networks of streets and paths
TRANSIT: Locate development near high-quality public transport
MIX: Plan for mixed use
DENSIFY: Optimize density and transit capacity
COMPACT: Create regions with short commutes
SHIFT: Increase mobility by regulating parking and road use
What should be apparent from this list is that the standards are quite clearly stacked against cars. Number 2 is about prioritizing non-motorized transport networks. And number 8 is about regulating parking use and road use. It’s about making a decision who you are planning for and acknowledging that when you do all of the above, you largely eliminate the need for driving.
If you’re a “war on the car” kind of person, this might offend you. But if you look at the data I shared about a week ago (forgive me, I know the chart is a pain to read), you’ll see that it’s seemingly pretty difficult to design a city that’s equally great for both cars and for people. The cities where people love to walk, cycle, and take transit are precisely the ones where few people drive.
Image: Flickr