As many of you know, I am an advocate for high-speed rail in Canada. Specifically along the Windsor-Quebec City corridor, which is the most densely populated part of the country. And so I found this comparison interesting:
"If there is one project that would create thousands of jobs, improve business productivity, clean up the air, reduce the output of greenhouse gases and cut the demand for endless highway construction, it would be high-speed electric rail between Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, where population densities are high enough to make the project sensible. Cost estimates are all over the map. The University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy put the price tag at about $12-billion, which is $2-billion less than the bucks being thrown at the Volkswagen battery plant alone. But forget it – the Canadian government wants more cars, not fewer. Canadian cities will remain car sewers forever."
As many of you know, I am an advocate for high-speed rail in Canada. Specifically along the Windsor-Quebec City corridor, which is the most densely populated part of the country. And so I found this comparison interesting:
"If there is one project that would create thousands of jobs, improve business productivity, clean up the air, reduce the output of greenhouse gases and cut the demand for endless highway construction, it would be high-speed electric rail between Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, where population densities are high enough to make the project sensible. Cost estimates are all over the map. The University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy put the price tag at about $12-billion, which is $2-billion less than the bucks being thrown at the Volkswagen battery plant alone. But forget it – the Canadian government wants more cars, not fewer. Canadian cities will remain car sewers forever."
The above excerpt is from this opinion piece talking about EVs and the public subsidies being paid to encourage battery production within Canada. I get that we want to be part of this important mobility shift. But we are way behind when it comes to high-speed rail.
And by behind, I mean that we don't have it at all in this country.
Last month, Waymo (Alphabet) and Uber announced a new multi-year partnership that will bring Waymo's autonomous vehicles to Uber in the Phoenix area later this year. Already, Waymo operates across 180 square miles of the city, making it the largest fully autonomous service area in the world. But now, or I guess later this year, people will be able to order a Waymo AV through the Uber app.
Not a lot of people seem to care about autonomous vehicles anymore. For a while, every conference had people talking about how they were going to reshape our cities. But then the technology didn't arrive quite as quickly as people were hoping, and so everyone lost interest and move on to other more exciting things. But clearly things are still happening. And this announcement strikes me as being an important one.
The above excerpt is from this opinion piece talking about EVs and the public subsidies being paid to encourage battery production within Canada. I get that we want to be part of this important mobility shift. But we are way behind when it comes to high-speed rail.
And by behind, I mean that we don't have it at all in this country.
Last month, Waymo (Alphabet) and Uber announced a new multi-year partnership that will bring Waymo's autonomous vehicles to Uber in the Phoenix area later this year. Already, Waymo operates across 180 square miles of the city, making it the largest fully autonomous service area in the world. But now, or I guess later this year, people will be able to order a Waymo AV through the Uber app.
Not a lot of people seem to care about autonomous vehicles anymore. For a while, every conference had people talking about how they were going to reshape our cities. But then the technology didn't arrive quite as quickly as people were hoping, and so everyone lost interest and move on to other more exciting things. But clearly things are still happening. And this announcement strikes me as being an important one.
Not surprisingly, the responses were divided. Some responded saying that beauty is more important than density, and a lot of people were quick to point out that there's good density and there's bad density. And because I can appreciate both of these comments, it made me think that I should probably elaborate on my glib tweet.
The points I was trying to vaguely imply are the following.
More often than not (at least for North American cities), I think our problem is not too much density, it's too little. This translates into cities that aren't walkable, aren't conducive to transit, and that are overall less sustainable. Right now, every mayoral candidate in Toronto is promising to fix our crippling traffic congestion. I don't know how they're going to do it, but they're promising it because they know it's something people are pissed off about.
But here's my take: counterintuitively, the problem is not enough density. The problem is that too many people in our region have no reasonable way to get around without a car. So they're forced to drive. The way you fix this not as simple as more traffic enforcement or better signal timing. Good luck! You fix it through density, because density is what makes other forms of mobility suddenly possible.
All of this is not to say that density alone will render you a great city. Obviously things like beauty also matter a great deal. But in my opinion, density is a fundamental component. Because what good is beauty if you don't have any urban vibrancy? The answer is that you probably don't have a real city.
The other point I was trying to make is that space and density are both relative and oftentimes difficult to understand. We think building height and density are correlated, but that's not always the case. Look at Paris or Barcelona. We also like to make a lot of spatial rules that we think are right and make our cities better: streets should be at least this wide, buildings should be no taller than the width of the street, and so on.
But here (pictured above) is a street that narrows to around 6 meters and has buildings that are probably 2.5-3x the width of the right-of-way. Sure, it also happens to be beautiful, historic, and Italian. But what would happen if you maintained this same beauty and made the street 5x as wide and lined up parking in front of the stores?
Somehow it wouldn't be as enjoyable as what you see here.
Not surprisingly, the responses were divided. Some responded saying that beauty is more important than density, and a lot of people were quick to point out that there's good density and there's bad density. And because I can appreciate both of these comments, it made me think that I should probably elaborate on my glib tweet.
The points I was trying to vaguely imply are the following.
More often than not (at least for North American cities), I think our problem is not too much density, it's too little. This translates into cities that aren't walkable, aren't conducive to transit, and that are overall less sustainable. Right now, every mayoral candidate in Toronto is promising to fix our crippling traffic congestion. I don't know how they're going to do it, but they're promising it because they know it's something people are pissed off about.
But here's my take: counterintuitively, the problem is not enough density. The problem is that too many people in our region have no reasonable way to get around without a car. So they're forced to drive. The way you fix this not as simple as more traffic enforcement or better signal timing. Good luck! You fix it through density, because density is what makes other forms of mobility suddenly possible.
All of this is not to say that density alone will render you a great city. Obviously things like beauty also matter a great deal. But in my opinion, density is a fundamental component. Because what good is beauty if you don't have any urban vibrancy? The answer is that you probably don't have a real city.
The other point I was trying to make is that space and density are both relative and oftentimes difficult to understand. We think building height and density are correlated, but that's not always the case. Look at Paris or Barcelona. We also like to make a lot of spatial rules that we think are right and make our cities better: streets should be at least this wide, buildings should be no taller than the width of the street, and so on.
But here (pictured above) is a street that narrows to around 6 meters and has buildings that are probably 2.5-3x the width of the right-of-way. Sure, it also happens to be beautiful, historic, and Italian. But what would happen if you maintained this same beauty and made the street 5x as wide and lined up parking in front of the stores?
Somehow it wouldn't be as enjoyable as what you see here.
