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The largest urban region in the US, New York, is famously urban. Recently, we talked about how it has the highest share of zero-vehicle households and really stands on its own when it comes to US cities. But what about the country’s second-largest urban region — Los Angeles?
It probably won’t surprise you that around 88% of households in this city own a car. Transit and other forms of non-car mobility remain deeply entrenched secondary options for most. But what you may not be aware of are all the initiatives that LA is undertaking to transform itself into more of a transit-first region.
The city opened its first metro line in 1993. Today, it has a system that spans over 109 miles (~175 kilometers) across six lines with 107 stations. It also has wildly successful bus rapid transit (BRT) lines, with ridership levels that are 3x initial projections. The 18-mile Orange Line is viewed as one of, if not the, most successful bus lines in the US.
In parallel, the city is doing what it needs to do on the land-use side by easing density restrictions and working to intensify around its transit stations. It also has a little extra motivation: Los Angeles has vowed to make the 2028 Summer Olympic Games a “transit-first” event. And with 15+ million visitors expected, there's going to be no other way to do it.
Los Angeles has long been known as a car-first city, but don’t be surprised if that changes this century.
For more on this topic, here’s a recent article by Joseph Shortell, a Senior Analyst at Philadelphia-based Econsult Solutions.
Cover photo by Studio Trista on Unsplash
I tweeted this yesterday (please forgive the grammar mistake).
What it shows is a bunch of narrow urban properties ranging, for the most part, from 5 to 7 storeys. Some of them are old buildings, and some are new. Regardless, the point I wanted to make was that this is a scale and rhythm of building that does wonders for cities. They’re dense, they have a compact footprint, and they promote urban vibrancy.
And yet, it's a building type that is far too difficult to develop in many cities. It is not always the case, but oftentimes the only way to underwrite these kinds of projects is to make them ultra high-end. That's a shame. So let’s talk about this a little more, starting with what makes this urban pattern so appealing.
One key thing that narrow lots and narrow retail frontages do is increase the number of destinations within walking distance. This promotes visual interest by always showing you something new.
At the same time, there are numerous economic benefits to this urban pattern. Smaller shops lower the barrier to entry for small businesses and allow greater adaptability. Change is able to happen faster, and if one or two businesses happen to turnover on a street, it’s not the end of the world.
One way I like to think of this is in terms of shops per step.
For example, let's assume that the average walking speed is 4 km/hour and that, as a starting point, fine-grained urbanism translates into storefronts that are around 6 m wide. This would mean the average person walking on a street would see a new shop (or retail frontage) about every 9 steps.
If we instead assume a retail frontage of something like 30 m (which is five times our original 6 m), then the average person would need approximately 43 steps for every shop. This is a meaningful difference that fundamentally changes the character of a street. If you’ve ever walked on a great main street, you know this, even if you’ve never explicitly acknowledged it.
But this is only the ground floor. The other benefit of these simple, straight-up infills is that they also bring homes and offices to the same compact footprint. Density is good. It is a prerequisite for urban vibrancy. And it can be achieved simply. Strip away the facade ornament from the building examples in my tweet, and these are extruded boxes with no stepbacks to speak of.
Waymo has just been granted approval to test its autonomous vehicles in New York City. The permit allows up to eight of the company's Jaguar SUVs to circulate in Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn. And according to the company, the plan is to start "immediately." This first approval only runs until the end of September, after which it will need to be extended — but I'm guessing that shouldn't be too difficult to obtain.
What's noteworthy about this announcement is that (1) New York City is a big and complex place and (2) it's the first city for Waymo that receives snow. The company currently operates in San Francisco, Austin, Phoenix, and Los Angeles.
That said, the company has been doing cold weather testing since, I think, 2012. And in 2016, they opened a 53,000-square-foot self-driving center in Michigan for this purpose. They've also run tests in Truckee, California, Upstate New York, and the Detroit area. So presumably its sensors are ready to melt snow and ice. But it's looking like the true test will be on the streets of New York.
Next should be Toronto.
This used to be how many (or most) cities built fabric buildings at scale, but for many reasons, we forgot how. One of the reasons is that we’ve generally made building things more onerous, and that means developers need bigger and bigger projects to justify the costs.
But it's clear our desire to experience human-scaled environments hasn’t changed. So I reckon it’s about time to bring back the skinny extruded boxes.
Cover photo by Praewthida K on Unsplash
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