We are all selfish bastards when it comes to sharing road space and public space.
When we drive, we complain about pedestrians jumping out in front of us, crazy cyclists who get in our way, and under-utilized bike lanes that are taking away valuable driving space and creating traffic jams.
When we take surface transit (such as buses and streetcars), we want all the cars out of the way so that we can move more efficiently. And we complain about drivers who don’t stop to let us off and on when the streetcar doors open. (Toronto specific reference.)
When we cycle, we complain about cars parked in the bike lanes, people who don’t look before changing lanes or opening their car doors, and drivers who honk at you because they just want you off the road and onto the sidewalk.
And when we walk, we complain about cyclists who ride on the sidewalk (they should be on the road!), cars that don’t stop to let us go, and slow walking groups who linearly block the entire sidewalk so you can’t pass.
We are never happy. And we automatically assume that we could do it better. (I know I’m guilty of this.)
But here are a few things to consider the next time you’re flipping the bird to someone on the streets. Here are a few things that we do know about urban mobility.
There is an unprecedented number of condominiums in the development pipeline right now in Toronto. For argument’s sake, let’s assume 75,000 condominium suites – many of which will be built in central areas of the city.
At a parking ratio of 0.6 stalls per unit, which isn’t an unreasonable assumption today, that’s 45,000 new parking spots and potentially 45,000 new cars in the city.
If you think that 45,000 new cars will be able to get fully absorbed into the core and somehow move around in an unfettered way, then I believe you are mistaken.
If you think that there’s something that can be done to magically expand road capacity to handle all of these additional cars in the city, then I believe you are mistaken.
And if you think that adding a bike lane is the only reason you are currently stuck in traffic, then I believe you are missing the bigger picture.
Over a decade ago, we made a decision in this region to encourage building up, instead of building out. And along with that decision came a necessary rethink of how we get around. That transition is what we are living through right now.
The other thing we know is that the 4 modes of mobility that I started this post with are ordered from least sustainable to most sustainable.
Electric self-driving vehicles will reduce the impacts of driving, but it will also transform it into something that feels more like transit and less like the driving we know today. That will be a very good thing.
But I’m not yet convinced that it will solve all of our problems. To do that I think we will need to adopt a much more balanced and unselfish view of what it takes to move around a city. That, of course, isn’t always easy.
There has been and continues to be many divided cities around the world.
Berlin had the Berlin Wall.
Northern Ireland (mostly Belfast) has its Peace Walls that still separate Protestant loyalists and Catholic republicans from each other.
Beirut had the Green Line, which separated the predominately Muslim side in the west from the predominantly Christian side in the east during the Lebanese Civil War. And I understand this is still the case today.
Detroit has 8 Mile Road, which is a psychological barrier rather than a physical one, but one that still sharply separates whites (blue dots, below) and blacks (green dots, below). The image below is from Wired Magazine.
And even here in Toronto you could say that we’ve become a divided city, albeit without the civil wars or race riots that have plagued the other cities listed above. Our voting patterns suggest a real urban-suburban divide and the many ethnic groups in this city continue to concentrate themselves in specific areas.
I’ve been thinking about this phenomenon in the context of a recent article I read talking about closed vs. open social networks. The article was talking about career success, but I think the lessons are also transferrable to cities.
The argument made in the article is that people who are able to position themselves in open networks – that is, become the connector between diverse kinds of social groups – are more likely to succeed than people who position themselves in closed networks where they are only surrounded by people they already know and by people who are similar to themselves.
And the reason for this is because people in open networks end up getting exposed to a broader set of viewpoints and ideas. They get a more accurate view of the world and they are able to problem solve better than those who may be coming at it from a more myopic or singular perspective.
But the challenge with open networks, is that there seems to be an innate human tendency towards closed networks. We love what is familiar. We love what is comfortable to us. In other words, we are attracted to people that are similar to ourselves. This is known as homophily.
So it’s not surprising that we tend to cluster ourselves in cities. Yes, there are economic benefits to doing so (known as agglomeration economies), but there’s also a certain feeling of solidarity that comes from being around other people with the same view of the world. There’s no tension because everyone has the same beliefs, whether that be religion or politics or sports or what to eat.
But just like there’s an argument to be made that successful people should try and resist the pull towards closed networks, I think there’s also an argument to be made that successful cities should try and resist the pull towards closed and divided cities.
That’s why some people believe that tolerance is a critical ingredient to fostering creativity in cities.
This past week I received 2 separate invitations to talk at events about blogging as a form of city building.
The first is a Pecha Kucha talk being held here in Toronto on Tuesday, October 20th, 2015. If you’ve never heard of the Pecha Kucha movement, it’s basically all about rapid fire presentations. Each person gets 20 slides and 20 seconds for each one.
Here are the details for the upcoming Toronto event:
The second event is being held in Ottawa in the new year. I’ll write more on that closer to the date when I have more information to share.
I haven’t yet figured out exactly what I’m going to talk about at each event, but I am starting to think about a few things.
When I started writing this blog, it was intended simply as an outlet for my own city-related – and also personal – thoughts. Ultimately, the blog evolved into having its own mission, which is to promote the building of beautiful, sustainable, and globally competitive cities. And so clearly in my mind blogging was and is in fact a form of city building.
But writing is vastly different than the kind of city building I do for a living. During the day I worry about things like rental rates, building setbacks, bulkhead locations, parking counts, and a bunch of other fun stuff.
The two are certainly related, but the latter feels a lot more tangible. The result is spaces that people will occupy and buildings that will have some sort of impact on the overall built environment.
But as you all know, city building is a lot more than just bricks-and-mortar. It is political. It is emotional. It is subjective. It is ego-driven. And it is so many other things. Because of this, words do have a role to play in shaping the cities we live in. And hopefully my words are having some kind of positive impact.
At the same time, I see myself as simply part of a larger set of trends that are happening in both city building, as well as in many other sectors. Trends around transparency, decentralization, and the democratization of information.
Technology today allows us to connect at zero marginal cost. And that is empowering people like me to self-publish, people to crowdfund real estate development projects, people to crowdsource community feedback for projects, and to do many other exciting things that weren’t possible before. Without this blog, most of you reading this right now would have absolutely no idea who I am.
So I guess I kind of do know what I’m going to talk about.