Arup, the global consulting firm, has an interesting publication out called Cities Alive: Towards a walking world. The report highlights 50 benefits of walking and then 40 actions that city leaders can take today to transform their cities. The entire study was informed by examining 80 international case studies.
As I was going through the report, the following diagram caught my attention. It compares journeys on foot vs. journeys by car for a collection of global cities.
The turquoise circles represent % of journeys by walking. On the left is Los Angeles at 4%. And on the right is Istanbul at 48%.
The red circles represent % of journeys by car. On the left is Miami at 79% (with Los Angeles right beside it). And on the right is Kolkata at 2%.
The map in the middle of the circles represents pedestrians killed in traffic crashes per 100,000 people.
I’m not sure where the data was drawn from, but it’s not all that surprising to see a few North American cities clustered towards the left (less walking; more driving). Still, I wonder how “journey” is defined.
To view the full report, click here. Arup also produces a lot of other great content that you can download for free, here.
As a follow-up to yesterday’s post on New Urbanism, I thought I would post an interesting video discussion between Andrés Duany and Ben Stevens.
Duany is the father of New Urbanism and Stevens runs a great blog called The Skyline Forum where he interviews notable city builders, developers, architects, planners, and so on. If you can’t see the video below, click here.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfZZ61C4YOY?rel=0&w=560&h=315]
Once again it’s a great reminder that so much of what we do and build in our cities is dictated by parking requirements. One of the ways Duany differentiates New Urbanism from “old urbanism” is that the new explicitly provides for the car.
Regrettably, I think we do that almost everywhere nowadays. But I take his point that New Urbanism happens almost as an intervention in areas where there are few or no other mobility options besides the car.
I also thought it was interesting that Duany refers to big box stores as the new noxious-use in cities, rather than industry. He describes the parking, not the stores themselves, as creating a “flume of unwalkability.”
It always seems to come down to parking.
Last night I was in CityPlace, West Palm Beach. Completed in 2000, CityPlace is a quintessential example of New Urbanism. (For those of you from Toronto, this is a different kind of a CityPlace.)
In case you’re unfamiliar with this movement, here’s a snippet from The Charter of New Urbanism (via Wikipedia):
“We advocate the restructuring of public policy and development practices to support the following principles: neighborhoods should be diverse in use and population; communities should be designed for the pedestrian and transit as well as the car; cities and towns should be shaped by physically defined and universally accessible public spaces and community institutions; urban places should be framed by architecture and landscape design that celebrate local history, climate, ecology, and building practice.”
At a high level, New Urbanism makes a lot of sense. American cities were sprawling uncontrollably and so advocates had decided that something had to change. The Congress for New Urbanism was founded in 1993.
But the New Urbanism movement has had its share of critics. Here’s how Witold Rybczynski – professor at the University of Pennsylvania – talked about it on his blog:
“What are the important ideas that have affected American cities in the last 20 years? The development of waterfronts. The renaissance in constructing urban parks. The move of genXers and retirees into downtowns. High-rise urban living and Vancouverism. The popularity of urban bicycling and bike-rental programs. Ditto for Zipcars. Urban farmers markets and community gardens. Urban charter schools. The dramatic expansion in attendance of urban cultural institutions, especially art museums. Urban tourism. Downtown trophy buildings. The emergence of influential big-city mayors. Have any of these been the result of the new urbanism movement?”
Frankly, I have never been a big follower of New Urbanism. It has always felt artificial to me. But I recognize the immense challenge in transforming car-oriented cities and communities into walkable ones. It’s one of the greatest challenges in city building. You’re asking people to change their habits.
If any of you are experts on New Urbanism (because I am certainly not), I would love to hear from you in the comment section below.