mindstalk | Entries tagged with jane jacobs

problems of cul-de-sacs
http://www.citylab.com/design/2011/09/street-grids/124/
From the 1950s until the late 1980s, there were almost no new housing developments in the U.S. built on a simple grid.

networks that have 45 intersections per square mile (like Salt Lake City) and others that have as many as 550 (Portland, Ore).

In their California study, Garrick and Marshall eventually realized the safest cities had an element in common: They were all incorporated before 1930.
These cities were built the old way: along those monotonous grids. In general, they didn’t have fewer accidents overall, but they had far fewer deadly ones. Marshall and Garrick figured that cars (and cars with bikes) must be colliding at lower speeds on these types of street networks.

foreclosure hotspots tend to be focused in places with the least location efficiency – in spread-out subdivisions

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5455743
On the other hand, there's the problem of having to drive your car almost everywhere. Or, in Speck's words, the uneasy feeling that "your car is no longer an instrument of freedom but a prosthetic device."

cul-de-sac communities turn out to have some of the highest rates of traffic accidents involving young children.
"The actual research about injuries and deaths to small children under five is that the main cause of death is being backed over, not being driven over forward," he says. "And it would be expected that the main people doing the backing over would in fact be family members, usually the parents."

making walkable cul-de-sacs
http://www.accessmagazine.org/articles/spring-2004/reconsidering-cul-de-sac/

Bit more history, and a schematic diagram of changing patterns: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4yfhx9/eli5_why_arent_neighbourhoods_built_gridstyle/d6ngpp4

Crossposts: http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/456947.html

(simply copying a comment I made elsewhere:)

So, according to Google's convenient graph, Somerville's population was 76,295 in 1990, and 78,804 in 2013. That's 3% growth stretched over 23 years. Boston has grown 13% in the same period. Cambridge, 12%. Massachusetts, 12%. The US as a whole, 28%. If population increase had been distributed evenly, there should be over 97,000 people in Somerville now. Or 85,000, at only the state's level of growth.

In reality there's been migration to warmer (or cheaper) states; OTOH, there's also been migration back into dense cities, as many people who grew up in suburbs don't want to live there. Except hardly anyone's building dense cities anymore -- it's usually illegal[1] -- so the price of the old stuff gets bid up way high. 97,000 people wanting to live in the space of 78,000 people will explain a lot of the housing price increase even without bringing in tech or "have no kids"[2] money.

(And I think it's fair to use the higher number -- after all, Boston and Cambridge rents have been going up a lot too, indicating people want to move here faster than housing can be built for them.)

[1] A friend claimed that 99% of Somerville is non-conforming to the current zoning code. If the city burned down, it wouldn't allow itself to be rebuilt as it is.

[2] Or "have no car" money, what with relying on bikes and the Red Line.

Crossposts: http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/433485.html

Resolved: spend less time arguing uselessly with people Wrong On the Internet, spend more learning stuff. Or even doing stuff.

Currently am indeed in a reading/learning mode. First up is The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City by Alan Ehrenhalt. You could say it's about gentrification writ large, but the premise is more than that. If gentrification is well-off people taking over particular neighborhods, Ehrenhalt says for the past 15+ years well-off people have been returning to the inner cities in general. Gentrification of the city. The book is mostly several case studies exemplifying what he claims is a trend.

To specify the trend a bit more: it used to be cities had rich people in the middle, smelly factories in an inner ring, poor people in an outer ring. European cities still largely follow that trend, possibly minus the smelly factories these days. Central Paris is expensive, African immigrants go in high-rises in the "suburbs". London's less organized, but similar. It's the US that largely had rich people go to the suburbs and concentrate poor people in the middle, probably because of a mix of greater car love, cheap gas, GI Bill, and desegregation/busing/white flight. Also, the crime wave of the 1960s. But now some rich people are moving back, for a mix of expensive gas, the crime decline of the 1990s, and people having grown up in suburbs and not wanting to repeat the mistake. And, these days lots of immigrants are settling directly in the suburbs, for being cheaper and closer to many of their jobs.

It's not necessarily a mass migration; he doesn't say everyone's preferences have flipped, a bunch of the trends got interrupted by the 2007 housing crash, and there's kind of not enough pedestrian Jane Jacobs city for everyone who wants it, let alone everyone. (Part of the case studies is about how towns are trying to rebuild or reinvent themselves.) Still, there have been Changes. Property values in what used to be distressed urban neighborhoods have shot up -- and are staying up even in the Depression 2.0 -- and people are found living where they haven't before, like Wall Street! -- while suburbs are getting more poor people and crime.

One particular note: Chicago continued to lose people, down to about 2.7 million from the 3.3m of my youth, which made me sad. But apparently a lot of the recent losses are from the destruction of high-rise public housing like Cabrini-Green -- a synonym for crime-ridden hellhole -- which hasn't been replaced, so the losses are actually of poor black people. Meanwhile Chicago has been friendly to high-rise developments downtown or near downtown, and gentrification has crept out along the L tracks. He talks about Sheffield, once a working neighborhood, then a drug crime neighborhood, and now a land of million dollar houses. Which points to one reason he doesn't use 'gentrification': the actual modest gentry can't afford to live there!

This 'inversion' following transit when it can is a common theme in his examples. It sometimes happens even without people commuting to work on it that much; one saying is "it's not the train it's the tracks", investors liking the promise of long-term investment and stability offered by the tracks. Or perhaps the promise that the trains are there when needed.

He also has a chapter on Cleveland Heights, as an example of an old inner suburbs that's trying to adjust, which was of particular interest since I've been there once and a friend lives there. Others include Houston, Philadelphia, DC, various NY neighborhoods, suburbs of Denver, Phoenix...

Another interesting point: apparently suburban malls have been failing en masse. Some suburbs try to create little pedestrian town centers in the ruins, with newly re-created streets. Success varies.

Crossposts: http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/325908.html

Solar zoning for cities, defining solar envelopes such that terraced buildings could be built to maximize solar access (for light and heating) while attaining high densities. High as in 100 1000-square foot apartments per acre in LA, which at 2 people per units maps to 128,000 people per square mile. Manhattan overall is 65,000/square mile. The idea of an even more environmentally friendly Manhattan justifies the icon.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9074
Long, originally published as 3 articles on Lowtechmagazine.

Which also informed me of the Chinese wheelbarrow, a highly efficient device for transporting loads (vs. the European wheelbarrow, which is convenient on a construction site.) Europe didn't have it, though a comment suggests Europe had enough waterways to not need it.

A Mormon flow chart is amusing. Lemba African Jews are interesting.

On the topic of cities, Jane Jacobs's 1958 essay on city design and streets vs. blocks.

Article from last year on health care systems around the world. Actually several linked articles, but I think you can figure it out. "Communist" China has totally fallen down on the health care front and is trying to reinvent universal health care. Oddly for once it's better to be rural.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/healthcare-network/2011/may/11/european-healthcare-services-belgium-france-germany-sweden

But not all links are awesome. On Israel Independence Date (don't save the date, it's set by the Jewish calendar), I learn of hunger striking prisoners being punished for their protest of indefinite detention without charge and ill treatment. Also, water cannon being turned on peaceful protest villagers. Which is probably a good thing for the overall cause, getting away from failed terrorism to the moral high ground. (Of course, I've been told one of the intifadas started out peaceful, until soldiers shot them.)

Someone's been leaking about Catholic church corruption. The Pope's response? Send in Opus Dei to hunt down the whistleblowers.

BTW, Pinker says pretty much every terrorist movement has failed to achieve its goals; the few exceptions had military or government targets, not civilian. (And if you have military targets, are you really terrorist?) Though he doesn't mention bin Laden wanting US troops out of Saudi Arabia, and didn't we eventually oblige?

Crossposts: http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/322694.html

By Edward Glaeser. Subtitled How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier.

As you might guess it's a paean to cities, and a celebration of the benefits their density provides. It's also a tour of how some cities have succeeded or failed, and of anti-urban policies that undermine them. Very aligned with Jane Jacobs, but friendlier to high-rises, and with more environmental points. Flawed in a couple places, like confusing megawatts with Joules.

Some points:

Old cities aren't just expensive because they're popular and often geographically constrained; many of them have locked out new construction in the interest of preserving one quality or another, which increasingly means only rich people can enjoy them. Central Paris is frozen into the five story buildings of the 19th century. Much of the Boston area has minimum lot sizes for houses. San Francisco loves its Victorians, and the Sunset's expanse of 1.5 story houses has got to be artificial. Even NYC, seeming home of the high-rise, was hostile for a long time to new high construction. Glaeser's all for limiting the ability to preserve buildings -- maybe with a fixed # of buildings, so protecting a new one means releasing a new one -- and accepting change and growth upward.

Even partial densification can have payoffs; if people still drive to work, but live in neighborhoods where walking works for errands and going out, they'll drive less.

Local environmentalism can be globally disastrous. The Pacific coast of the US is a great climate, with little need for heating or cool; it's also heavily protected, especially in California. Marin requires 60 acre lots. Much of the Peninsula is off-limits. San Francisco is dense but capped. But people have to live somewhere; if not on the coast, then in the interior, or even further afield in places like Houston -- both places which require a lot more cooling (and as they are, more driving.) Skyscrapers near much of the west coast could easily be a lot greener than Houston sprawl. Water? California uses 4x as much on agriculture as it does on urban water, and Singapore shows that a thriving city with no special resources can make its own water.

(He doesn't even bring up the old example of Cape Cod liberals fighting off windmills.)

Anti-urbanism: old news like the home mortgage deduction and subsidies for freeways. But an interesting twist: apparently the Supreme Court ruled that imposed busing couldn't cross districts, thereby making it easy for racist whites to move to a suburb to escape integration. Either of no busing or of being able to send kids to any school they could reach would have removed one city-gutting trend. ("Our schools need more socialism or less.") Likewise, locally provided and funded services makes it easy for the rich to wash their hands of the poor. (I don't remember if Jacobs said anything about politically distinct suburbs, though I think she was all for metropolitan areas as a natural unit of government, which would imply limiting suburban independence.)

Mumbai restricts itself to an average of 1.3 stories per building, apart from a rash of new high-rises. This is bad when you've got 14 million people. Beijing and Shanghai are apparently half as dense as LA, bad news given that high-density urbanization is the one hope for China and India not dwarfing American carbon emissions.

One odd note: he refers to Jacobs supporting a density of 100-200 households per acre; he prefers more. 250 acres per square kilometer (625 per square mile), so that's 25,000 households per km2. *Manhattan* isn't that dense -- it's about 25,000 *people* per km2. Granted, specific residential neighborhoods must be higher.

Old surprising fact: you could fit the world into Texas. Say 1000 square feet per person, or 100 m2. 10,000/km2, and 700,000 km2 for 7 billion people -- almost exactly the area of Texas. Need room for streets, so make it 50 m2/person, or two-story buildings. Three-story allows space for businesses and some more open space. Relatedly, you obviously don't need much height to get a fair amount of density, just close-packing.

California is 420,000 km2. Playing on Google Earth, I estimate there's upward of 20,000 km2 available between the coast and first mountains north of San Francisco. 2000 km2 at Manhattan density would be 50 million people.

He's not for artificially supporting declining cities. Help poor people, not poor places. Providing clean water and safety and good schools, always good. Megaprojects in hopes of starting revival, bad. Rebuilding New Orleans, in decline from the early 1800s, not good, especially if it costs $400,000 per resident. Could just buy them all a home in a good area for that.

Crossposts: http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/317681.html

Both update and thoughts on the psychology of housing construction.

Yesterday I left the compound for the first time. What do I mean by that? My current home isn't that big -- house is a decent size but not huge, grounds feel comparatively small, though given that there's like four contour levels the square meterage may be higher than it feels. Still, not that big. But there's an opaque wall all around the property, with the house inside. There's sightlines to high parts of neighboring houses, and to the lower parts of the city -- we're on a hill, see countour lines -- but still, wall. Wall and gate to the street.

So it's rather easy to go Outside -- open a sliding door and step onto the patio and into the sun, or even out onto the grass, to childish cries of "but you're not wearing shoes, Damien!" -- but whichever way I go out, I'm still in private, domestic space. And it's full of light and companionship. Whereas going Out, into public space, means going through the wall as well, and there's not much of immediate interest out there. So it is that on my last visit -- albeit over holidays, with friends I hadn't seen in 3 years -- I got out on my own once in ten days, and I think late into the time at that. This trip, I made it Out on only the third day! And I can't even credit schoolday, because the kids were back by then, and I'd happily slept through the morning.

But still, it takes effort, and even S notes that for herself, which got me thinking about contrasts...

The walled area design is nearly universal here, though sometimes it's just a fence instead of full wall. I saw a bit into a gated community, and there you have individual walls inside the community walls. I think this is common in old Mediterranean architecture, for whatever reason, though I've heard more than once of Arab or maybe Egyptian design of presenting a blank exterior so as to not attract tax collectors. I also recall that S grew up in LA on an even larger area, fenced and maybe half-walled off, so she's used to one's land being an airlock or moat between the house and the world.

By contrast, I grew up with a high fence around most of the back yard, but if you went out the front door there was a 10 foot walk and some shrubs to the sidewalk. Many other houses were similar, though with grass instead of shrubs, though some did have front fences -- often more decorative or dog-repelling than functional, though, since if you needed to knock you'd just open the gate and go to the door, rather than pressing a buzzer out by the sidewalk. Anyway, go outside one way, and you're still private, but go out the front door and you're Out, and conversely the public can come right up to the front door. In san Francisco, there wasn't even then 10 feet; go out the front and you were on the sidewalk, though you might have a long backyard hidden away. (Really hidden, given that homes were wall to wall leaving no space for peeking through.)

Southern style in Atlanta seemed similar, with the addition of an open porch, inviting a mixing of a relaxing homedweller with public traffic. Bloomington has that too sometimes. Bloomington also has a fair number of homes where even the backyard isn't fenced off, it's just open rolling lawn, and I've now identified why that felt so odd to me. I'm used to half-walled property, so fully walled feels antisocial, but no-walled feels overly open and exposed, and very trusting.

Then there's apartments, where you often have to get your shoes and keys just to go Outside for some sun and fresh air. So there's more incentive to cave up, but if you do get Outside you're automatically Out as well; you're either a total recluse or unavoidably public.

I should note that the "antisocial" bit above is a bit of illusion on my part, or rather the idea that we were any better kind of is. We didn't have a front wall, but we had an enclosed porch used for storage; mostly, we weren't public any more than we had to be. The two exceptions are my playing on the sidewalk as a child, and the fact that someone wanting to get our attention could come up to the door. Then again, that last bit feels like a big deal; places where the door is accessible feel less intimidating to me than ones with a wall, or even an unlocked gate. Especially if the resident has to come out all the way to see you, vs. shuffling down to the front door. Of course, that's what intercoms and these days probably camera screens are for, but still, it feels like Money and Reclusiveness to me.

Tangentially, I recall the apartments I was in in Paris and Madrid, with basically multiple airlocks of gates, with the Madrid ones likely to kill you in a fire because you literally couldn't get out without a key. My Oakland residence was simpler, just an outside fence with gate and intercom.

Nothing much to say from my walk itself. I found a few places, managed a bit of sub-pidgin communication, and found a chocolateria selling bon-bons, though these weren't the ganache-filled truffles I was expecting. Makes sense I suppose, given $4 for 15 or 18 pieces.