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©2005 J.Crawford

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©2005 J.Crawford

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©2005 J.Crawford

Dongtan, a New, Green City?

This will be a green city in a nation not known for environmental sensitivity. (In some provinces, over 90% of the trees have been cut.) Toxic waste dumps abound and rivers run black. Environmental damage increased in the 1980s, when China's explosive economic growth began. Overseas companies located their most toxic manufacturing operations in China. Energy demand soared, and China now opens a new coal-fired power plant once a week. China will soon surpass the USA as the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Since 2001, Chinese emissions have increased by more than all the other industrialized nations in the world combined. China got richer, although about 10% of Chinese people still live on less than a dollar a day. And pollution is now costing China an estimated 10% of its GDP. The cost to public heath and quality of life is huge. Government figures show that 300,000 people die prematurely each year just from air pollution. China must overcome its history.

One of the most instructive lessons from the planning of Dongtan was an understanding that low-density, US-style development didn't stand a chance of reaching the sustainability targets. The designers looked at energy consumption in cities and plotted energy against density. They concluded that very high density, as in Hong Kong, only slightly improved the picture when compared to the moderate density of a city like Stockholm, so they settled on about 50 people per acre (around 125 per hectare) in mid-rise buildings.

But a funny thing happened. When they started plopping sample blocks onto the site map, they discovered that they could put ten times as many people as anticipated onto a smaller proportion of the site than proposed in alternative designs. In fact, they would build on only 35% of the site, in locations clustered along the public transport lines. Mixed-use neighborhoods will be the norm.

The Dongtan master plan is a green response to China's environmental crisis. The city is to be powered by local, renewable energy sources. Efficient buildings are to be clustered in dense, walkable neighborhoods. Most wastes are to be recycled. Vehicles that emit CO2 are banned. Today the site is completely undeveloped, but that will begin to change at lightening speed in a few months. Will Dongtan become a model for the rest of the world? It's not possible to say yet, but it is an ambitious and promising undertaking.

At the Shanghai Residential 2000 conference (held in 1996), I proposed a city very much like the Reference Design. The proposal was for a city of a million, on a site not far from Dongtan. At the end of my presentation, the Iranian-born architect Hossein Amanat stood up and pleaded with the Chinese not to repeat the American auto-centric mistake. Maybe people were listening.

©2005 J.Crawford

Dream On, Please

The daring artist imagines that the community will become livelier. He says that trees and flowers don't kill people, traffic does. Foot traffic is already so heavy during the summer that pedestrians take over part of the street.

Choski is gathering support from local business and community leaders, with more success than might be expected. He is, alas, battling history. Hundreds of pedestrian malls were opened in North America during the 1960s and 1970s, but only about 30 remain vital. (Most of the failures were outdoor bus stations dubbed "pedestrian malls.") He cites Stone Street in Lower Manhattan as a model for what Bedford could be. This narrow cobblestoned street was built in the 17th century by Dutch colonists. It was closed to traffic in the mid-1990s, when it became a popular dining and shopping area.

©2005 J.Crawford

Transit-Oriented Development. . . In Los Angeles Suburbs?

TOD is proposed as a response to the realization that greater population density will come to Tarzana and other places along the Orange Line, whether people want it or not. (It's crazy to build heavy transit infrastructure and then not put destinations next to the stations; San Francisco's BART often puts the lowest and least valuable use, parking, next to the stations.)

City planners are impressed by the Council's plan and by the willingness of residents to consider increased density and mixed uses. There is, in fact, a desire by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and city officials to develop urban villages along the city's transit lines. City administrators understand that patterns of development must change to accommodate rising populations and land shortages. Urban Planning and Design Coordinator Krista Kline said:

We have to build higher. In order to do that and still make the community livable, you have to make communities better than they are now.

You have to build neighborhoods where people can exist without getting in their cars, and they're comfortable with that.

People have an inherent desire to identify with a place.

Maybe in the past this may have seemed out of line to think that a non-autocentric place could be created. After all, this is still the [San Fernando] Valley.

However, as the Valley's demographics have changed, so have the habits, thoughts and patterns of its population.

©2005 J.Crawford

Cheap Cars for India

Traffic on India's already choked roads is poised to become even worse. Manufacturers are scrambling to introduce cheap Indian-made cars, some under US$2500. (Similar prices are emerging in China, which suffers from the same general circumstances.) India today has just 7 cars per 1000 people. If this rises to the level of car ownership in the rich world, India will soon have 70 times more cars on the road.

India may become the principal testing ground for cheap cars. Just as rising wages and the cheap, small, reliable Honda motorcycles transformed the region a few decades ago, rising wages and cheap cars may transform it again. The first transformation was not wholly negative, despite serious air pollution problems. Most streets were wide enough to accommodate heavy motorcycle traffic, and nearly a billion people in Asia gained better mobility. This time, there won't be anywhere near enough room on the streets and highways.

India holds the dubious distinction of the highest number of road fatalities in the world. Last year the road death toll stood at more than 60,000. In part it is the mixture of fast-moving motor vehicles with slow-moving ox carts, bicyclists, and pedestrians on the highways. Major roads pass through the centers of towns and villages. Even limited-access highways have become killing grounds as pedestrians are struck trying to cross them.

The tragedy is that railroads served India admirably for more than a century, but they are so overcrowded today due to flagging investments that a ready market for cars is emerging. This will not only worsen the hazards from collisions but also increase deaths from air pollution. This trend must be reversed.

©2005 J.Crawford

Bikes to the Rescue

A UN report warned earlier this year that billions face water shortages and starvation if damage to Earth’s climate alters rainfall patterns, strengthens storms, and raises the risk from drought, flooding, and water stress.

Greater use of bicycles, clean energy sources, and tax incentives to reduce carbon emissions are cited as essential steps. And fewer, not more, cars.

©2005 J.Crawford

Fat Kids

A target on childhood obesity was introduced to halt the year-on-year rise in obesity among children aged under 11 by 2010 in the context of a broader strategy to tackle obesity in the population as a whole. As yet there is almost no evidence that the [rate of] rise in obesity levels is changing.

There is evidence that among children aged six to 10 years, males will be more obese than females, with an estimate of 50% being obese by 2050, compared with 20% of female children.

©2005 J.Crawford

Go Outside and Play

"Go outside and play."

Do parents say that to kids anymore? Not so often in our Brave New World, where parents daren't let their kids play, even in fenced backyards, without adult supervision for fear they'll be abducted - though they're more than three times more likely to be injured by a lightning strike, and how likely is that?

The pharmaceutical industry stands ready. More kids are being given Ritalin for ADHD, anti-psychotics, and anti-depressants. What about just sending them outdoors to run around? She says, "Taking a walk can be as effective at combating depression as taking a pill, so imagine what playing tag would do for them (or you)." Schools have removed playground equipment out of fear of lawsuits. "Now, they need fitness club memberships; 'play' is a 'work' out, and it has to be scheduled into mum or dad's day, so they can drive them there."

It gets even worse. Kids aren't learning the creative thinking that play develops. Play helps kids to become confident, independent, problem-solving adults. If it's all wrapped up in cotton batting, it doesn't work. "Kids need to fall from trees and, yes, live a little dangerously . . . to be prepared to meet life's challenges." I spent a good deal of my childhood building tree houses, which taught me things I would not otherwise have learned. Ms. Rinehart waxes poetic:

My late mum, who might have been a bit laissez-faire even for our day, sent her kids out to play without any rules that I remember. Her "negligence" allowed us full rein not only of the terrain, but our imaginations. I ran through meadows, climbed up and down the escarpment, and played explorer with my girlfriend, whose father dropped us in unknown wilds, leaving us to leap streams, build forts, catch frogs and explore spooky paths.

Apparently even the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents sees the risks of an overprotected childhood and is now urging parents to tolerate more risk to help kids learn "valuable life-long lessons, particularly about risks and how to deal with them, from playing in the natural environment."

Ironically, our urge to protect children is killing them. Fearing abduction, we keep them inside and drive them everywhere. The result? Thirty per cent are now overweight, with resultant health risks, and more are dying in car accidents (the odds increase with more time spent in them) and being hit by vehicles - most often outside schools by parents dropping off their own kids. Meanwhile, a lack of exposure to sunshine is blamed not only for vitamin D deficiencies, but this week a study linked it with the rise in the number of cases of autism.

©2005 J.Crawford

Slim Kids, Walking to School

The report, "Unfit for Purpose: How Car Use Fuels Climate Change and Obesity," from the Institute for European Environmental Policy says that increased car use fosters the "twin crises" of obesity and global warming. The report claims that walking for just one extra hour a week could stave off a weight gain of 28 pounds over ten years.

©2005 J.Crawford

Cars are Even More Toxic Than We Thought

"It does not have only to do with freeways but also to do with busy streets inside the city," according to Vlemming Cassee, a project leader at the Dutch Institute for Health and Environment (RIVM). " In Amsterdam, those who live near the A10 [a ring road] run an increased risk, and also those living on the Stadhouderskade or the Overtoom [busy streets near the city center]."

The health effects are probably a result of a combination of fine particulates, SO2, CO, and the stress effects of noise, which also contributes to hardening of the arteries. The researchers did not identify a specific toxic component but determined that the effect is related to proximity to heavy traffic.

©2005 J.Crawford

Bad News About Noise

In addition to the heart disease link, the Noise Environmental Burden on Disease work group found that 2% of Europeans suffer severely disturbed sleep because of noise and 15% suffer severe annoyance. Chronic exposure to noise also causes tinnitus, a continuous ringing sound in the ears.

Recent research shows that noise raises levels of stress hormones, even during sleep. The longer these hormones circulate, the greater the chance that they will cause life-threatening physiological problems, such as heart failure, strokes, high blood pressure, and immune system problems. Even people who think they are not bothered by noise suffer from its effects.

Researchers compared households in noisy areas with those in quieter locations. WHO guidelines hold that the noise threshold for cardiovascular damage is a night-time exposure of 50 dB, about the level of light traffic. For sleep disturbance, the threshold is only 42dB, for general annoyance just 35dB.

©2005 J.Crawford

Please Don't Buy That Car

©2005 J.Crawford

A Few Necessary Deaths

The economic cost to developing economies, in lost productivity alone, is about equal to the amount they receive in foreign aid. About half of the hospital beds are occupied by people struck in road accidents. The human cost is unthinkable.

The problem will only get worse. The World Bank estimates that by 2020, deaths from road collisions will rise by 83% in poor nations (while falling somewhat in rich ones). The foreign aid budget for preventing and treating malaria is about 200 times larger than for road safety. The Guardian says:

This issue has been neglected partly because it is something the rich inflict on the poor, and partly because it is widely perceived as an unavoidable price of doing business - as the global transportation industry expands, so must its human costs. Governments are just beginning to wake up to the problem. But the corporations got there first.

The "Partnership" emphasizes driver training and safety education for children. ("Don't play in the streets.") The transport is protected. But, according to Roberts, these measures don't work. The Guardian asks:

Is this the vision: that the space now used by pedestrians and cyclists and ox carts and rickshaws is surrendered to car drivers? If so, it might reduce fatalities, but it would also represent a classic act of enclosure, through which the rich are able to secure the resources of the poor.

©2005 J.Crawford

King Coal Rears Its Filthy Head Again

Big coal claims that coal-based fuels are somehow more American than gasoline and greener than ethanol. Rep. Nick V. Rahall, chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, said "For so many, filthy coal is a dirty four-letter word. These individuals, I tell you, have their heads buried in the sand."

The size of the proposed subsidies for coal far exceeds those for any alternative fuel, including ethanol from corn (itself a boondoggle). Proposed are loan guarantees for 6-10 major coal-to-liquid plants (each costing $3 billion), a tax credit of 51 cents a gallon through 2020, automatic subsidies if oil drops below $40 a barrel, and a 25-year Air Force contract for a billion gallons of jet fuel a year. If you own a coal mine, you can't lose. New plants costing $70 billion would supply just 10% of US gasoline.

As usual, lobbyists are spraying money around. They have enlisted organized labor, the Air Force, and the airline industry. Peabody Energy, the world's biggest coal company, ran an ad campaign urging people to "imagine a world where our country runs on energy from Middle America instead of the Middle East." Presidential candidate Barack Obama is leading the way.

Bush called for "alternative" fuels, not "renewable" fuels. The distinction was lost on many, but the language was deliberately arranged to make room for coal. The industry thinks that fuel from coal can compete against gasoline if oil prices are above $50 a barrel (and as long as they get those juicy subsidies).

Coal is, of course, the worst fuel there is by any measure except abundance. It produces the most CO2 per unit energy, its extraction causes exceptional environmental damage, and it is laden with toxic contaminants. Conversion technology has been known for years, and the product is compatible with existing fuel streams. However, the conversion is itself inefficient, causing even more greenhouse gas emissions than simply burning the coal in a power plant. It is claimed that the CO2 from the conversion process would be stored underground or injected into aging oil wells to sustain production.

The economic viability of the processes is apparently not yet demonstrated, which probably gives rise to the demand for subsidies. If it works, the coal companies make billions. If it doesn't, the government loses billions, the industry little or nothing. The carbon-sequestration aspect of the plan is still hypothetical. Large amounts of energy would be consumed to separate the CO2 from stack gasses and compress or liquify it.

Howard Herzog, a principal research engineer at MIT, said, "At best, you’re going to tread water on the carbon issue, and you’re probably going to do worse. It goes against the whole grain of reducing carbon."

©2005 J.Crawford

Protecting Greenbelts

J.B. Priestley complained, during a 1933 trip through what had once been rural England:

This is the England of arterial and bypass roads, of filling stations and factories that look like exhibition buildings, of giant cinemas and dance halls and cafes, bungalows with tiny garages, cocktail bars, Woolworths, motor-coaches ... and everything given away for cigarette coupons.

In 1935, the Greater London Regional Planning Committee proposed 'to provide a reserve supply of public open spaces and of recreational areas and to establish a green belt or girdle of open space'. The Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 took the principle further with a London green belt and a generation of new towns to house the populations of bombed-out cities.

For 60 years, this land-use settlement has broadly governed the contours of urban and rural Britain. But now it is under pressure as Gordon Brown responds to demographic and lifestyle changes with a proposed 3 million new homes by 2020.

Similarly, the scheme for eco-towns is an interesting update of Labour's new town ethic. These developments should be opened up to a well publicised national competition: an unashamedly modern alternative to Prince Charles's Poundbury and a chance for architects Terry Farrell or Piers Gough to show Britain has not lost its tradition of townscaping.

But ministers also need to keep our cities alive. Last week, the Town and Country Planning Association called for a 'suburban renaissance' and they're right to stress the importance of re-investing in our crumbling inner suburbs. Housing densities can be increased beyond 40 homes per hectare with good public transport and decent green spaces. And it remains crazy that VAT is still charged on brownfield regeneration as green-field new builds go up tax free.

To think the solution to the housing problem lies simply with gutting the green belt is the politics of defeat. Sacrificing our natural and urban heritage might butter up the Home Builders Federation, but it will not make Britain a better place to live.

©2005 J.Crawford

Feature Article

Humanizing Energy

J.H. Crawford

How much power can you generate by pedaling a stationary bicycle connected to a generator? A normal adult in decent condition can produce 0.1 HP continuously for eight hours a day. One horsepower is 746 watts, so our average adult can generate 75 watts. That works out to:

75 watts * 8 hrs = 600 watt-hours = 0.6 kWh

in one day.

A horse, not surprisingly, can produce one horsepower for sustained periods, which explains why humans long preferred to get horses to do the hard work, even with all of the bother of training, feeding, and caring for them.

If we were to replace mechanical sources of power with human power, what would that entail? The average Western household consumes about one kilowatt of electrical power continuously (i.e., averaged throughout the entire day), or 24 kWh per day. To generate this much power, we would need 40 ordinary cyclists, each pedaling generators for 8 hours every day.

Unfortunately, that's not all of the energy a household uses. If two members of the household each drive 30 miles every day in a car that gets 20 MPG (approximately the US fleet average), they are consuming 0.2175 kWh per mile. This gives us another 22 people pedaling an entire working day for us.

Then we have gas or oil for space heating. This is harder to estimate, as it varies by season and location, but it approximates the amount of fuel that people use in driving, so we have another 22 people pedaling

This is becoming a bit tedious, but to our 40 + 22 + 22 people pedaling, we would have to add people for energy that is embedded in the products we buy and in the transport that gets them to the store. We would further have to add lots of cyclists for any air travel that would be required. A reasonably conservative estimate is that the daily energy consumption of a family that includes two adults is equivalent about 100 people pedaling 8 hours a day, every day. It can thus be seen just how puny our own energy capacity is compared to the amount of energy we are consuming. People must come to understand at a gut level that this just can't continue.

The fix we're in is so much worse than people think it is, simply because they think it's quite normal to put 10 gallons of gasoline in the car once or twice a week. The energy content of that gasoline is enormous. Only since the start of the industrial era have even the richest people been able to consume energy at this rate. This was only made possible by burning, during the course of two centuries, fossil fuels accreted over a span of millions of years.

Rainwater falling off the roof is not going to power your next flight to Disneyworld. It's not going to get you to the airport. In fact, it's barely going to get you out of the driveway.

Life is going to change. Get used to it. Then figure out how to enjoy it. That's not hard. Just imagine bicycles and carfree cities.

Letters

First, New York's Park Avenue when it still deserved the name:

The second is subtler. Look at that last image: the "no-pedestrian-crossing" and "no-bicycles" warnings, the harsh yellow markings, the lights, the huge looming signs. They're not only hideous, they're distinctly inhuman. Walking down a street like that is like entering an alien civilization - nearly all of the visually prominent elements would not have any meaning in a pedestrian environment.

Those signs and signals serve not human, but mechanical, purposes - they exist purely to enable the industrial function of moving big rolling chunks of steel around without too many fatal collisions. Modern streets do not merely ignore pedestrians, or fail to serve them. They don't merely place pedestrians at risk. Rather, they require pedestrians (often with the force of law) to act like cars.

In a humane streetscape, pedestrians make beelines from point to point, when hurrying, and when at leisure, wander in loops and digressions. Pedestrians walk quicker or slower, or stop entirely, as their purposes dictate - not according to arbitrary mechanical timers.

On today's streets, by contrast, pedestrians have to travel in straight, block-long segments, turn only at street corners, cross only at intersections, stop arbitrarily to wait for traffic lights, anticipate traffic flow, follow a fat lawbook worth of rules, and generally abandon all the advantages of walking; they turn themselves into very slow, very vulnerable, cars.

Look at the visual environment: the ugliness of parking meters, parking signs, huge billboards, huge speed-friendly store signage, flashing lights, garish yellow lines, and all the other detritus of traffic control. That exacts a mental cost from everyone, but supplies a benefit only to drivers, or rather, to their cars (it's maddening for drivers, too).

Pedestrians have to put up with this baffling visually-noisy environment, have to read the signs, obey the lights, beware the hazards, listen to the back-up alarms, and so on, just as drivers do. Instead of enjoying the simplicity of walking freely, they have to turn themselves, mentally, into drivers, not walkers.

A motorist is half-blind, three-quarters deaf, and entirely cut off from scent, taste, touch and kinesthetic awareness - and on a typical city street, blinded by lights, deafened by traffic din, poisoned by exhaust fumes, paralyzed by narrow sidewalks and walk/don't walk signs, a so-called "pedestrian" is almost equally deprived of sensory competence. On such a street, no one is a pedestrian; everyone is a driver.

When people deride the car-free vision, we tend to think they're making a foolish wasteful choice: to drive rather than to walk. They're not; today's streets offer them no such choice. Rather, people are forced to choose between driving a car, and driving without a car. They have had no experience of walking in city streets. They've only had the experience of driving without a car - subject to all the restrictions and disadvantages of urban driving, without any of the advantages of walking.

I don't know how to fix this problem, but it's fundamental. We're trying to promote walking among people who have never experienced genuine urban walking, but think that they have. As long as they equate walking with driving-without-a-car, we're doomed.*

Car-free days are an obvious start; so are car-free zones, so are speed limits set to a jogging speed, legal mid-block crossing, raised intersection crosswalks (as giant speed bumps and as crossings at sidewalk grade), and we can all think of others. But until we find ways to let pedestrians act like pedestrians, experience viscerally the liberating character of humane urban walking, they're never going to get out of their cars.

Thoughts?

*Ditto for bicycles, streetcars, trains, buses - all crippled by the need to accommodate cars.

Books & Films

The Great Neighborhood Book A Do-it-Yourself Guide to Placemaking Jay Walljasper Project for Public Spaces, 2007 175 pages Softcover US$ 19.95 ISBN 9780865715813

From the publisher's blurb:

Abandoned lots and litter-strewn sidewalks, or rows of green beans and pockets of wildflowers? Graffitti-marked walls and desolate bus stops, or shady refuges and comfortable seating? What transforms a dingy, inhospitable area into a dynamic gathering place? How do individuals take back their neighborhood?

Neighborhoods decline when the people who live there lose their connection and no longer feel part of their community. Recapturing that sense of belonging and pride of place can be as simple as planting a civic garden or placing some benches in a park.

The Great Neighborhood Book explains how any community can be improved and enlivened, not by vast infusions of cash, not by government, but by the people who live there. Through real-life stories, this book addresses such challenges as traffic control, crime, comfort and safety, and developing economic vitality. Offering compelling evidence of how people in communities have enhanced their own neighborhoods through "Placemaking" - the PPS term for the process of transforming public space - this exciting guide offers inspiring real-life examples that show the magic that happens when individuals take small steps, and motivate others to make change. It joins The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces and How To Turn a Place Around in the PPS library of publications that explore a place-based approach to improving neighborhoods.

New Urban Cowboy Michael E. Arth Golden Apples Media Inc., [Flash!] 2007 Still seeking distribution 99 minutes DVD

Truth in advertising: I consider Michael a friend and spent two days as a guest of the Arths when they lived in Santa Barbara.

This is the story of Michael's "invasion" of the Garden District of De Land, Florida, an inland town not far from Daytona. When Michael arrived, this area was crack central. Housing was extremely dilapidated and the "garden" part of the name was nowhere to be found. Michael bought a few houses and started fixing them up. The police advised him to buy a gun, so he did: nail and staple guns. He set about rebuilding the neighborhood one house at a time. Michael tried to work with everybody in a calm but determined way.

The results can only be called phenomenal. Today this neighborhood thrives and is full of beauty. Neighborliness has replaced crime. The area cannot be called carfree (and a fair bit of footage is shot from vehicles), but this is an inspiration for anyone who ever sought to turn a place around. You might call Michael a practical dreamer.

Michael promotes what he calls the "New Pedestrianism." This is as close as modern American practice gets to carfree. It turns the New Urbanism inside out - the main streets are for bikes and pedestrian, with cars relegated to back alleys. In auto-centric America, this is about as radical a proposal as is likely to be built today. Michael has some projects at the proposal stage.

The film is too long, and Michael sometimes comes across as a bit full of himself, but this is a truly inspiring story and a great act of personal courage. Hats off to Michael.

Anyone who can get this film into distribution channels should contact Michael. The film will be doing the festival circuit, which may get it some attention.

Michael sent this panorama and further elaborated:

Phoenix Court, Garden District
©Michael E. Arth

Here's a panorama of car free Phoenix Court in the Garden District. This used to be a treeless, dirt parking lot, with a dumpster at one end. The porches, the fences, the landscaping and the renovations were a part of my Garden District renovations. I made condos out of these homes and sold them to individuals, figuring that owners would take better care of it than renters. The buildings at the far left and far right used to be garage apartments behind the houses in the middle, which were originally oriented toward the street on the other side. Putting in the porches in what was the back gives the appearance that they face the courtyard instead of the street. Having an extravagant fountain and courtyard is very inexpensive when shared by five buildings (the fifth building is behind the camera).

Hot New Links

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Urban Reinventors

Momentum

The History of New York City Public Space

New Means to PROMote Pedestrian Traffic in Cities (Guidebook) by the European Commission [PDF!]

New Means to PROMote Pedestrian Traffic in Cities (Part 2: Families of Solutions Overview) by the European Commission [PDF!]