Salzburg, Austria
A café in the old town.
©2002 J.Crawford

Announcements

The Books

World Carfree Network

Towards Carfree Cities IX to be hosted in York

Carbusters Now On-Line

Budapest
This friendly city has many fine outdoor cafés.
©2005 J.Crawford

Cafés

CONTEST: Who can figure out the difference between the photographs in this issue and those in the last issue?

News Bits

Rembrandtplein, Amsterdam
One of several large outdoor cafés on this important square.
©1999 J.Crawford

Copenhagen and Climategate

Likewise, the tempest in a teapot being called "Climategate" is not worthy of further coverage, either. A few people made some mistakes that don't affect the overall conclusion that the world's climate is teetering on the brink of disaster. The right-wing-nuts are seizing on these errors as if they are evidence of malfeasance and proof that climate change is just a figment of someone's imagination. Nothing will change their opinion except future events, and by then it will be too late.

Leidseplein, Amsterdam
Although not the largest square, the Leidseplein is the city's most lively.
©1999 J.Crawford

Carfree Fazilka

Last year a one-week "Fazilka Heritage Festival" was held, during which the center city was made carfree. A study revealed that during the trial, social life, law and order, air quality, and road safety all improved. A local new report concludes:

Communities that are NMV-friendly are seen as places with a high quality of life in the society. NMV-friendly communities are places where people feel safe and comfortable riding their cycles and walking for fun, fitness, and transportation. Encouraging NMV is a simple way towards improving public health. With more people joining NMV, communities experience reduced traffic demands, improved air quality and greater physical fitness. In addition, NMV-friendly towns are often seen as most safe place to live.

The politicians behind these initiatives are enjoying broad support, which has been seen in places as diverse as Bogotá, Zurich, and Seoul.

Salzburg
The old town is a network of narrow streets and small squares.
©2002 J.Crawford

Obama and Sustainable Communities

U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan and DoT Secretary Ray LaHood will address the 9th Annual New Partners for Smart Growth Conference. They will be joined by EPA Assistant Administrator Mathy Stanislaus.

Secretaries Donovan and LaHood and Assistant Administrator Stanislaus will discuss the ways their agencies are working together through the Obama Administration’s Partnership for Sustainable Communities to improve access to affordable housing, provide better transportation options, and protect public health and the environment.

"EPA, HUD and DOT are working together to rebuild our foundations for prosperity, a process that starts with rethinking the ways our communities grow," said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson.

"I am proud to announce HUD’s brand new Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities today," said Donovan. "[T]his new office will help us streamline our efforts to create stronger, more sustainable communities by connecting housing to jobs, fostering local innovation and building a clean energy economy."

"Our Partnership really is a new way of doing business in Washington, to help our nation meet 21st century challenges," said LaHood. "Working together, we’re creating jobs to revitalize our economy, while helping state and local transportation agencies to build the capacity they need to promote livable, walkable, sustainable communities."

The President proposed $527 million in his budget for a new livability initiative at DoT. Its Office of Livable Communities will be a focal point for initiatives such as expanding transit in low-income neighborhoods. It will fund a grant program to help state and local transportation agencies provide more transportation choices that spur economic development.

The New Partners for Smart Growth Conference is managed by the Local Government Commission, in partnership with EPA, DOT, and other public and private sponsors.

More information on HUD’s Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities

I am not certain how seriously this initiative should be taken, but it goes in the right general direction, if not to the carfree final destination. It might be worth making inquiries at the new Office of Livable Communities to see if there is any funding available for carfree conversions or new development.

Amsterdam
Normally-chilly Amsterdam moves outdoors at the first hint of warm sun.
©1998 J.Crawford

GIS and Infill

GIS now allows planners to examine and plan space use at practically any level of detail. It can be used to identify spaces that are unused, underutilized, or misallocated. In San Francisco, more than 1600 such parcels were identified. They have a total area about half the size of the city's large Golden Gate Park. These sites are commonly neglected because they are revenue-neutral and don't appear on anyone's balance sheet.

Academics at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a project called Local Code, which identifies unused paved space in urban areas. Finding useful ways to employ this space can greatly improve the social, economic, and environmental health of the surrounding areas. The system also allows users to identify physical and ecological problems such as storm-water remediation and heat-island effects. Social and medical problems such as incidence of crime or risk for respiratory ailments can be visualized. Even small patches of available space can be quickly identified, a task that formerly required lengthy field investigations.

Local Code helps to identify and green-up excess space for use by the public. These spaces are today not only misused, they are often eyesores (commonly in the vicinity of highways) that blight neighborhoods. The most remarkable thing about Local Code is that it analyzes data on buildings, sewer location, topography, and so forth in order to assist optimum design for each site. The results are remarkably detailed and specific. Micro-climate is considered by the software, and the solution is intended to make the space attractive to users while also solving local and regional problems.

The proponents speak of "data-driven design." This conforms to long-standing site planning practices, although the data can now be assembled far more quickly and easily than formerly. One problem to watch, of course, is that automated solutions to human problems are not immediately adopted without community review. "Data-visualization capabilities can't solve all the problems, but it's hard to overestimate the extent to which this information can help us to think about larger systems and their interrelationships, so that we see a building as not just a building but an ecological infrastructure."

The original article is worth consulting, as it includes a number of informative graphics, some of which are very detailed if clicked on.

Venice
A small café integrated into a local commercial street.
©2001 J.Crawford

Health and Transit

Money should be reallocated to make walking and biking "the most direct, convenient, and pleasant options for most urban trips." This includes giving them priority over motorized transport at intersections.

The British medical journal The Lancet recently published six reports on the health benefits of strategies to halt climate change. The study authors see the need for "enormous" changes to combat global warming, changes that will also be good for people's health. Millions of deaths could be avoided by these changes.

Simply encouraging walking and biking would bring large benefits for both human health and the climate. "Green" cars are not seen as part of the solution. They call for motor vehicle speeds to be limited and tightly controlled, with non-motorized modes taking priority.

Amsterdam
A small café on a local square.
©1999 J.Crawford

Slow Down, Save Kids

Zones where speed limits are lowered to 20 MPH cut road injuries by 40%. The number of children killed or seriously injured was cut by half over the past 15 years. The study, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, estimates that 20 MPH zones could prevent up to 700 casualties in London alone.

At 20 MPH, nearly all pedestrians struck by a car will survive. At 30 MPH, one in five will die.

This appears to have been an exhaustive study based on data collected over a 20-year period. The researchers concluded that the introduction of 20 MPH zones is associated with a 41.9% drop in casualties. The greatest reduction is among children younger than 11. Injuries to cyclists fell by 17%, and injuries to pedestrians fell by almost a third.

There was no evidence that the reductions were associated with higher casualty rates in nearby areas to which traffic might have been displaced. In fact, casualties in adjacent areas fell by an average of 8%.

It was estimated that 20 MPH zones in London now save 200 lives a year. This would increase to 700 if plans to extend the zones were implemented. A similar study by the Department of Transport had reached approximately the same conclusions.

Amsterdam
A small café along the edge of one of the central canals.
©1999 J.Crawford

Getting it Wrong in Amsterdam

Now, however, the city has begun an aggressive campaign to get people to buy electric cars. The city council is giving away power for electric car owners for two years. Worse, the city will pay half of the extra cost for a plug-in vehicle. Favorable parking treatment is also under consideration.

The city wants 10,000 electric cars by 2015 and 40,000 by 2020. By 2040, all cars should be electric. Electric cars are seen as crucial to the city's goal of a 40% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2025.

At present 38% of transport in the city is by bicycle, compared to 37% percent by car. In the city center, however, cycling accounts for 55% of movements. Many cyclists are afraid that electric cars will reduce the number of cyclists and make cycling more dangerous. And they say, "We think the cleanest means of transport is the bike. Definitely."

Ria Hilhorst, Amsterdam's cycling official, says, "I think it [bicycling] is the future way of transport. It's very fast. You can go anywhere. It keeps cities livable and safe."

One cyclist said, "It's better if there are no cars."

Lisbon
Lisbon is one of Europe's most overlooked cities. It's full of cafés.
©2003 J.Crawford

Road Taxes vs. Road Expenditures

The study estimated that gasoline taxes would have to be raised six-fold to bring revenue in line with expenditures. The cost of gasoline (currently $2.50/gallon) would have to rise to $4.35.

"Green" cars are seen as a problem in themselves. Their lower demand for fuel will actually exacerbate the highway budget crisis.

The study revealed that no road pays for itself in gas taxes and fees.

For example, in Houston, the 15 miles of SH 99 from I-10 to US 290 will cost $1 billion to build and maintain over its lifetime, while only generating $162 million in gas taxes. That gives a tax gap ratio of .16, which means that the real gas tax rate people would need to pay on this segment of road to completely pay for it would be $2.22 per gallon.

Piazza San Marco, Venice
I think it's the best public square in the world.
©2001 J.Crawford

The Biomass Disaster

The policy has been adopted without an understanding of its impacts on food production, public health, land use, greenhouse gas emissions, soil conservation, water consumption, or biodiversity. Since the law was enacted, the critique of biofuels, corn-based ethanol in particular, has grown steadily more damning. Cellulosic fuels would, in theory, answer some of the concerns because they are made from the inedible parts of plants. Serious problems have beset cellulosic fuel production, however. Furthermore, farmers are reluctant to see their chaff go off to a distant refinery, never to return. They need this material in their soil.

Simply burning biomass for electricity and heat is easy. Communities are offered "green jobs" cutting, hauling, and chipping their forests to fire a new generation power plants being constructed (or retrofitted). At least 200 new burners are proposed in the USA. Some coal-fired plants may use biomass under the assumption that burning trees is better than burning coal.

To produce one continuous megawatt (MW) of electricity requires the burning of approximately 13,000 tons of wood per year. The wood chips would be delivered by diesel-fueled trucks. Remember that one megawatt is not a lot of power; it's generally considered enough to "power a thousand homes." Most power plants produce peak outputs of 500 MW, and the nukes are run continuously at full power (when they're not down for refueling or safety problems). The US EIA says that the USA generated 4,348,856 Gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity in 2007. Your 13,000 tons of trees produces only 8,760 GWh.

If the USA were to produce just 10% of its electricity by burning biomass, 760 million tons of wood would be required each year. This translates to harvesting an area the size of Florida every year. (This is not clear-cutting, but selective cutting at a rate of 20 tons/acre/year.) One way to meet the demand is to replace indigenous forests with eucalyptus plantations. They prefer a genetically-modified strain. These trees have been widely shown to deplete ground water supplies.

The facilities proposed for Massachusetts alone would produce 135-200 MW, an increase of just 1.3% in the state's total generating capacity. But this would require cutting over 2 million tons of wood a year. That translates to cutting the state's entire 844,000 acres of forest land every six years. (The EU is preparing to import enormous masses of wood for its own biomass systems.)

The emissions from biomass may actually be worse than coal. This is especially true in cases where "biomass" includes garbage, construction debris, tires, manure, and more. When synthetics are burned, they release a rich cocktail of toxins.

Fortunately, local opposition is increasing, and some of these foolish plants will probably never be built.

I'll ask one more time: could we please consider the alternative of living well with less? No, I thought not. . . .

Books

Campo Santa Maria Nova, Venice
A busy neighborhood square.
©2001 J.Crawford

Public Spaces How They Humanize Cities Debra Efroymson, Tran Thi Kieu Thanh Ha, Pham Thu Ha HealthBridge-WBB Trust, 2009 167 pages Full-text free download from WBB Printed version available from: HealthBridge in Canada or WBB Trust in Bangladesh

You might consider buying a carton of these books to hand out to local officials who still don't have a clue what public space is all about. (It's not really their fault; many of them have never experienced a public space that works.)

This book is not a planner's guide to public spaces. There's no math involved, no rigorous standards. Rather, this book seeks to show the reader how important public spaces are to quality of life and the strength of social connections in a city. It's an inspirational work, not a manual.

It's nicely illustrated and printed in a handy format. The one possible stumbling block for North American use is that the book focuses mainly on southern Asia. The lessons, however, are timeless and placeless. This is a book to give to anyone with an open mind on the subject of cities. Have a look at the free download, link just above.

Carjacked The Culture of the Automobile and Its Effect on Our Lives Catherine Lutz and Anne Lutz Fernandez Palgrave Macmillan, 2010 272 pages US$28.00 ISBN 978-0230618138

This book is a socio-economic study of the car in the USA. The authors, two sisters, were impelled to write the book by their own tragedies (five friends or family lost to car crashes). They went on to investigate the car as a major phenomenon in American life. They approached the study from a variety of viewpoints and conclude with some suggestions to Americans on how to reduce the stranglehold the car has on them. It calls for more sensible pricing of driving and better funding of non-automotive alternatives. It's a serious book and appears to have been carefully researched.

It's depressing to read a book like this, mainly because the only possible conclusion is that any real change in the "American Love Affair with the Car" is going to be difficult, expensive, and slow. This not withstanding the increasing irritation with traffic. The "my car is me" phenomenon is so deeply rooted in so many Americans that a significant change in attitudes will require people to find new (i.e., real) identities for themselves. This will not be easy, quick, or painless.

There is a lot of material on the economics of car ownership, the predations of car dealers, and the interplay between the car and society. All of it seems sound. Most depressing, perhaps, is that people spending hours in their cars listen to the likes of Rush Limbaugh, which makes any change in the status quo even less likely than it might otherwise be.

The Smart Growth Manual Andreas Duany, Jeff Speck with Mike Lydon McGraw-Hill, 2010 240 pages US$24.95 ISBN 978-0071376754

This disappointing work does not even have the word "carfree" (or any of its variant spellings) in the index. A quick thumbing seems to show that the topic is not in the index because it's not in the book.

Even though these folks understand that catering to the automobile has nearly destroyed American cities, they still cannot bring themselves to call for even small carfree spaces at city centers. Given that Europe has been installing them for decades now, with excellent results, it seems strange that American practitioners in the forefront of urban planning still will not utter the word. They must be awfully scared.

This is a small book that condenses each topic into onto one (sometimes not even full) page. It's nicely illustrated and reasonably printed. It doesn't even cost much if you buy it at a discount. I fear, though, that most readers of this newsletter will not find much to interest them here.

The Miami Herald sees it differently. Read their article, Architect's urban living guide doesn't include cars." Huh?

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