Looking Around
Venice, 2001

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Car-Lite Paris or, Damn the Cars, Full Speed Ahead!

I'm not obsessed by cars. I'm obsessed with the health of Parisians. Is it my fault that the automobile is the city's major source of pollution and that it takes up two-thirds of the road surface? Things have to be brought back into balance.

Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë

By 2007, the city will:

• Reduce speeds to 30 km/hr
• Remove a lane from the Seine's riverside highway to create a bike lane
• Reduce the width of several other streets
• Convert several grand boulevards to two-way (i.e., slower) traffic

Under the plan, cars of non-residents and tourist buses would be banned from a 5.6 square kilometer (2.1 square mile) area north of the Seine, according to Journal du Dimanche. Several major roads, including the heavily-trafficked riverside highway, would be closed to traffic. Bicycle routes would be opened and non-resident parking fees raised.

The project would affect everyone in the first, second, third, and fourth arrondissements, from Place de la Bastille to Place de la Concorde (one of the noisiest urban spaces on the planet, due almost entirely to extreme road traffic).

Only one household in four in this area owns a car, and it is expected that residents will favor the plan by a large margin. Businesses are expected to oppose it. Christian Gerondeau, of the National Federation of Automobile Clubs said, "The plan will turn Paris into a ghetto and cut off the capital from its hinterland. The car is indispensable to economic and cultural activity." Right. Just tell that to the Venetians!

The proposal supports Paris's bid to host the 2012 Olympics, which is founded on strong environmental protection.

Mayor Delanoë campaigned in 2001 on a platform of creating more "civilized space" in Paris, where traffic has steadily worsened and pollution has soared. Delanoë promised that he would "fight, with all the means at my disposal, against the harmful, ever-increasing and unacceptable hegemony of the automobile." He said that fighting the car is "a duty, but it also reflects the aspirations of a majority of Parisians." He pointed out that "private motorists, who make up a quarter of road users, use up 94% of Paris's road surfaces."

Since his election, he has dramatically reduced the amount of road space available to cars, giving rise to such bad gridlock that few people are willing to brave it any longer. Unlike in so many cities, this is seen as a benefit. Deputy Mayor Yves Contassot said, "It's only by making life hell for motorists that we will force them to give up their cars." The strategy seems to be working! Space is being set aside for buses, taxis and bicycles only. Cars have to squeeze into what's left over. Drivers were, predictably, outraged.

Delanoë views his popular closure of the highway along the Seine as the first stage in a plan to reconquer both banks of the river and eliminate cars entirely in favor of what he calls gentle traffic - "anything without an engine."

But Not in London

Yet everyone seems to admit that the small-scale pedestrianization of Trafalgar Square was a success. My own experience there in the summer of 2003 was that it was much better, and that there was still plenty of room for improvement. The change has, nonetheless, attracted thousands of extra visitors a day. Richard Rogers is Livingstone's architectural advisor and is pressing for a Sunday car ban along the Thames.

Living Streets, which campaigns for pedestrians, argues that too much attention is being paid to the needs of a small minority. Only one in thirteen people entering Central London between 07:00 and 10:00 is in a car; the remainder use public transport, cycle, or walk. A spokesman said, "Many streets in Central London are now so dominated by pedestrians that removing cars is the next logical step. We could have pavement cafés to rival anything in Paris."

New York Businesses Want Congestion Charging

New York Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg tried to charge commuters entering Manhattan, but his plan was blocked by state officials afraid of a backlash from heavily-Republican suburban voters who work in the city. Other cities are also reflecting on Livingstone's success in London.

New Yorkers Junking Their Cars

Goliath: The Road Gang

David & Goliath

David: Union of Concerned Scientists

Go here to read the full story and to give UCS money to circulate their ad. The Road Gang is still up to their tricks, more than 50 years after they were first convicted of criminal conspiracy and fined a whopping $5000 per company. (I guess that really taught them a lesson.)

Kid-Free Cities???

The cause seems to be simple: families with children cannot afford the high cost of center-city housing. San Francisco seems to be hardest hit. The median house price is a staggering $700,000, and only 14.5% of its residents are under 18, compared with 25.7% nationally. Seattle, which has more dogs than children, was second.

How do we bring children back into the city? Remove the cars. This makes cities safe places for children and frees up land to help hold down the cost of new housing. We can also use some of that land to make the play spaces that children must have.

Paramedic Bikes Get There First

One of the daily drawings by drew at
ToothpasteForDinner

Air Pollution Bad for Kids

After birth, genetic alterations were measured, and a 50% increase in the level of genetic abnormalities was found among the infants in high-pollution neighborhoods. Dr. Frederica P. Perera said, "We already knew that air pollutants significantly reduced fetal growth, but this is the first time we've seen evidence that they can change chromosomes in utero." She said that the findings underscore the need for government to take steps to protect children.

Bad For You, Too

Female toll booth attendants working on a highway south of Taipei were followed and compared with female office workers. Researchers measured urine samples for 8-OHdG and 1-OHPG, both produced by the breakdown of traffic pollutants. Blood levels of nitric oxide (another marker for tissue damage caused by exhaust byproducts) were also measured.

Levels of urinary 8-OHdG were on average 90% higher among the non-smoking toll booth operators than they were among the office workers. Levels of nitric oxide were on average 30% higher. The researchers say their work suggests that traffic fumes boost oxygen free radical activity and therefore cause DNA damage. They called for measures to reduce pollution to protect people's health. One researcher said that if a genotoxic effect could be confirmed, exposure to traffic pollution would have to be reduced.

Quite Quick Quiet Freight

While Europe has seen remarkable innovation in passenger equipment during the past two decades, freight technology has lagged far behind. This new bogie signals a renewed interest in rail freight, which is long overdue in Europe. (The USA, with dismal passenger rail service, is actually a leader in rail freight.)

Cutting Car Use Saves Money

• Workplace and school joint travel
• Public transport information
• Car sharing
• Telepresence
• On-line shopping

The End of Weather

Climateprediction.net used distributed computing to run thousands of competing climate models to arrive at a deeper look into the range of possible outcomes. No model run showed a change of less than 2° C, and even this seemingly low value means serious trouble.

The Kyoto Protocol has finally come into force, despite desperate attempts by Bush & Co. to derail it. It's much too little, and may be too late, but it is at least a framework for achieving the necessary changes. This same approach worked with the Montreal Accords for CFC reduction and needs to be made to work again, this time with a much less tractable problem.

If you don't yet believe that this is a serious problem, consult the following links:

We'll close this discussion by reminding folks that carfree cities offer what is almost certainly the easiest, cheapest, and most effective way to permanently reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, we would enjoy a large improvement in the quality of life. People are beginning to understand this.

The Oil Report

We will probably never pump significantly more than we are pumping now and will not be able to sustain this level for very long. Coupled with soaring Chinese demand, static production will soon plunge the world into an oil crisis. Unlike the first two crises, this one does not come to an end.

Oil is now firmly above US$50/barrel and OPEC has been unable to talk down the price. I will go way out on a limb and predict that oil will reach $100/barrel by the end of 2006. That will begin to exert an effect on consumption, and prices may not rise much above that level for some time.

What happens next is anybody's guess. The global production and consumption of energy is on such a vast scale and has such enormous inertia that rapid change is nearly out of the question. We will start to see solar sources becoming energetically and economically attractive. As production of photovoltaic cells, wind turbines, and solar heating collectors ramps up, demand for oil will sag, so the price may not reach the $200/barrel range any time soon, even in the face of declining production. (Of course, if Osama bin Laden shuts down Saudi production, all bets are off.)

The effects will be large and felt almost everywhere. As in the 1970s, look for deep recessions coupled with intractable inflation. Sectors, including agriculture, that are highly dependent on petroleum will be badly hit by soaring energy costs. The airline industry, already struggling, will be especially hard hit.

Nuclear power is quietly back on the agenda. I don't know if reactor designs have actually improved in the 30 years or so since anybody last ordered a power reactor, but I rather suspect that improvements beyond minor tweaking have not been made. (Proposals for safer reactors have been on the table for decades, but the development costs would be substantial.) The waste question is solvable in theory but apparently not in practice.

The big question for humanity is whether or not mass starvation at mid-century can be averted. I think it can, but we have to act now. Carfree cities offer what is almost certainly the easiest, cheapest, and most effective way to permanently reduce energy consumption. At the same time, we would enjoy a large improvement in the quality of life. People are beginning to understand this.

Saudi Arabia Peaks?

If Saudi Arabia have damaged their fields, accidentally or not, by overproducing them, then we may have already passed peak oil. Iran has certainly peaked, there is no way on Earth they can ever get back to their production of six million barrels per day (mbpd).

Simmons also discovered a fierce debate inside Aramco regarding overproduction.

The company claimed in the early 1970s that it would be able to produce 20 to 25mbpd, then by 1978 it was 12mbpd. Now it looks like 9.8mbpd is the maximum.

This is dangerous stuff. If we say they have not peaked and then they choose to further increase production, they will only hasten their field decline, and waste huge amounts of valuable oil into the bargain.

On the other hand, Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi recently said that the Saudis would increase production capacity to 12.5 mbpd by 2010. Whether this can be achieved at all or without damaging oil fields seems highly debatable.

Quite probably we are at or near peak oil production. The other half of the play still has to be written, but the plot is very simple: declining oil production. Forever.

Ominous Signs

• ConocoPhillips announced that additions to its oil reserves in 2004 were only about 60-65% of production.
• ChevronTexaco would not give precise figures but admitted that its 2004 reserves-replacement rate was low.
• Royal Dutch/Shell lowered its estimated holdings by a further 10%, bringing its total write-down to 5.3 billion barrels. In 2004, the company replaced only about 45-55% of the oil and gas it produced.

Since there's little money to be made finding oil, the big oil companies are doing what cash-rich companies do best: getting richer by buying other companies. This won't do anything to assure a continuing supply of oil.

The US Department of Energy's International Energy Outlook 2004 expects "conventional oil to peak closer to the middle than to the beginning of the 21st century." [Translation: 2026, if we polish the data right.] However, Princeton geologist Kenneth S. Deffeyes says in his new book, Beyond Oil, that "the peak will occur in late 2005 or in the first few months of 2006." Mike Rodgers of PFC Energy forecasts the peak between 2010 and 2015. Who really knows?

What this leaves unsaid is that demand is continuing to surge, and even a peak as late as 2025 has shortages developing long before then. People are grasping at "unconventional oil," the troublesome sources such as tar sands and oil shale, that are difficult, expensive, and environmentally risky to develop. "Natural gas liquids" are also touted as helping to save the day, but the looming North American gas shortages suggest that gas producers will prefer to include the lighter fractions of these hydrocarbons in the gas stream instead.

Meanwhile, stay tuned for my report from Lisbon.

Interesting New Books

 

The Nature of Order Book Two: The Process of Creating Life Christopher Alexander The Center for Environmental Structure, 2002 635 pages Hardcover US$ 75.00 but widely discounted ISBN 0972652906 Book One was reviewed in Carfree Times #37 Numbers in parentheses are page references. In quoted material I have retained the original, unusual typographic treatment.

Preface

As usual, before going to press, I circulated the draft of this issue to several people. The reaction to my review of this work ranges from "not bad enough" to "much too harsh." The task that Alexander has undertaken with these four volumes is so large and so important that the criticisms I have leveled deserve an airing. I will, therefore, attempt to organize some kind of discussion of this review and publish it in the next Carfree Times. Before you invest $75 cash and many evenings in this book, you may want to wait two months for the results of this discussion. It really is important to come to a full understanding of what Alexander has attempted and the weaknesses and strengths of the result.

Review

I will begin with a question that has bothered me since I began reading this series: what is the relationship between the "patterns" in Alexander's earlier work and the "centers" in this work? Alexander answers the question in Book Two:

These entities we called patterns were - albeit in an early formulation - somewhat similar to the entities I now call centers. (344)

In this volume, Alexander examines the process of design and proposes that good design evolves in a step-wise fashion. It is not the result of a single brilliant moment of insight.

Alexander believes that contemporary processes are at the root of many of today's design failures. He believes that the rise of "developers" and the loss of feeling not only go together but are cause and effect. (525) He says:

Many of the processes used today, sadly, are nearly bound to fail. We see the results of this failure all around us. The lifeless buildings and environments which have become common in modern society are not merely dead, non-living structures. They are what they are precisely because of the social processes by which they have been conceived, designed, built, and paid for. No matter how skillful the architects, no matter how gifted, no matter how profound their powers of design - if the process used is wrong, the design cannot save the project (3)

The modern development process is based solely on money, not on tangible physical results. (522)

The pursuit of wholeness, pure and simple, was at odds with virtually every institutional and social reality of the 20th century. (528)

Alexander clearly understands the weaknesses of today's planning-on-paper process. Speaking of dreadful contemporary designs, he says:

They can be created when conceived on paper. They are conceptual. But in their abstractness, they are barren, not of flesh, and they could not possibly have been created as a result of an authentic process of unfolding. (128)

And there is a further sense in which such planned communities, and indeed nearly all developer-built artificial communities, are based on structure-destroying transformations. This comes not from their failure to be consistent with the land where they are built, but merely from the fact that they are planned at all, rather than "grown." (122)

[T]he prevailing wisdom about architecture suggests that since a building is a complex whole, a designer has to do everything all at once, in a kind of incredible artistic tour-de-force, where he sees everything all at once in a single coherent vision. This is nonsense of course. But it is based on a rhetorical question something like this; "How could one possibly succeed in design, doing one thing at a time, since a complex whole is a unitary undivided whole which cannot be separated into parts?"

It is precisely the trick of the unfolding process to solve this problem. The unfolding process allows you to go one step at a time, precisely because it is based on a sequence which permits this without disturbing or screwing up the unfolding of the whole. (317)

In Alexander's view, each step is taken in order and worked until the best possible solution is found; then the next step is taken up. Feedback is thus explicitly excluded (unless it is built into the sequence itself, which is not the case in his examples). He believes that these sequences, once fully developed, are empowering:

Who knows the most about a place? The people who live there and work there. Who is capable of providing all the detailed twists and turns, the detailed nuances, the detailed lovely subtleties, required to create a well-adapted structure? The people who live there, and the people who work there. (558)

Alexander believes that sequences can be defined for urban design at all scales. To the extent that this is possible and yields good results, it would be a great simplification of the process. In the introduction to Part Two, he says,

Instead of using plans, designs, and so on, I shall argue that we MUST instead use generative processes. Generative process tell is what to DO, what ACTIONS to take, step by step, to make buildings and building design unfold beautifully, rather than detailed drawings which tell us what the END-result is supposed to be. (176)

The essence of the successful unfolding is that form develops step by step, and that the building as a whole then emerges, coherent, organized. The success of this process depends, always, on sequence. (129)

In this vision, the craft of the architect - the forming of the environment in its beauty, in its majesty, in its humanity - is to be assisted by semiautonomous generative sequences that help millions of people to become creative. (560)

He somewhat undermines his case when he gives three maps of Amsterdam's development up to 1800 and remarks:

If we look at the evolution of traditional Amsterdam (page 99), we see how gradually the canals were formed, bridges were built to span (and thus enhance) the canals, edges were formed for the canals, houses were built one by one along the canals - all enhancing the canals - and slowly, over two or three hundred years, a wonderful living harmony was built. (97)

Alexander claims that errors can be weeded out of sequences by testing:

If one applies a sequence of steps to a given context, and if one then observes the unfolding process, it is possible to identify, unambiguously, whether the process engendered by the sequence at any time contradicts itself - that means, whether one is forced to backtrack, because step B which comes at a certain point in the sequences forces one to undo the results of the previously taken step A. (306)

And yet Alexander does call for feedback in the design process. He complains:

...the line was drawn on a drawing board, without any opportunity for the line to be modified, or adjusted, according to realistic perception of actual difficulties and opportunities on the place itself. I claim that in a professional planning/design/development process, this failure of adaptation is inevitable, and that at the time of its creation no process was put in place to remove those mistakes. (187)

The modern process leaves no room for feedback. The process goes on without regard for the character of each log and its position in a building. The traditional adzing process allows each timber to be hewn, shaped, and carved according to its place in the house. (92)

Apprenticeship may be the most effective means to pass these skills on. The mentor simply points out in passing certain features of the work. An alert apprentice picks this up as it comes and becomes a journeyman in less than a decade. (The apprentice system has the advantage that the adolescents entering the system are still young enough to develop completely new pathways of thought and to learn skills that are based in intuition, not formal process.)

The computer-driven production of custom parts will be taken up at length in Book Three, but Alexander mentions it here. This is a development I have been hoping to see for some time. It would bring an end to the imperative of using standard-sized, mass-produced parts to control costs. It brings an end to a century of "Taylorism" (516), which killed the centuries-old apprentice system. Taylorism is today's "de-skilling" - don't hire expensive people with broad skills; hire poorly trained people and teach them to perform one task. Regarding the opportunities afforded by computer-controlled production, Alexander says:

Deep in our hearts, I suspect we know that every situation is unique, each person, each moment, and therefore each place, must be unique. To live in a world which denies this truth, by creating an appearance of sameness, and then perhaps forcing us unique creatures into that mold of sameness, is degrading and impossible to bear. (331-332)

As I have observed, modern people are, very often, not holistic perceivers. Instead of seeing the wholeness and acting on it, they (especially if they are educated in verbal concepts at modern institutions) now perceive according to invented categories, which often blind them to the wholeness which exists. (116)

Our current modes of perception are not always tuned to seeing wholeness in the world around us; and the exact definition of the structure of wholeness - the system of centers at all scales, with their attendant degrees of life and coherence - is cumbersome and hard to grasp when we try to grasp it by analytical means. (370)

As in Book One, Alexander sometimes reaches too far. Regarding the "fundamental law about the creation of complexity," he says:

The law states simply this: ALL the well-ordered complex systems we know in the world, all those anyway that we view as highly successful, are GENERATED structures, not fabricated structures. (180)

Like Book One, this book is long and arduous. Unlike Alexander's earlier work, it meanders and repeats. I think those involved in urban design had better read it, but we should hope for a more succinct and useful treatment from another hand in the not too distant future.

Alexander has done us a huge favor by opening up this new field, which points in a very hopeful direction. It is a pity that these first two books are weak efforts to translate his understanding into useful theories. For the next issue, I will review Book Three. It appears to be more useful in guiding actual design. In the mean time, let us hold on to the ideas that the processes of design are crucial and that morphogenic sequences could be powerful tools in the hands of citizen designers.

The Post-Automobile City: Legal Mechanisms to Establish the Pedestrian-Friendly City James A. Kushner, Southwestern University School of Law Carolina Academic Press, 2004 176 pages Softcover US$25.00 ISBN 1594600015

The Post-Automobile City is James Kushner’s assessment of how US society came to be dominated by the automobile, its effects on public transport, land-use, and housing, but also (most importantly) how we might reverse these trends and return to people-centred communities. Kushner is nominally based in the USA, but has lectured and travelled widely in Europe. It is his insight into the divergent US and European experience of transportation and cities which forms the basis for this comparative analysis of both past public policy failures and future opportunities.

The book begins by examining the role of the car in late 20th Century American society, starting with the systematic, state-subsidised processes of suburbanisation and the dismantling of efficient public transport. It goes on to consider the subsequent loss of local amenities, the decline of vibrant communities, and social exclusion caused by car-based land-use patterns.

Following a discussion on the geo-political perils of continued oil dependency, the remainder of the book concentrates on strategies for delivering an alternative model - the post-automobile city. Using examples drawn mainly from continental Europe, Kushner examines the ways in which progressive, integrated transportation, housing, and locational policies can promote urban regeneration and re-establish liveable cities as places that provide access to essential services, opportunities, and quality of life. Themes include pedestrianisation, traffic-calming measures, parking reduction, and a review of European carfree housing projects. Whilst this material might be familiar to many readers, the significance of this book is that it describes in clear terms the motivations and fiscal and regulatory mechanisms used to establish a wide range of people-friendly policies, from national to community level. Of course, it would be simplistic to suggest that there is no opportunity for policy transfer from the USA to Europe: There are many examples from American cities of innovative best practice. Kushner touches upon the Smart Growth and New Urbanism movements in the US, which aim to re-establish high-density, walkable, and transit-orientated communities with a quality urban realm and a sense of place.

As a study in comparative policy analysis, the book highlights the pivotal role of the automobile in destroying civic society. However, anyone looking to this volume as a shortcut to some form of carfree utopia will be disappointed: This book is not about immediately eradicating automobiles nor demonising motorists, but rather the social, economic, and political realities of alleviating chronic car-dominance. That’s not to suggest that Kushner’s position is incompatible with the objectives of the carfree movement. He offers a systematic indictment of the auto-centric transport policies, tax framework, and stealth-subsidies which continue to support the entire property development, auto manufacturing, and infrastructure sectors and serve to mask the true costs of car dependency. Moreover, The Post-Automobile City is based on detailed research, which draws upon a wide range of legal, governmental, and professional sources. It provides a comprehensive and meticulously referenced resource for policy makers, academics, and advocates involved in transportation, urban renewal, or community planning. Kushner shows that much successful work is already being done towards the post-automobile city, and that such measures are more equitable and more efficient than an outmoded infatuation with the car.

Railvolution The Professional Two-Monthly Magazine Of Rail Transport Worldwide M-presse s.r.o. Zelená c.p. 1083 160 00 Praha 6 Czech Republic €10.00/single copy

Semi-monthly magazine with a strong European focus on rail, mainly from the rolling-stock perspective. Also strongly focused on passenger equipment but with some freight as well. Includes not only line-haul heavy-rail operations but also metros and trams. Very nicely produced and much more interesting than the US rail trade journals which, last time I saw them, were mostly advertising.

Hot New Links

The New Modernity

An Architecture for Our Time

Why the Western Economic Model Will not Work for the World

The Future Isn't What It Used To Be Changing Trends And Their Implications For Transport Planning [PDF!] (VTPI)

World Transport Policy & Practice

TramTrain

The Neighbourhood Initiatives Foundation

Road design? He calls it a revolution

Adaptions to Main Roads [PDF!]

A Tale of Two Cities: The Mayors of Paris and London Say "Enough" to Cars

They're Not Making More (Review: Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil)

The Public transport and priority to pedestrians and bicycles as a basis for the quality of life in capital cities [PDF!] General Assembly of UCUE, Lisbon, 27 September 2002 (I would be very grateful if someone would volunteer to read and summarize this document!)

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