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Transitioning the infrastructure is an excellent idea. Goals to work toward are lifestyles that are as carfree as possible. City development or restructuring in the future could follow the pedestrian and light rail oriented designs by J. H. Crawford;
Individual districts could look like the following;
I'm quite skeptical of planned cities. They tend to miss the boat on mixed-use development -- retail on the first floor, residential above. That's a very successful urban form, and one used along avenues in most old streetcar suburbs.
Intentionally non-gridiron, non-rectilinear streets also seem ill-advised. Non-straight streets seem to increase the amount of walking required and the amount of pavement needed.
By an amazing coincidence, that's exactly what is suggested in the plan.
If interested in such things, you should visit carfree.com. It may astound you, but people can't give their entire plan for reorganising cities and societies in a comment on an article on a website. They need at least a few pages.:)
As much of the foot travel is to and from the center of the district, a radial pattern is more desireable. Absolutely straight streets everywhere can take a bit of human scale away from an urban design, and the wedges of a radial shape are so narrow at the center as to reduce efficiency of space.
Curved or otherwise non-straight avenues can create more of a sense of 'here', and intrigue one as to the view around the corner.
From the Carfree Cities Design Elements page.
Elegant design and concept. Almost utopian, really. But a few practical issues:
1. This would be highly unpleasant if the rail was above ground.
2. How do people get into and out of the city? Does another rail line run through the central hub?
3. How is residential and commercial divided?
4. How do people have access to the green space? Is it completely cordoned off for wildlife or can it be used for agriculture, recreation, etc?
5. Where are you going to build it? The Amazon? Siberia? Mars? Most development has already happened worldwide so the infrastructure is already there. Are you going to level existing cities in order to build it? At what cost to people and resources?
6. Air travel?
7. No personal vehicles of any sort?
8. Doesn't seem to allow much variety and options for homes and public spaces.
Each of the lobes has at least one district that can connect to external road or rail networks, for moving people and cargo (good, produce, etc).
Retail is on the first floor, with the largest retail near the center of each district. Commercial would tend to be located near the center of each district. Residential can be throughout the district, nominally above the first floor, especially near the center of the district.
This can be up to the city's preference. Obviously, with 80% open space, there will be plenty of parks, sports fields, gardens, wildlife areas, and so forth. Note that the interior of each city block, without the need for car parking, can look like the following picture;
While some countries might be pressed to find land to start such a project, other countries are creating new cities from scratch, such as Dubai and China;
Dubai Carbon Free City
China's new carbon free city
An airport could be located nearby, but such an investment would make little sense in a peak oil world.
Inside each district, there could be bikes, segways, and motorized transport for those with physical challenges. For transport outside the city, 3 districts in each lobe could have car parking, for both private cars and for car-share cars.
Any number of architectural themes can be realized. Suburbia-influenced yard layouts are not considered appropriate for this design theme, for all the obvious reasons.
There can be quite a bit of architectural diversity even within one city block;
I encourage you to visit the website Carfree.com to gain a greater sense of the way such a city would be designed, built, and lived-in.
I think the plan is very practical in a post oil world but unfortunately we probably won't have the energy resources to rebuild our cities from scratch. I wrote an undergrad thesis on the same topic back in the early 80's and a few aspects are worth expounding on.
1. The size of the subcity is both a function of the practical distance to walk to public transportation, farmland and open space (considered by some to be 7 minutes in todays society) and the appropriate scale of political entities for a local democratic government (some say 7000 is the maximum). Its interesting to note that even when preindustrial New York City exceeded a million people most of its food was grown within a seven mile radius.
2. The plan only describes uses as housing but I would assume that the blocks are mixed use, with the lower level as commercial functions, particularly in the center. The hieght of the blocks is not discribed but I would assume about a 5 story maximum to maintain a human scale and efficiency. The thickness of a building is also similar to preindustrial blocks where lighting and ventilation where from natural, not mechanical means. In this case the street and squares become defined spaces. The space between buildings become as important and defined as the buildings themselves. I explored the idea of building blocks as solar envelopes, where the intent was not to have buildings shade one another for maximum solar gain. This results in a diamond pattern of pyramids but sacrificies the strong sence of defined space between buildings.
3. The shape of the blocks in this case is a result of organic (accretive) growth, similar to most preindustrial cities but with a underlying masterplan much like Amsterdam. In Amsterdam an efficient transportation system of canals for boat traffic radiated outward as the city grew. In this case a highly efficient, quiet and above grade rail network will provides transportation beyond walking. I suspect that air travel in twenty or thirty years will become extrodinarily expensive and large airliners will become dinosaurs. Large airports will become few and far apart. Trains are the future.
If you agree with James Kunstler, and I do, the US is probably screwed. The huge investment in the spralling suburban built enviroment will become the new ghetto. Will the lawn become a permaculture garden? Can we cover roofs with solar panels cost effectively? Will we get mass transit up and running at the scale necessary? Unfortunately the energy required to maintain this infrastrucure as it wares out will probably be not be viable. Can we recycle much of it? Maybe, maybe not. Calculations posted below indicate its probably not worth recycling asphalt into energy. Can you recycle a tract home and strip mall? Hummm?
I've seen strip malls, at least the blocks of the buildings, parking lots and foundations ground up into huge piles. most of the steel and pipes are probably recycled because the volumes are so big.
now tract homes, not a whole lot will probably recycled unless the cost of the basic materials is expensive as it should be in a post-peak world. there already is a new trend of increased copper stealing. I have heard of slow demolition where a lot of the building is torn down piece by piece. aren't construction materials like sheet rock and 2X4s not recycled a lot? we can probably make progress in recycling construction debris.
we don't know if suburbia is the new ghetto. suppose we radically increase MPG or car pool more? suppose the unemployed living in suburbs gets jobs busing suburbanites to their jobs in the city? I would think that raised beds would help suburbs that had their good top soil scrapped away. the costs for solar seem to be going down while the cost for power is trending up. there are also other options. solar windows, solar paint, geothermal, wind and other things. the suburbs usually have more money so they could adapt. they could sell the SUV if they had to!
I am very glad to see people discussing the demand side situation relative to carbon fuels, the application of new urbanist city planning principles.
The biggest challenge is the entropic suburban developments that have sprung up in the age of the automobile and cheap oil. These communities need to be retrofitted, with the major change being the building of community centers for economic and cultural activities. WE need to bring the goods and services to the neighborhoods rather than all this willy nilly wasteful driving around to get the things we need and want.
Such will not occur unless we accept the maxim of a Planned Economy. The trick will be changing the way that resources are allocated to and within communities. We need to look beyond the tyranny of the bottom line in development projects, and allocate resources incorporating environmental (i.e. sustainability and equity) externalities. Even if we as a reactionary economic culture can accept the need for Ecological Socialist Planning (ESP ;-) ), we will still be faced with the huge problem related to the incredibly inflated real estate prices and costs of Capital. We may have to figure some way of writing off these costs.
The following is something that I wrote previously.
Policy Paper #7 – Energy, Agriculture, and Waste Issues
Mike Morin
Are they proceeding with tar sands removal and processing?
Such would be unfortunate in "light" of the gluttony of our times and relative to future needs, and to other concerns of the "natural" environment, public health (such as water and air quality and availability), wildlife (which does not threaten domestic life), and recreation.
Similar concerns have of course been stated for coal, oil, natural gas, uranium, water, and other resources.
Among the many problems associated with the agricultural sector are those regarding runoff from manures, pesticides, herbicides, and of soil. It is my considered opinion that Americans could consume much less meat. Shifting agricultural practices towards less meat and dairy production and consumption would help assuage the non-human animal manure problem. Some may argue that such manure could be a valuable fertilizer source though I would argue that I would not want such a job. Less meat, dairy, and egg consumption would also be healthier for people and would allow more people to realize healthy diets.
Currently blood meal from slaughterhouses is a source of nitrogen fertilizer. Again, such as the other jobs in that sectors would be very unpleasant and should be highly compensated. Evolution to a less meat regimen and more humane treatment of animals would be in order.
We need to put more resources into composting efforts and other practices and technologies associated with ecological food systems.
I have previously addressed in other forums the opportunity costs associated with cropping for tobacco, alcohol, soft drinks, sugar in lieu of food crops, ethanol, and biofuels.
Also, the active encouragement and support of more localized food systems (i.e. going toward self-sufficiency in all regions) would go a long way towards improving the quality of life in our communities. We need to put in place development control policies which stop once and for all the loss of productive farmland (and stop the sprawl that engenders and perpetuates energy intensive lifestyles) and work with growers and other farm workers to develop a production system in which they control the means of production and distribution (In such a scheme, I would consider people who work in distribution and transport a "farm" worker). Packaging should be minimized, advertising (in all sectors) eliminated and concurrently restaurant establishments should be scaled back considerably, if not minimized. Doing these things would greatly help the trash disposal problems that are with us now. Additionally, we need to actively support the reinstitution of source separation of wastes.
To the extent that sewer systems exist, humanure can and is captured. The production of algae for energy production may very well be an endeavor worthy of pursuit. Biosolids are a major problem and perhaps the construction of tankers and barges to haul and dump such to the deep ocean could mitigate this problem and create many high skilled jobs and community economic development and ownership opportunities.
However, like a national highway program (the so-called free freeways of the so-called free market system), the notion that these could be developed as a marketable products strikes me as absurd, but not nearly absurd as the plethora of extraneous and ill-conceived products that currently sit on shelves or the mountains of trash which plague our
hinterlands.
Policy Paper #2 – Equity and Sustainability Mike Morin
>Unfortunately, most Americans led by one certain heinous VP and his non-elected boss, have been inured with the notion that our energy consumption patterns are not negotiable.
This is undoubtedly one of the biggest challenges we face and the one that we must work relentlessly to correct.
We must form an equity union to implement community redevelopment and relocalization strategies towards the realization of walkable communities and the significant reduction on the dependence of the automobile and the airplane. Perhaps a desirable goal would be the reduction of automobile use by 80% in the next 20 years. With regards to what would remain of the automobile industry it is necessary to implement strong CAFE standards, which would probably be best done by the capitalization of a retooling effort (imagine something like the Yugo or a quality Aveo as a hybrid). TOD and car sharing are very worthwhile ideas.
Concurrent with the former would be a program of road narrowing which would reclaim the livability of many once desirable and potentially reclaimable properties.
There would be problems associated with peak and non-peak use of automotive vehicles. For example, here in Oregon, many folks would want to use cars in the summer months to get to hiking destinations (assuming there will be any left given the current and projected policies and practices consistent with the rapacious concept of supply side economics). If one does not have a car, the current alternative is to rent one. I did this once, and the insurance costs are prohibitive. If we had an insurance pool, and the "users" owned the vehicles instead of rented, it may be a better arrangement.
I concur that bio-fuels are a limited alternative and only within the context of a much less energy intensive civilization, and much better if we could produce it with byproducts and waste products. And there are opportunity costs associated with liquors and soft drinks. Dealing directly with such issues would also go a long way toward reducing health and waste problems. And there are the opportunity costs associated with food (and byproduct) production relative to the tobacco industry. Converting liquor and soft drinks to ethanol, and tobacco resources to food resources May both be great ideas. Though a more thorough discussion about the use of biofuels May be in order.
But neither is sufficient without radical demand side management and more relocalization of food production and the production and distribution of other (necessary) goods.
Supply side economics has been a disaster and we can no longer rely on "the invisible hand" to DICTATE an anarchist (though the Capitalists prefer the term Libertarian) world headed toward certain disaster.
Sustainability and equity, equity and sustainability need to be our guiding principles.
Imagine the money we could reinvest in our communities and economy if we weren't spending it on the tremendously costly (also in terms of lives, injuries, and other miseries) wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Imagine the money that could be saved by drastically downsizing government: Federal, State, County, and Municipal.
Major savings realized by reducing or eliminating or in some cases reorganizing the current redundant, legalistic, bureaucratic, inefficient, and oppressive "democracies" which represent the interests of the monied elite coupled with an economic reorganization, a transition to an economic democracy, a planned economy, is fundamentally necessary for world peace, sustainability, equity, and survival.
You May want to look at the following also:
www.culturechange.org/Morin.html
Workin' for peace and cooperation,
Mike Morin
katerimarie@netzero.net
When gasoline prices climb to a much higher level, very few people will buy an SUV at any price. They become un-sellable, but they make great driveway ornaments and storage sheds.
.
Gilbert.
http://www.angelfire.com/in/Gilbert1/tt.html