The holiday season is a time to celebrate, be thankful, and reflect. In this spirit, here are trends in the field of urban planning that give me hope and others that I find worrying.
The Good
Rapid uptake of bikeshare
As readers of this blog know, I think the environmental, health, and fiscal benefits of biking are extremely persuasive. The rise of bikeshare programs around the country is a promising sign. It shows that by lowering the barriers to transportation choices, people will make different decisions. It also significantly grows the local demand for bike facilities and therefore more complete streets. Also, according to a 2012 Sierra Club report, the DC bikeshare program eliminated five million miles of driving in 2011. If that isn’t exciting, I don’t know what is.
Cities are back
The greenest neighborhood is the densest neighborhood. This trend has been emerging for years, but it seems to have crossed a tipping point. According to Brookings, walkable neighborhoods perform better economically and benefit from being near other walkable places. All the data points in this direction, but so do the anecdotes. Here is H St, NE, DC now. This corridor was significantly damaged by riots just 40 years ago.
Protesting
Speaking of riots, protesting has shaped cities to be more responsive to its residents. It is good to see Brazilians expressing their displeasure with the investments leading up to the World Cup and Olympics. It isn’t crazy to expect commensurate community investments when massive expenditures are made for sports and tourists. Also, five dead construction workers reveals a system that doesn’t protect its workers. Protesting is an important part of creating more equitable cities.
Internet free spaces
This idea hasn’t caught on yet, but i think internet free spaces have a future in urban places. The writer Evgeny Morozov (subscription required) first brought them to my attention. With the growing discomfort and outrage with the tracking of metadata by both the government and other corporations as well as just screen time fatigue, I foresee a future with urban spaces that are disconnected, untrackable, unwired – human spaces. Or maybe we just fall deeply in true love with our computers.
The Troubling
Lack of affordability in cities
With the increase in demand to live and work cities, comes the negative repercussions for those on the lower end of the income spectrum. Cities are no longer affordable. The public housing built downtown in the 60s and 70s has been largely redeveloped with less affordable housing and more market rate (often high end) housing. As happens when neighborhoods change with more income, the people and the poverty is displaced. Poverty is now growing in the suburbs. Manufacturing jobs in the suburbs have disappeared. The service sector jobs that pay low wages are in the suburbs. The suburban population is aging. The policy responses to suburban poverty are most likely going to be different from the responses to urban poverty. Let the hard work begin.
Exclusive transportation
While the increase in transportation choices is good news, the rise of exclusive transportation, like the technology company employee buses in San Francisco and companies like Uber, is worrying. These private services have the potential to undermine community investments in public transportation. Employee only bus routes represent a tenuous commitment to the city, one that can be ended at any time, and remove users from the public transportation system.
Old architects
I’m constantly vacillating between admiring and being disappointed by two of the richest and most successful companies in the world, Facebook and Apple. It is hard to believe they are visionary companies when they hire traditional architects to design their new headquarters. The Apple headquarters reminds me of the Pentagon. The Facebook headquarters remains isolated and disconnected from the region. Why couldn’t they have hired a young architect who is doing exciting things? Aren’t these companies following the lead of the young in so many other ways? Then why not build a headquarters near where they live?
Watering down of “sustainability”
What does it even mean anymore? Recycling? Reusable bags for shopping? An electric vehicle? In the age of advanced metrics in everything from finance to sports, it isn’t a good sign that the meaning of the word best describing our movement is so opaque. It now seems to be token, congratulatory, sycophantic. Is there a way to infuse the term sustainability with real meaning?
What are your best and worst in urban planning from 2013?
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