Planning Theory and Ideas

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Compiled by: Rae-Leigh Stark Intern, Urban Planning & Design Institute of Shenzhen (UPDIS) Master of Urban & Regional Planning Candidate, Portland State University September 2015 THEORIES & IDEAS SHAPED CITIES: THAT HAVE A PLANNER’S GUIDE

Transcript of Planning Theory and Ideas

Compiled by: Rae-Leigh StarkIntern, Urban Planning & Design Institute of Shenzhen (UPDIS)

Master of Urban & Regional Planning Candidate, Portland State UniversitySeptember 2015

THEORIES & IDEASSHAPED CITIES:THAT

HAVE

A PLANNER’S GUIDE

THEORIES & IDEAS THAT HAVE SHAPED CITIES: A PLANNER’S GUIDEURBAN PLANNING & DESIGN INSTITUTE OF SHENZHEN 2015 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cities are the Primary Drivers of Economic Growth

The Legibility and Imageability of the City

The City Beautiful Movement

Regional Planning

Urban Renewal

Bottom-Up Design

HISTORIC PLANNING THEORY

MODERN PLANNING IDEASNew Urbanism

Tactical Urbanism

General Theory of Walkability

The High Cost of Free Parking

Health and the Built Environment

20 MPH Speed Limits

Road Diets / Rightsizing Streets

TRANSPORTATION DEMAND THEORY

The Commuting ParadoxAdvocacy Planning

4.5.6.

17.16.

15.14.

12.

11.10.9.8.7.

25.

23.22.

21.20.19.18.

27.

INTRODUCTION3.

Street Network Theories / The Case for Smaller Blocks12 Foot Lanes are Distastorous

FURTHER RESOURCES28.

Inequities Among Poor / Spatial Mismatch Theory26.

Induced Demand - If You Build It, They Will Come

24. Theories of Congestion

Transportation and Land Use13.

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INTRODUCTION

This icon will link to online resources to help you further understand the theory or idea. The resources include films, project examples, case studies, research, and how the theory or idea can be applied through practice.

WHEN YOU SEE THIS, CLICK!

PLANNING DISCIPLINES

Researching transportation planning theory is no easy task. While historically, urban planning has been theorized, transportation planning has not. As transportation planners we have a hard task. Not only are we responsible for transporting people and goods from point A to point B, but we also have a larger role in society. Transportation effects the community’s health and happiness, it drives the economy and supports people’s livelihoods, and most importantly, people’s lives are in our hands when they use the system we built.

Although much theory doesn’t exist, there are many case studies and best practices. Cities all over are learning what’s best, exploring new options, and building transportation systems that are continually evolving and improving. There might not be an exact equation to what is proposed, but if you plan the system with the community in mind, you are building the best system.

Finally, we must not forget that transportation is not an independent practice; planning is interdisciplinary. Every decision made and every change to the transportation system has the potential to lead to consequences in land use, urban design, economic growth, social justice, and resource preservation.

“There is no planning practice without a theory about how it ought to be practiced. That theory may or may

not be named or present in consciousness, but it is there all the time.”

– John Friedmann

HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE

LANDUSE

URBANDESIGN

ECONOMICGROWTH

RESOURCEPRESERVATION

TRANSPORT-ATION

SOCIALJUSTICE

There are 6 planning disciplines (land use, urban design, economic growth, social justice, transportation, and resource preservation) present throughout the guide. These icons indicate which planning discipline the theory or idea is most applicable.

Use this guide while determining what is the best practice for the project or proposal you’re working on. This guide can help steer you in the right direction and provide insite to what has been done and what works best.

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HISTORICPLANNING

THEORY

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1. Jane Jacobs approached cities as living beings and ecosystems. She suggested that over time, buildings, streets and neighborhoods function as dynamic organisms, changing in response to how people interact with them.

2. She explained how each element of a city – sidewalks, parks, neighborhoods, government, economy – functions together, in the same manner as the natural ecosystem. This understanding helps us discern how cities work, how they break down, and how they could be better structured.

3. Although orthodox planning theory had blamed high density for crime, filth, and a host of other problems, Jacobs disproved these assumptions and demonstrated how a high concentration of people is vital for city life, economic growth, and prosperity.

4. While acknowledging that density alone does not produce healthy communities, she illustrated through concrete examples how higher densities yield a critical mass of people that is capable of supporting more vibrant communities. In exposing the difference between high density and overcrowding, Jacobs dispelled many myths about high concentrations of people.

5. By dissecting how cities and their economies emerge and grow, Jacobs cast new light on the nature of local economies. She contested the assumptions that cities with large, stable businesses are the best sources of innovation. Instead, she developed a model of local economic development based on adding new types of work to old, promoting small businesses, and supporting the creative impulses of urban entrepreneurs.

“A metropolitan economy, if it is working well, is constantly transforming many poor people into middle-class people, many illiterates into skilled people, many

greenhorns into competent citizens...Cities don’t lure the middle class.

They create it.”

CITIES ARE THE PRIMARY DRIVERS OF ECONOMIC GROWTH

Approach cities as Jane Jacob did, as living beings and ecosystems. Build cities as the community wants them and use their ideas to shape them. For example: Could a mix of urban village development and modern planning better support an environment for the middle class and economic growth?

The cities Jane Jacob imagined resulted in not the middle class living in them, but instead the elite upper class. As cities became trendy, desirable places to live in, only the elite have been able to afford to live in them. While this wasn’t the intent or vision of Jacobs, it is the reality. However, there are methods like mixed-income housing, inclusive zoning, and workforce housing to keep even the most desirable places affordable.

APPLICATIONS IN PLANNING PRACTICE

CRITIQUES

– Jane Jacobs

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“Not only is the city an object which is perceived (and perhaps enjoyed) by millions of people of widely

diverse class and character, but it is the product of many builders who are constantly modifying the

structure for reasons of their own.”

THE LEGIBILITY AND IMAGEABILITY OF THE CITY

The best way to apply the theory of legibility and imageability into practice is to create a mental map of the city you’re working or living in. Are you able to use your memory to create a well-defined map of a place? If you’re able to remember a place, areas that are distinct, and the way to travel throughout, then the city is legible. If you are struggling to create a well-defined mental map of a place, than the city is lacking in legibility and imageability.

APPLICATIONS IN PLANNING PRACTICE

1. The legibility of a place is essentially the ease with which people understand the layout of a place. By introducing this idea, Lynch was able to isolate distinct features of a city, and see what specifically is making it so vibrant, and attractive to people.

2. The city contains many unique elements, which are defined as a network of paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks.

3. Paths are channels by which people move along in their travels. Examples of paths are roads, trails, and sidewalks. Edges, are all other lines not included in the path group. Examples of edges include walls, and seashores. Districts are sections of the city, usually relatively substantial in size, which have an identifying character about them. Nodes, are points or strategic spots where there is an extra focus, or added concentration of city features. Examples

include a busy intersection or a popular city center. Landmarks are physical objects that act as reference points.

4. Imageability, another term introduced by Lynch, is the quality of a physical object, which gives an observer a strong, vivid image. He concluded that a highly imageable city would be well formed, would contain very distinct parts, and would be instantly recognizable to the common inhabitant.

5. A well-formed city is highly reliant upon the most predominant city element, paths. Similarly, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks contribute to imageability if they are meaningful, distinct, and not confusing.

6. These elements, when placed in good form, increase human ability to see and remember patterns, and it is these patterns that make it easier to learn.

– Kevin Lynch

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1. The City Beautiful movement was a reaction to the rapid, ferocious and unplanned growth of American cities in the modern industrial era after the Civil War. The movement of people from country to city had become a flood. By 1910 46% of Americans lived in cities or larger towns. By 1920 the number would go to over 50%. Those towns and cities were dirty, crowded, polluted, crime-ridden places – and they were ugly. Little thought was given to beauty when there was money to be made.

2. Daniel Burnham, a Chicago architect, began to address these issues in an approach to urban planning that would become known as the City Beautiful movement. City Beautiful was characterized by the belief that if you improved form, function would follow. In other words, an attractive city would perform better than an unattractive one. Beauty came from what Burnham called “municipal art” --

magnificent parks, highly designed buildings, wide boulevards, and public gathering places adorned with fountains and monuments. Such beautiful additions to the cityscape could not directly address perceived social ills, but they could, at least in Burnham’s thinking, indirectly improve social problems by enhancing the urban environment.

3. Burnham then applied City Beautiful ideas to several city designs including Washington, D.C. and San Francisco, CA. The culmination of the movement came in 1906 when Burnham prepared the Plan of Chicago, the first comprehensive plan for an American city.

4. Although the City Beautiful movement was revolutionary in America, it drew upon urban planning ideas used for many years in Europe. In particular, Burnham used Paris as a successful model of urban planning.

“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized.

Make big plans; aim high in hope and work.”

CITY BEAUTIFUL

When designing new city streets or connectivity within a new development, think further than a bird’s eye view. For example, look deep into what it’s like to be a pedestrian on the street, rather than how it looks and if it meets all the standards of a textbook.

City Beautiful has been critiqued because a city doesn’t function properly or provide for its residents if beauty is the top concern. While aesthetics are very important, remember function over form.– Daniel Burnham

APPLICATIONS IN PLANNING PRACTICE

CRITIQUES

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REGIONAL PLANNING

1. The first, and the most influential in America’s history, period of regionalism happened in 1956 for the planning of the Interstate System. The Federal Highway of 1956 authorization of $25 billion for the construction of 41,000 miles (66,000 km) of the Interstate Highway System over a 10-year period.

2. The idea that planning can’t just happen within a city, but instead within a region or in this case within the country, was cemented. Regional Planning is really important in the US, especially with transportation planning. Starting in 1962, urbanized areas in the US with populations of 50,000+ are required by the federal government to have a Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO).

3. MPOs are responsible for the comprehensive transportation planning process for their urbanized area.

4. Urbanized areas are designated by the Census Bureau and are a reflection of urban growth, not political boundaries. The Federal Government wants to ensure that the transportation planning process and network are cohesive and functional for areas that have grown together. Transportation planning needs to be regional in scope because transportation systems cut across governmental boundaries.

5. Even though the US has created the system of MPOs to provide thought and make decisions regarding regional transportation, the US has failed to act cohesively to successfully implement a large public works project, like the highway system, since then.

6. The US could plan better on regioanl and federal levels to help develop a high-speed rail system or provide more cohesive development policies across the nation.

Portland, Oregon is unique in that it has the US’s only regionally elected government, Portland Metro. Metro coordinates between Portland’s incorporated cities and counties, with a specific responsibility to address growth and land use by, orienting growth clustered along transportation corridors, creating a mix of transportation options, encouraging compact urban design, and proactively anticipating long-term growth.

It is also unique because Portland implemented the first Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) in 1978. Development cannot happen outside of the boundary; it protects farms and forests from sprawl, and promotes the efficient use of land, public facilities and services inside the boundary.

The UGB has required Portland to maintain and increase density. The fight for space is evident, so Portland is works hard to reduce the number of people who drive, therefore eliminating the need for expansive roads and sprawled development that use a lot of space.

CASE STUDY

“It takes a whole region to make a city.”

– Patrick Geddes

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1. Urban Renewal emerged in the late 1940s and has had both successes and failures. It is a form of land redevelopment that was used in blighted, moderate to high-density, urban areas. The process has had a major impact on many urban landscapes, and has played an important role in the history and demographics of cities around the world.

2. Urban renewal involves the relocation of businesses, the demolition of structures, the relocation of people, and the use of eminent domain (government purchase of property for public purpose) as a legal instrument to take private property for city-initiated development projects.

3. Proponents have seen urban renewal as a tool for economic growth and a reform mechanism, and by critics as a mechanism for control. It may enhance existing communities, and in some cases result in the demolition of neighborhoods. Many cities

link the revitalization of the central business district and gentrification of residential neighborhoods to earlier urban renewal programs.

4. In the present day, urban renewal evolved into a policy based less on destruction and more on renovation and investment, and today is an integral part of many local governments, often combined with small and big business incentives.

5. Robert Moses was the “master builder” of mid-20th century New York City and played a significant role in the urban renewal of the city. As the shaper of a modern city, he is one of the most polarizing figures in the history of urban planning in the United States. His decisions favoring highways over public transit helped create the modern suburbs of Long Island and influenced a generation of engineers, architects, and urban planners who spread his philosophies across the nation.

I raise my stein to the builder who can remove ghettos without removing people as I hail the chef who can

make omelets without breaking eggs.

URBAN RENEWAL

– Robert Moses

As a planner involved in Urban Renewal projects, it is important to thoughtfully consider those who are being affected by the project. It is important to support the people who currently live at the project location. Work within the community to find solutions for the potentially affected citizens.

Urban Renewal has and will continue to be controversial. While Urban Renewal is an important piece of city planning, it often causes displacement among the most vulnerable communities. It has been seen through the decades of highway development, redevelopment projects, and the new influx of people wanting to move to city centers.

APPLICATIONS IN PLANNING PRACTICE

CRITIQUES

APPLICATIONS IN PLANNING PRACTICE

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“What attracts people most,it would appear, is other people.”

BOTTOM-UP PLACE DESIGN

William Whyte’s theory should be applied to any public space, including streets, sidewalks, intersections, bus stops, and Metro stations. You can learn a lot by looking how people use these existing spaces and then apply them to new plans. Designing spaces that are comfortable for people can have an impact on how people use the space or transportation system you’re designing.

With the right balance, streets can accommodate vehicles and become destinations worth visiting. Transit stops and stations can make commuting by rail or bus a pleasure. Neighborhood streets can be places where parents feel safe letting their children play, and commercial strips can be designed as grand boulevards, safe for walking and cycling and allowing for both through and local traffic. Streets that are planned for people, meaning they are not completely auto-centric, add to the social cohesion of communities by ensuring human interaction, and providing safe public spaces that promote cultural expression.

1. William Whyte believed that the social life in public spaces contributes fundamentally to the quality of life of individuals and society as a whole. He believed that we have a moral responsibility to create physical places that facilitate civic engagement and community interaction.

2. Whyte advocated for a new way of designing public spaces – one that was bottom-up, not top-down. Using his approach, design should start with a thorough understanding of the way people use spaces, and the way they would like to use spaces. Whyte noted that

people vote with their feet – they use spaces that are easy to use, that are comfortable. They don’t use the spaces that are not.

3. By observing and by talking to people, Whyte believed, we can learn a great deal about what people want in public spaces and can put this knowledge to work in creating places that shape livable communities. We should therefore enter spaces without theoretical or aesthetic biases, and we should “look hard, with a clean, clear mind, and then look again – and believe what you see.”

– William Whyte

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1. Advocacy planning, an innovation by Paul Davidoff, in the 1960s was a direct consequence of the engagement of urban planners in the civil rights movement and the struggles against the displacement of low-income communities by the federal urban renewal program.

2. Davidoff believed that the planner isn’t solely a value-neutral technician; instead, values are part of every planning process.

3. City planners shouldn’t attempt to frame a single plan that represents the “ public interest ” but rather “represent and plead the plans of many interest groups.” In other words, planning should be pluralistic and

represent diverse interests, especially minority interests.

4. Citizen participation programs should encourage people to propose their own goals, policies and future actions. Plural plans rather than a single agency plan should be presented to the public.

5. Davidoff felt that at the time urban planning was fixated on the physical city. Davidoff said that professionals should be concerned with physical, economic and social planning. The practice of plural planning requires educating planners who would be able to engage as professional advocates in the contentious work of forming social policy.

“The city planning profession’s historical concern with the physical environment has warped its ability to see physical structures and land as servants to those who

use them.”

ADVOCACY PLANNING

Citizen participation should be at the root of all plans. Start asking the community “what do you want?” Engaged communities result it excellent city planning. In the United States, advocacy planning isn’t just something learned during history of planning courses. Citizen participation has become the most important part of municipal urban and transportation planning. Before any development or plan can be approved it must include the input of the community.

APPLICATIONS IN PLANNING PRACTICE

– Paul Davidoff

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MODERNPLANNING

IDEAS

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New Urbanism promotes the creation and restoration of diverse, walkable, compact, vibrant, mixed-use communities composed of the same components as conventional development, but assembled in a more integrated fashion, in the form of complete communities. The principles of urbanism can be applied increasingly to projects at the full range of scales from a single building to an entire community.

1. Walkability: Most things within a 10-minute walk of home and work and pedestrian friendly street design (buildings close to street; porches, windows & doors; tree-lined streets; on street parking; hidden parking lots; garages in rear lane; narrow, slow speed streets).

2. Connectivity: Interconnected street grid network disperses traffic & eases walking and a hierarchy of narrow streets to make walking pleasurable and safe.

3. Mixed-Use & Diversity: A mix of shops, offices, apartments, and types of housing on site with a diversity of people - of ages, income levels, cultures, and races.

4. Mixed Housing: A range of types, sizes and prices in closer proximity

5. Quality Urban Design: Design with an emphasis on beauty, aesthetics, human comfort, and creating a sense of place.

6. Traditional Neighborhood Structure: Neighborhood with a distinguishable center and edge, usable public space at center, and a range of uses and densities within 10-minute walk.

7. Increased Density: More buildings, residences, shops, and services closer together for ease of walking, to enable a more efficient use of services and resources.

8. Green Transportation: A network of high-quality trains connecting cities, towns, and neighborhoods together and design that encourages a greater use of bicycles and walking as daily transportation.

9. Sustainability: Minimal environmental impact of development and its operations.

10. Quality of Life: Taken together these add up to a high quality of life well worth living, and create places that enrich, uplift, and inspire the human spirit.

“The role of the street is social as well as utilitarian.”

NEW URBANISM

While I’m unsure if New Urbanism is practiced in China, the general principals as noted about could be applied to any planning project. In the US and Europe there have been several developments where the principals of New Urbanism have been applied.

APPLICATIONS IN PLANNING PRACTICE

– Andres DuanySeaside, Florida, USA

CASE STUDY

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1. Tactical Urbanism: Short-term Action for Long-term Change, a new book by urban planners Mike Lydon and Anthony Garcia is the first book to organize all the small fixes that sprung up in so many communities in a way that everyone can understand.

2. These fixes — some temporary and others long-term — aim to address common problems in communities today, often in streets and public spaces: a lack of safe sidewalks or crosswalks; the absence of clear signage; the dearth of neighborhood parks and plazas, and, more broadly, the lack of community connection and solidarity.

3. Shedding its perception as an illegal or “guerrilla” approach, tactical urbanism is becoming a method of choice for innovative local governments, developers, or non-profits as well.

4. This approach is now happening everywhere, not just in New York City, with its transformation of Times Square and other car-only places into pedestrian plazas, or San Francisco, with its Pavement to Parks program, which led to the explosive growth of parklets everywhere.

5. In Portland, Oregon a group of people, Better Block, redesigned a highly travelled street and intersection at the heart of the city. The temporary redesign worked very well. Since then, a year later, their ideas are being permanently constructed. These types of small, yet potent interventions are going mainstream because they work — at least at fixing some problems.

TACTICAL URBANISM

These short-term fixes are ways to inspire permanent change. They’ve happened in many cities and have resulted in full projects being implemented. Not only do they help one think creatively, but they enable the city transportation planners to “test” the idea and see it function on the street, if even only temporarily. As transportation planners we can support these projects by listening to the community on their tactical urbanism ideas.

APPLICATIONS IN PLANNING PRACTICE

Not all projects are the result of supportive, inclusive coalition. Not all bottom-up community improvements are beloved. Some of these projects do spark feelings of anger, but typically that’s what change does.

CRITIQUE

“The lack of resources is no longer an excuse not to act. The idea that action should only be taken after all the answers and the resources have been found is a sure recipe for paralysis. The planning of a city is a process that allows for corrections; it is supremely arrogant to

believe that planning can be done only after every possible variable has been controlled.”

– Jaime Lerner, former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil

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1. The General Theory of Walkability explains how the choise to walk has to satisfy 4 main conditions: it must be useful, safe, comfortable, and interesting. Each of these qualities is essential.

2. Useful means that most aspects of daily life are located close at hand and organized in a way that walking serves them well. Safe means that the street has been designed to give pedestrians a fighting chance against being hit by automobiles; they must not only be safe but feel safe, which is even tougher to satisfy. Comfortable means that buildings and landscape shape urban streets into ‘outdoor living rooms,’ in contrast to wide-open spaces, which usually fail to attract pedestrians. Interesting means that sidewalks are lined by unique buildings with friendly faces and that signs of humanity abound.

3. The walkable city is a practical solution to a number of problems that affect both our daily lives as individuals and our economic, environmental, and cultural health as a society. These fixes simply give pedestrians a fighting chance, while also embracing bikes, enhancing transit, and making downtown living attractive to a broader range of people. Most are not expensive — some require little more than yellow paint. Each one individually makes a difference; collectively, they can transform a city and the lives of its residents.

4. f they are to function properly, cities need to be planned by generalists, as they

once were. Generalists understand that consolidating parks means that fewer people can walk to them. Generalists understand that infrastructure organized in service of big trucks is not always inviting to small people. And generalists, finally, are coming to understand that more lanes just lead to more traffic.

5. Most significantly, generalists — such as planners and, one hopes, mayors — ask the big-picture questions that are so often forgotten among the day-to-day shuffle of city governance. Questions like: What kind of city will help us thrive economically? What kind of city will keep our citizens not just safe, but healthy? What kind of city will be sustainable for generations to come? These three issues — wealth, health, and sustainability — are, not coincidentally, the three principal arguments for making our cities more walkable.

6. The economic advantage that has already begun to accrue to walkable places can be attributed to three key factors. First, for certain segments of the population, chief among them young ‘creatives,’ urban living is simply more appealing; many wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere else. Second, massive demographic shifts occurring right now mean that these pro-urban segments of the population are becoming dominant, crating a spike in demand that is expected to last for decades. Third, the choice to live the walkable life generates considerable savings for these households, and much of these savings are spent locally.

“Cities designed for people, as opposed to those engineered for cars, will be the places of urban,

demographic growth in the 21st century.”

GENERAL THEORY OF WALKABILITY

– Jeff Speck

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1. When cars at any given destination in a city (a block or group of blocks) occupy more than 85% of on-street parking spaces, then cars arriving at that destination are forced to circle the block for a few minutes in order to find an unoccupied parking space. This small search time per car creates a surprisingly large amount of traffic congestion, because typically, many cars are searching for parking simultaneously during peak driving times. This wastes time and fuel and increases air pollution. Donald Shoup, a parking expert, calls the phenomenon of excess driving as a result of under-priced parking as “cruising for parking.”

2. By using Shoup’s theory and smart pricing, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) designed an innovative parking program called SFpark.

3. Drivers use a smartphone app to help find parking quickly, instead of circling around. To help achieve the right level of parking availability, SFpark periodically adjusts meter and garage pricing up and down to match demand.

4. SFpark was a federally-funded demonstration of a new approach to managing parking. It used better information, including real-time data where parking is available, and demand-responsive parking pricing to help make parking easier to find.

5. After the initial start of the SFpark, SFMTA evaluated the program and found the following: 1) Average parking rates were lower, 2) Parking availability improved, 3) It is easier to find a parking space, 4) It is easier to pay and avoid parking citations, 5) Greenhouse gas emissions decreased, and 6) Vehicle miles traveled decreased.

6. SFpark is the first of its kind in the US and has since become a model for cities all across the nation. This is a great example of how technology is changing transportation demand.

THE HIGH COST OF FREE PARKING

Parking management can greatly improve by using smartphone apps to help drivers find and reserve available parking spaces. Many apps are available for both Apple and Android phones.

APPLICATIONS IN PLANNING PRACTICE

SFpark - An innovative parking program using technology and smart pricing to manage demand.

CASE STUDY

“85% occupancy rate of on-street parking spaces is the most efficient use of public parking.”

– Donald Shoup

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1. Conditions in the places where we live, work and play have a tremendous impact on health. It is much easier to stay healthy when we can easily and safely walk, run or bike; when we have clean air and access healthy food.

2. Recently the way we have built the cities we live in have had a negative impact on our health, especially in transportation. Many of us spend hours driving rather than spent doing physical activity that we used to do.

3. Every day, policy makers in many sectors have opportunities to make choices that—if they took health into account—could help stem the growth of pressing health problems like obesity, injury, asthma and diabetes that have such a huge impact on our nation’s health care costs and on people’s quality of life.

4. Health impact assessment (HIA) is a fast-growing field that helps policy makers take advantage of these opportunities by bringing together scientific data, health expertise and public input to identify the potential—and often overlooked—health effects of proposed new laws, regulations, projects and programs. It offers practical recommendations for ways to minimize risks and capitalize on opportunities to improve health. HIA gives federal, tribal, state and local legislators,

public agencies and other decision makers the information they need to advance smarter policies today to help build safe, thriving communities tomorrow.

5. HIA is a systematic process that uses an array of data sources and analytic methods and considers input from stakeholders to determine the potential effects of a proposed policy, plan, program, or project on the health of a population and the distribution of those effects within the population. HIA provides recommendations on monitoring and managing those effects.

6. HIAs: 1) Look at health from a broad perspective that considers social, economic and environmental influences, 2) Bring community members, business interests and other stakeholders together, which can help build consensus, 3) Acknowledge the trade-offs of choices under consideration and offers decision makers comprehensive information and practical recommendations to maximize health gains and minimize adverse effects, 4) Puts health concerns in the context of other important factors when making a decision, and 5) Consider whether certain impacts may affect vulnerable groups of people in different ways.

“This may be the first generation with statistically shorter life expectancies than their parents.”

HEALTH AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

Many projects have included at Health Impact Assessment (HIA) to determine if the proposed project will have potential positive or negative impacts on the community’s health. Sometimes HIAs are a requirement to be preformed for funding sources.

APPLICATIONS IN PLANNING PRACTICE

– Mark Fenton

This case study is a Health Impact Assessment of Proposed Public Transit Service Cuts and Fare Increases in Boston, Massachusetts. This HIA uses an array of data sources and analytic methods to help decision-makers understand the health implications of the proposed service cuts and fare increases.

The data allowed them to quantify the following: 1) Time Spent and Fuel Burned in Traffic, 2) Air Pollution, 3) Physical Activity, 4) Crashes, 5) Access to Healthcare, 6) Carbon Dioxide Emissions, and 7) Noise.

The results of the HIA found that the proposed transit fare increases and service cuts would have resulted in preventable deaths and hospitalizations as well as indirect economic impacts. The calculated impacts can be found on Page 10 of the report.

CASE STUDY

THEORIES & IDEAS THAT HAVE SHAPED CITIES: A PLANNER’S GUIDEURBAN PLANNING & DESIGN INSTITUTE OF SHENZHEN 2015 18

1. There are two important reasons behind this theory: 1) If the speeds were lower on the road, you wouldn’t need to make separated spaces for the vehicles and the bicyclists and 2) A pedestrian hit by a car traveling 30 mph is 7-9 times as likely to be killed as one hit by a car traveling 20 mph.

2. Cities are starting to adapt these policies, including London and New York City. They’re realizing that deaths can be prevented if the vehicle speeds were slightly reduced.

3. London implemented a 20 MPH zone within their whole city center in 2013. The results already look promising: casualties are down 12% from an average of 372 in 2010-2013 to 327 in 2013-2014 and, so far, no one has been killed in a collision on the affected roads.

4. In November 2014, NYC implemented a Vision Zero Campaign reduce its speed limit to 25 MPH in order to make the city safer for pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers and help meet the City’s goal of bringing traffic fatalities to zero. Driving at or below 25 MPH decreases stopping distance, gives drivers and pedestrians more time to see each other and react, and improves drivers’ ability to avoid crashes. Vehicle stopping distance improves by 45 feet (23%) when travelling at 25 MPH versus 30 MPH. Results of the first year haven’t been calculated yet.

5. Portland, Oregon developed a network of Neighborhood Greenways. These streets are set at 20 MPH and have traffic calming measures constructed throughout them. These streets are designed for people and bikes as the primary users. The streets serve as major routes for people commuting by bike to work or school.

20 MPH ROADS

20 MPH (25 MPH in NYC) policies are effective when implemented. Signage alone will not work. For the program to reach its maximum potential the roads must be designed to encourage slower speeds (narrow with traffic calming measures) and the reduced speed must be enforced.

In NYC and London the policy was adopted for the entire city center. This makes it good for both drivers and pedestrians. No matter where you are in the city center, the speed maximums are the same. In Portland, OR it was implemented on specific neighborhood streets.

APPLICATIONS IN PLANNING PRACTICE

London, NYC Vision Zero, and Portland Neighborhood Greenways

CASE STUDY“Don’t just think of space, think of time.”

– Andres Duany

THEORIES & IDEAS THAT HAVE SHAPED CITIES: A PLANNER’S GUIDEURBAN PLANNING & DESIGN INSTITUTE OF SHENZHEN 2015 19

1. The three most important benefits of road diets are 1) They become safer roads for all users, 2) They allow streets to incorporate more modes (rather than just vehicles), which in-turn increases the volume of traffic within the road, and 3) They are more affordable option rather than reconstructing the entire street.

2. The needs of our communities evolve over time, and our street design should, too. That’s the idea behind ‘road diets or rightsizing streets’ – reconfiguring the layout of our streets to better serve the people who use them, whether they’re commuters driving, shoppers walking, or children bicycling.

3. The original thinking held that wider roads meant better traffic flows, especially at rush-hour, but new lanes also attracted new traffic, and outside the peak periods you’d end up with lots of wasted road space. An analysis of road widening showed an increase in traffic volumes, but also delay, speed, and crash and injury rates.

4. Realizing these unintended outcomes, some localities implemented a type of “road diet”: reconfiguring the four lanes (two in each direction) into three (one each way plus a shared turn lane in the middle). The change dramatically reduced the number of “conflict points” on the road—places where a crash might occur.

5. The result was a much safer road. In small urban areas (with traffic volumes up to 12,000 cars a day), post-road diet crashes dropped about 47%. In larger metros (up to 24,000 daily cars), the crash reduction was roughly 19%. The combined estimate from all the best studies predicted that accidents would decline 29%, on average, after a four-to-three-lane road diet (DOT’s reported figure).

6. Road diets are typically just paint. This allows the project to be completed more affordably than an entire reconstruction and allows some flexibility. If for some reason it doesn’t work at the location, the paint can be removed. Or, if it works really well, the paint can be a starting point and additional infrastructure like curbs, a median, or protected bike lane can be constructed.

“If you plan cities for cars and traffic, you get cars and traffic. If you plan for people and places, you get

people and places.”

ROAD DIETS / RIGHTSIZING STREETS

As experienced in the US, road diets make sense to transportation planners, however they are a hard sell to political leaders and the community. It’s hard for people to understand the benefits of removing lanes. If this is a project you want to see through, make sure you have a strong case. Run a transportation model and have the facts to back up the case for a road diet.

APPLICATIONS IN PLANNING PRACTICE

– Fred Kent

THEORIES & IDEAS THAT HAVE SHAPED CITIES: A PLANNER’S GUIDEURBAN PLANNING & DESIGN INSTITUTE OF SHENZHEN 2015 20

1. In the US most streets are held to a 12-foot standard, if not by the city, then by a state or a county department of transportation. This thinking came from highway design. For highways, it is completely approriate for lanes to be 12 feet. However, for urban high-volume streets in city centers 12 foot lanes are not appropriate. Additionally, neighborhood streets can be much more narrow.

2. Typical high-volume street design requires 12-foot lanes to ensure high speeds and free flowing traffic. This comes at the expense of people, motorists, pedestrians, and bicyclists, who die daily on streets designed in this manner. It is time to reevaluate the standard 12-foot lane and embrace a narrower 10-foot lane for high-volume streets.

3. The reevaluation of narrower streets has recently come into light as many projects identified as “improvement and safety” projects, designed to widen and allow free flowing traffic, are ultimately resulting in the opposite of what was originally intended. These roads are actually causing higher speeds, increased amount of crashes, and an imbalanced priority given to vehicles versus other street users.

4. Human behavior is impacted by its environment. When streets are wide, too wide, motorists have more space to drive, less to worry about getting in their way, and the ability to further in front of them, which results in driving faster. When lanes are narrow,

motorists have to drive slower because they have limited space and must drive cautiously.

5. The first thought and issue related to narrower lane widths is the idea that there will be reduced traffic flow and capacity. This however does not result. The measured saturation flow rates are similar for lane widths between 10 feet and 12 feet. Thus, so long as all other geometric and traffic signalization conditions remain constant, there is no measurable decrease in urban street capacity when through lane widths are narrowed from 12 feet to 10 feet. Narrowed lanes will result in the same traffic capacity, which moves at the speed intended by the speed limits instead of the street design.

6. When lanes are built too wide, pedestrians are forced to walk further across streets on which cars are moving too fast and bikes don’t fit. A reduction in lane width results in shorter distances for pedestrians to travel. It also could allow for more space to be dedicated to refuge islands, wider sidewalks, street trees, and curb extensions. All of these elements add safety and comfort to the pedestrian environment.

7. When lanes are narrowed, up to approximately two feet each, more space is made available. This space could be allocated to bike lanes or other bike infrastructure. Not only does it add to the urban environment, but it allows for more users of the road and an increased mode share of bikes.

12 FOOT LANES ARE DISASTOROUS

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Image Source: Microsoft Bing

Created by Daniel Nairn, May 2010

This work is licensed un-der a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License

THEORIES & IDEAS THAT HAVE SHAPED CITIES: A PLANNER’S GUIDEURBAN PLANNING & DESIGN INSTITUTE OF SHENZHEN 2015 21

1. The length of a city block is one of the most important factors of a walkable city. Shorter blocks are more pleasant to navigate on foot, allow for more valuable corner lot real estate, and improve traffic flow.

2. Smaller blocks allow more variation in your daily commute and spread out the foot traffic around a city. It gives people more places to explore. The grid enhances legibility, therefore allowing people to remember where they’ve walked and how to get to place. Small blocks also reduce the scale, making it more comfortable for people and making it seem like the distances are shorter. With bigger blocks you have bigger buildings and less diversity for the eye.

3. Smaller city blocks also provide the city more intersections, which are always ideal places for commercial activity. There are more corner shops and more hubs of economic activity.

4. Smaller blocks create better connectivity within the city. This isn’t just a good thing for pedestrians, but it also improves traffic flow. By having more connections and ways to travel within a city it spreads the traffic out among the different options of streets. Additionally, it does slow the vehicle speeds because the shorter blocks gives traffic less time to increase their speed to a dangerous and unsafe level.

5. Looking at the image to the left, you can imagine being a pedestrian in those cities. They are all very different and provide a different experience for pedestrians, bicyclists, and drivers. From the list of cities and their block size, it is evident that the size of the city blocks does make a difference for walkability.

STREET NETWORK THEORIES / A CASE FOR SMALLER BLOCKS

The majority of Portland has 200 x 200 foot blocks, whereas most other American cities have much larger block patterns. Some Portland history indicates blocks were made at the 200 feet scale to create a pedestrian friendly downtown. The more widely accepted version says is it was done to create more highly valued corner lots for businesses, with the positive side effect being a pedestrian friendly downtown. Shorter blocks mean more places for pedestrians to cross and a smaller, more connected feeling for the walker, both of which encourage more pedestrian movement.

CASE STUDY

THEORIES & IDEAS THAT HAVE SHAPED CITIES: A PLANNER’S GUIDEURBAN PLANNING & DESIGN INSTITUTE OF SHENZHEN 2015 22

TRANSPORTATIONDEMANDTHEORY

THEORIES & IDEAS THAT HAVE SHAPED CITIES: A PLANNER’S GUIDEURBAN PLANNING & DESIGN INSTITUTE OF SHENZHEN 2015 23

1. The joke is that adding lanes to cure congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity.

2. You have a congested roadway, and transportation planners predict even more traffic on that road in the near future. What do you do? For most of the last century, the answer was to increase capacity.

3. In the short-term, this seemed to work. Time and time again, over the long-term, the actual amount of traffic after the capacity increase grew far more than expected. What seemed like an obvious solution to a congestion problem continued to disappoint. But why? The reason for these failures lies with the principle of induced demand.

4. Once capacity increases, not only do you get the originally predicted traffic growth, but you also facilitate some really great (often unanticipated) changes in travel behavior. First, existing road users might change the time of day when they travel; instead of leaving at 5 AM to beat traffic, the newly widened road entices them to leave for work with everyone else. Second, those traveling a different route might switch and drive along the newly widened option. Third, those previously using other modes such as transit, walking, bicycling, or even carpooling may now decide to drive or drive alone instead.

5. Instead of widening, let the road be congested! Once the road is widened this latent demand induces more traffic than originally expected and saps the supposed improvement of the expected benefits.

“If you build it, they will come.”

INDUCED DEMAND - DOWN’S THEORY

Congestion is an essential mechanism for coping with excess demand for road space. We need it! Embrace a little congestion and let the road users determine when they’ve had enough. If it’s too bad for them, they will choice a different mode or a different lifestyle (for example: they may decide to live closer to their job, rather than commuting far distances to work).

APPLICATIONS IN PLANNING PRACTICE

– Unknown

THEORIES & IDEAS THAT HAVE SHAPED CITIES: A PLANNER’S GUIDEURBAN PLANNING & DESIGN INSTITUTE OF SHENZHEN 2015 24

Congestion happens when the demand is great than the supply. The greatest demand cities are dealing with is the demand for vehicle space on the road, causing high congestion especially during peak-periods. Cities in North America are currently trying to deal with peak-period traffic congestion using 5 different techniques:

1. Subsidies & HOV Lanes: Bus operations are heavily subsidized in many areas, and buses together with other high-occupancy vehicles (HOVs) such as carpools are given preferential access to road capacity by allowing them on a city street and expressway HOV lanes reserved just for them. HOV lanes provide s lane with a volume-to-capacity ratio lower than the rest of the road. Only buses and people who carpool can use this lane which encourages more people per car.

2. Ramp Metering: Vehicles are metered onto freeways in many areas to reduce traffic volumes, therefore reducing the chances that traffic conditions will shift into really severe, standstill congestion. Metering reduces congestion in two ways, 1) queues that develop at the access ramps discourage short freeway trips and 2) metering reduces variations in expressway entry rates, thereby reducing turbulence and eliminating the short surges in vehicles that could briefly exceed the highway capacity.

3. Staggered Business Hours: While this can be difficult to do, some cities have been able to stagger their business hours so they’re employees aren’t traveling during peak travel times. This benefits the entire community by reducing congestion and also improves the well-being of the employees who spend hours sitting in congestion.

4. Congestion Pricing: Congestion pricing basically buys your way onto a stretch of road. This using comes in the form of a toll where you pay to use a road that is at lower capacity. The lower capacity is the result of the toll that many people do not want to pay. Congestion pricing does have its equity issues as only people who can afford to use the road do so. It is a highly effective way of reducing congestion.

5. Road Expansion: Unfortunately road expansion is still the most used “solution” to traffic congestion. When roads are expanded it can be paired with another solution like an HOV lane or a toll to reduce increased amount of demand.

THEORY OF CONGESTION

THEORIES & IDEAS THAT HAVE SHAPED CITIES: A PLANNER’S GUIDEURBAN PLANNING & DESIGN INSTITUTE OF SHENZHEN 2015 25

1. People spend a lot of time commuting and often find it a burden.

2. According to standard economics, the burden of commuting is chosen when compensated either on the labor or on the housing market so that individuals’ utility is equalized.

3. However, it has been found that people with longer commuting time report systematically lower subjective well-being.

4. The conclusion is that people with long journeys to and from work are systematically worse off and report significantly lower subjective well-being. For economists, this result on commuting is paradoxical.

5. Typically a person’s commute versus the utility they gain by their job is balanced. Recently it has been found that this isn’t the case and a person’s long commute is resulting in an imbalance with a lower well-being. For many people, commuting seems to encompass stress that does not pay off.

6. Commuting is also interesting for economic research conceptually. The decision to commute is hardly regulated. People are expected to freely optimize. This environment

allows for testing basic assumptions of the economic approach, like market equilibrium. Positive and normative theories in urban and regional economics, as well as in public economics, rely on a strong notion of equilibrium. It is assumed that people who can move freely and change jobs arbitrage away any utility differentials between people, whether they are due to residential characteristics or due to covering distance.

7. Why are people choosing a worse commute? It is important to understand this issue. Depending on the city, people may have to live far from work or they may be choosing to live far from work.

8. For people who have to live far away from work is it because 1) the work place is located in an area where there is not housing nearby or 2) is the work place is located in an area where the rents are higher than what the employees can afford?

9. For people who choose to live far from work – the subjects in the Commuting Paradox Theory – are they aware of the full cost of commuting? Are they aware of other options they have that could better balance the equilibrium and provide better well-being?

THE COMMUTING PARADOX

THEORIES & IDEAS THAT HAVE SHAPED CITIES: A PLANNER’S GUIDEURBAN PLANNING & DESIGN INSTITUTE OF SHENZHEN 2015 26

1. Transportation is about more than just moving people from point A to point B. It’s also a system that can either limit or expand the opportunities available to people based on where they live. In many cities, the areas with the shoddiest access to public transit are the most impoverished—and the lack of investment leaves many without easy access to jobs, goods, and services.

2. Commuting time has been found as the single strongest factor in the odds of escaping poverty. The longer an average commute in a given city, the worse the chances of low-income families there moving up the ladder.

3. A longstanding theory exploring relationships between transport and poverty from a geographical perspective is the notion of spatial mismatch. Developed primarily in North America in the late 1970s, this theory is mostly concerned with spatial barriers poorer people face to access jobs in a context of suburbanization and high car dependency.

4. Those who can afford to pay more for their transport move to suburban areas; retail and other services follow, taking jobs with them. Cheaper, more affordable housing tends

to be located in areas with poor transport connectivity and poor service provision, so it becomes increasingly difficult for those on lower incomes and without a car to access jobs. Spatial Mismatch explains this process of generation of barriers for access to income resulting from the three-way dynamic relationship between jobs, housing and the transport network. In this context, employment provides disposable income for mobility, which allows job retention.

5. Spatial mismatch mainly addresses location patterns of the poor in relation to main concentrations of activities, access to transport alternatives, and affordability of travel. More recent studies deriving from spatial mismatch theory also address the effects of skills mismatch resulting from low-level of education and production of spatial entrapment. For example, mothers with young children who have household responsibilities and constrained schedules and often occupy jobs that do not justify long commutes (i.e. part-time, low wages often in retail, education and healthcare). These dynamics generate additional vulnerabilities and inequalities within poor households.

INEQUITIES AMONG POOR / SPATIAL MISMATCH THEORY

An example of Commute Inequities in the San Francisco Bay Area

THEORIES & IDEAS THAT HAVE SHAPED CITIES: A PLANNER’S GUIDEURBAN PLANNING & DESIGN INSTITUTE OF SHENZHEN 2015 27

1. The continuous increased speed of urban travel and reduction in cost, innovations in transportation technology and investments in the resulting physical infrastructure have provided a powerful impetus for continuing decentralization of urban areas.

2. These same developments have also fostered rapid growth in the demand for transportation services within urban areas, reshaping the spatial and temporal patterns of personal travel and freight transportation at the same time they have influenced the developing geography of urban land uses.

3. The primary influence of transportation on metropolitan development patterns is the critical role of transportation costs of household and firm location decisions. People choose to locate where the costs of commuting to work exactly balances the savings in housing costs that accrue from living at a more distant location. Similarly, a firm’s location will be determined based on transporting costs, workers’ commuting costs, and land rents.

4. Transportation demand spurs from the development patterns of where households and firms decide to locate. However, it has been found that transportation demand isn’t just derived from development patterns, but instead derived from transportation costs.

5. For example, there are several known associations between urban land use and travel behavior. The first is residential density and automobile use. Living in a dense place will limit your vehicle usage, but even in this case, the cost of commuting by car (time, fuel, and maintenance) will still have more of an affect on your travel behavior. If you can afford it, no matter the land use, you will choose that option.

6. Other associations include employment clustering and its positive correlation with commuting by transit, mixed land uses and it’s correlation with trip length, and finally the job/housing balance and commute distances. All of these are influential on travel demand, but the cost of transportation still trumps the demand caused by land use.

TRANSPORTATION AND LAND USE

If land use patterns don’t have as much of an influence on transportation demand as cost, then as transportation planners we have to use cost to influence the transportation demand. If we want to decrease the amount of drive alone rates, then we must target the cost the person bares to own and operate the car. We could increase parking costs, charge by tolling, or increase licensing fees.

APPLICATIONS IN PLANNING PRACTICE

Even though it is determined cost affects travel demand more than land use, as transportation planners we should still focus efforts on making better land use decisions that support transportation options alternative to driving alone.

CRITIQUES

THEORIES & IDEAS THAT HAVE SHAPED CITIES: A PLANNER’S GUIDEURBAN PLANNING & DESIGN INSTITUTE OF SHENZHEN 2015 28

FURTHER RESOURCES

Planetizen is a public-interest information exchange for the urban planning, design, and development community. It is a one-stop source for urban planning news, editorials, book reviews, announcements, jobs, education, and more.

PLANETIZEN.COM

CITYLAB.COMThrough original reporting, sharp analysis, and visual storytelling, CityLab informs and inspires the people who are creating the cities of the future—and those who want to live there.

STREETFILMS.ORGStreetfilms produces short films showing how smart transportation design and policy can result in better places to live, work and play.

American Planning Association is an independent, not-for-profit educational organization that provides leadership in the development of vital communities. We measure our success by the successes of our members and the communities they serve.

PLANNING.ORG

NACTO.ORGThe National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) represents large cities on transportation issues of local, regional and national significance. NACTO views the transportation departments of major cities as effective and necessary partners in regional and national transportation efforts, promoting their interests in federal decision-making.

COPENHAGENIZE.EUCopenhagenize Design Co. is your multi-disciplinary “go-to team” for cities in all matters relating to bicycle culture, planning, traffic and communications. We approach every job from the human perspective - using design, anthropology, sociology and common sense as our points of departure.