Week 10 wrap-up

 Posted by Heather Ann Kaldeway  Chapter 18 - Erosion of cities or attrition of automobiles, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Apr 052012
 

Blog round-up

Recommendations on transportation and Victor Gruen from the Toronto Public Library

The Toronto Reference Library at 789 Yonge St. now houses the collection of the Urban Affairs Library, formerly located at Metro Hall. As a specialized collection devoted to all aspects of urban planning and local government, the library contains far more than the materials cited here. Titles were selected by librarian Cynthia Fisher to give you an overview of some new and some old books and reports that you can find at the library to complement (and perhaps contradict) some of Jane Jacobs’ views. When viewing the catalogue records for the books, click on some of the subject headings to give you a broader range of materials.

Transportation planning

The Toronto Public Library has hundreds of books on transportation planning issues.  A sampling of some recent thoughts on transportation planning:

An introduction to sustainable transportation : policy, planning and implementation

By Preston L. Schiller.

This text reflects a fundamental change in transportation decision making. It focuses on accessibility rather than mobility, emphasizes the need to expand the range of options and impacts considered in analysis, and provides practical tools to allow planners, policy makers and the general public to determine the best solution to the transportation problems facing a community.

Carfree design manual

By J. H. Crawford.

This enticing manual shows how to design sustainable, carfree cities that meet the needs and desires of their inhabitants. Based on walking, bicycling, and public transport, this comprehensive handbook offers a fresh look at city design. The book proposes methods to achieve aesthetically pleasing and practical, carfree living environments. From urban planning and neighborhood design to squares and building layouts, the author argues that narrower streets, four-story buildings, and interior courtyards offer a higher quality of life. A design process is proposed that directly involves future residents. Illustrative case examples and comparative analysis of 18 urban spaces are also included.

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Alissa Walker on ‘Erosion of cities or attrition of automobiles’

 Posted by Alissa Walker  Chapter 18 - Erosion of cities or attrition of automobiles, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Apr 042012
 

I came across an fascinating video last week called “The American Love Affair.” It’s a 1976 film made by Lee Rhoads (yes, Rhoads) about the country’s obsession with cars. But really, it’s about how one particular place is paving the way—in this case, an endless gridlocked freeway—for the U.S.’s automobile dependence. And that place, of course, is Los Angeles.

The film is entertaining enough—who doesn’t love that groovy soundtrack?—and the opening segment is brilliant: Drivers are interviewed about public transit while waiting in line at the pumps, including a rather articulate man sitting shirtless in his convertible who advocates for monorails with retractible tops (not a bad idea!). But the film evolves into a fairly critical examination of how L.A.’s transit system—called the best in the country, some say the world—was dismantled and discarded in favor of buses and automobiles. It’s heartbreaking for an Angeleno to see some of this footage. The sight of the Red Cars being loaded onto flat bed trucks and hauled off to their demise is almost too hard for me to watch.

Although the film was made 15 years after The Death and Life of Great American Cities was published, in a way, it serves as a fantastic visual companion to the concepts set forth in Jane Jacobs’ masterpiece. In the early 1960s Jacobs had only seen the first glimpses of our emerging auto-obsessed society, but in her chapter on “Erosion of Cities or Attrition of Automobiles,” she issues a cautionary warning—one that the Los Angeles of 1976 seems to have blissfully ignored. Continue reading »

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Jarrett Walker on ‘Erosion of cities or attrition of automobiles?’ — Individual choice and transportation

 Posted by Jarrett Walker  Chapter 18 - Erosion of cities or attrition of automobiles, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Apr 032012
 

The frame of the question is striking: “Erosion of cities or attrition of automobiles?” Both key terms, erosion and attrition, warn us of a gradual process, a process we might not notice as we focus on the shiny revolution of the moment. They warn us too, that the causes will be multiple and probably untraceable. Jacobs is adamant that the automobile itself didn’t cause sprawl, just as it didn’t cause traffic congestion; the horse-and-buggy era already offered the possibility of both. So, the attrition of automobiles, as it’s achieved, will have many causes and effects. Each needed but compromised revolution – market-based parking, congestion pricing, major transit, complete streets, road diets – will take due credit for this attrition, but it will really happen through individual choices, and of course the liberation from habit that comes only from the turning of generations.

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Early on Jacobs attacks Corbusier for failing to run the numbers on the freeways that were supposed to serve the massed apartment towers of his Radiant City. The free flowing traffic in his drawings would have been gridlock, and “his vision of skyscrapers in the park degenerates … into skyscrapers in parking lots.” Corbusier’s freeways are “embroidery,” – surely an insult to that delicate craft – adding a mood or symbol of transportation rather than providing actual mobility. Many urban “visionaries” still do that, of course, implying that a new transportation tool will be so cool to ride or drive that nobody will care if it provides the volume and efficiency required, or fits into a network that will get everyone where they need to go.
Continue reading »

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Steven Dale on ‘Erosion of cities or attrition of automobiles’ – The Department of Bollixing?

 Posted by Steven Dale  Chapter 18 - Erosion of cities or attrition of automobiles, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Apr 022012
 

There's a joke in here somewhere, but I don't know where. CC image by flickr user Marika.

Throughout this whole process I’ve dreaded writing about chapter 18 of D&L. It’s not because it’s a long chapter (it is). It’s not because it’s a hard chapter (it works to be). And it’s not because it throws so many ideas at you that it’s hard to keep track of them all (it does).

The reason I’ve dreaded this chapter so much is that unlike the other chapters, it confronts directly that most personal (and controversial) of North American possessions – the private automobile. And as such, there’s no way to write about the chapter without irritating someone. Transportation is the topic everyone knows nothing about but is certain they know how easy it is to get from A to B. Everyone takes it personally, everyone’s got an opinion and everyone thinks their opinion is right.

So here goes …

When you read most of D&L, Jacobs’ talks in ways that empower people to take control of their lives and their communities by taking ownership of their own actions. Her special brand of sideway blows are reserved for institutions, governments and agencies but never against communities and their residents’ behaviors. She wants to see government and planners getting out of people’s way so that they may “struggle with plans of their own.”

But in Chapter 18 her tone changes and her tactics shift. Suddenly a person’s choice to use the automobile must be challenged. Despite qualifiers like “automobiles are hardly inherent destroyers of cities” Jacobs behaves as though they most certainly are. Note how her language is tinged with the language of combat. The entire chapter is peppered with words like attrition, war and conflict. Continue reading »

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Week 9 wrap-up — gradual & cataclysmic money, subsidizing dwellings

 Posted by Heather Ann Kaldeway  Chapter 16 - Gradual money and cataclysmic money, Chapter 17 - Subsidizing dwellings, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Mar 302012
 

Blog round-up

Recommendations on subsidizing dwellings from the Toronto Public Library

The Toronto Reference Library at 789 Yonge St. now houses the collection of the Urban Affairs Library, formerly located at Metro Hall. As a specialized collection devoted to all aspects of urban planning and local government, the library contains far more than the materials cited here. Titles were selected by librarian Cynthia Fisher to give you an overview of some new and some old books and reports that you can find at the library to complement (and perhaps contradict) some of Jane Jacobs’ views. When viewing the catalogue records for the books, click on some of the subject headings to give you a broader range of materials.

From despair to hope : HOPE VI and the new promise of public housing in America’s cities

For decades, the American federal government’s failure to provide decent and affordable housing to very low-income families has given rise to severely distressed urban neighborhoods that defeat the best hopes of both residents and local officials. Now, however, there is cause for optimism. From Despair to Hope documents the evolution of HOPE VI, a federal program that promotes mixed-income housing integrated with services and amenities to replace the economically and socially isolated public housing complexes of the past. As one of the most ambitious urban development initiatives in the last half century, HOPE VI has transformed the landscape in Atlanta, Baltimore, Louisville, Seattle, and other cities, providing vivid examples of a true federal-urban partnership and offering lessons for policy innovators.

This vibrant, full-color exploration of HOPE VI details the fate of residents, neighborhoods, cities, and public housing systems through personal testimony, interviews, case studies, data analyses, research summaries, photographs, and more. Contributors examine what HOPE VI has accomplished as it brings disadvantaged families into more economically mixed communities. They also turn a critical eye on where the program falls short of its ideals. This important book continues the national conversation on poverty, race, and opportunity as the country moves ahead under a new president.

Understanding housing finance : meeting needs and making choices 2nd ed.

One of the biggest challenges for students of housing is understanding the financial principles which underpin the place of housing in the wider economy. By taking a political economy approach, Peter King’s Understanding Housing Finance makes the basic principles of the subject accessible, without requiring detailed prior knowledge of economics or financial systems.
The book explains housing finance by exploring the way in which markets and governments react together. It takes a conceptual approach to consider the advantages and limits of housing markets and why governments intervene. The consequences of intervention are explored in detail using examples of housing subsidy systems and policy mechanisms such as rent control, housing allowances and subsidies to owner occupation.

Housing policy in the United States

The most widely used and most widely referenced “basic book” on Housing Policy in the United States has now been substantially revised to examine the turmoil resulting from the collapse of the housing market in 2007 and the related financial crisis. The text covers the impact of the crisis in depth, including policy changes put in place and proposed by the Obama administration. This new edition also includes the latest data on housing trends and program budgets, and an expanded discussion of homelessnessof homelessness.

Good places to live : poverty and public housing in Canada

Public housing projects are stigmatized and stereotyped as bad places to live, as havens of poverty, illegal activity and violence. In many cities they are being bulldozed, ostensibly for these reasons but also because the land on which they are located has become so valuable. In Good Places to Live, Jim Silver argues that the problems with which it is so often associated are not inherent to public housing but are the result of structural inequalities and neoliberal government policies. This book urges readers to reconsider the fate of public housing, arguing that urban poverty — what Silver calls spatially concentrated racialized poverty — is not solved by razing public housing. On the contrary, public housing projects rebuilt from within, based on communities’ strengths and supported by meaningful public investment could create vibrant and healthy neighbourhoods while maintaining much-needed low-income housing. Considering four public housing projects, in Vancouver, Toronto, Halifax and Winnipeg, Silver contends that public housing projects can be good places to live — if the political will exists.

Online resources

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