Recently, a good friend and colleague indicated in an email that it was important for us to stop pussyfooting around when it comes to attacking or otherwise opposing car-happy tactics such as road widening, removal of on-street parking, fighting against mixed use development, or keeping residential densities low in a new development. That if we continued to be too timid in going after these counterproductive design ideas, we would continue to fail to meaningfully improve and induce more bicycling, walking, or transit use in the US.

We must, he urged, move aggressively to ban cars from certain streets, for example.

As much as I was thrilled to hear him make these bold observations, I’m not sure the time is ripe.

Frankly, I was SHOCKED to hear myself say that.

I’ve spent a lifetime being on the other end of this, with friends and enemies regularly telling me “Gainesville [where I used to be a town planner] is not ready for your idea, Dom,” or “Your idea is too radical, Dom, and will marginalize you.”

But I find that I must urge caution in proceeding too rashly – and I do believe my friend is being somewhat rash.

I STRONGLY agree that we need to stop pussyfooting around with cars and what we bend over backwards to provide them, if we are serious about promoting bicycling, walking, or transit use. Anything else is almost a complete waste of time. I probably agree with him more than anyone else I know!

BUT [it is very painful to have a “but” here…] I’m convinced that the US still has made it way too cheap to own and drive a car. Given that on-going state of affairs — that we’ve had now for several decades — I cannot imagine that an explicit anti-car crusade will resonate with anyone – even our allies.

Given what I’ve seen over the past 20 years with the very quick disappearance of openly anti-car organizations in the US during a time where it is very affordable to drive a car everywhere, I think that an openly anti-car agenda by an organization (or individuals) must regrettably wait for the cost of car ownership and use in the US to become significantly higher. We are starting to get close to that long-awaited tipping point – increasing gas prices, for example – but the prices are still too low overall.

I regrettably urge patience. We are still in the low-cost motoring world that will inevitably marginalize those calling for car-attacking tactics.

I’m saying this because philosophically, I am a materialist. Behavior and values are largely shaped or driven by underlying conditions such as prices. No matter how skillfully conveyed, even the most inspiring rhetoric needs to patiently wait for the conditions to be right, and the prices are just not there yet, I’m afraid. I say this even though I fully agree with him on the effective tactics.

Have I lost my revolutionary radicalism in my “old age”? Or have I just matured into someone who is now more politically savvy than I once was in my younger days?

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My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

“Road diets” are instances where a decision is made to shrink the size (or width) of a road that is considered excessively wide. For nearly a century, the United States has spent trillions of public dollars to build and widen roads throughout the nation. In the early years, these new or widened roads were often highly beneficial and cost-effective, as they resulted in significant increases in access to many destinations that were previously difficult or impossible to reach by car – even relatively slow, well-behaved cars. However, over the past few decades, new or widened roads have seen rapidly diminishing returns on investment.

Today, nearly all (if not all) road widenings cost way more than the benefits they produce. Those costs include worsened congestion (due to “induced demand”), a significant increase in noise pollution, exponentially growing costs of materials/construction/ROW acquisition, loss of travel choice (wider roads are much more difficult for pedestrians, bicyclists and transit users to use), decline of smaller and locally-owned businesses (wider roads promote predatory “Big Box” retailers such as Wal-Mart), loss of civic pride, decline of the town center (wider roads drain the economic and residential lifeblood out of town centers in a downwardly spiraling death sprawl), an increase in traffic injuries and deaths, an increase in air pollution and fuel consumption, increased travel time (due to the sprawl induced by wider roads), and a substantial degradation of community attractiveness and quality of life.

Examples of road diets include the removal of travel lanes from roads with an excessive number of lanes (a common and increasingly popular tactic is to shrink a road from 4 or 5 lanes to 3 lanes), removal of a turn lane (usually a right-turn lane), a narrowing of travel lanes (from 12 to 14 feet in width to 9 to 11 feet in width), installation of landscaped sidewalk “bulbouts,” or installation of permanent on-street parking.

Another highly beneficial tactic that is related to road dieting is highway removal. Removal is becoming increasingly popular around the world due to the rapidly increasing cost of maintaining big highways, in addition to the growing recognition of the enormous benefits of removing ruinous highways (increasingly, nearly ALL urban highways are ruinous).

What are the benefits of road diets or highway removal? A very large number of studies around the nation and world show that such actions tend to very quickly result in dramatic improvements in retail and residential health, town center health, level of civic pride, reduction in injuries and deaths, a substantial increase in travel choice (more can walk, bicycle or use transit), a reduction in travel distances, a reduction in noise pollution, a dramatic improvement in quality of life, and a much more healthy financial state of affairs for government, businesses and households.

For these reasons, road diets and highway removal are becoming quite frequent around the world.

Here is a list of recent highway removals. Because they are so numerous, I am not able to provide a list of road diets.

• Park East Freeway, Milwaukee

• Embarcadero Freeway, San Francisco

• West Side Highway, New York City

• Central Freeway, San Francisco

• For Washington Way, Cincinnati

• Gardiner Expressway, Toronto

• Alaskan Way Viaduct, Seattle

• Harbor Drive Freeway, Portland OR

• Riverfront Parkway, Chattanooga TN

• Route 29, Trenton NJ

• Big Dig (elevated Central Artery) in Boston

Here’s the top 12 urban highways in North America with the best opportunity for transformations such as removal or road dieting, based on an analysis by the Congress for the New Urbanism (http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/cities/top-12-urban-highway-removal-projects/1953):

1. I-10/Claiborne Overpass, New Orleans, La.

2. I-895/Sheridan Expressway, New York City (Bronx)

3. Route 34/Oak Street Connector, New Haven, Conn.

4. Route 5/Skyway, Buffalo, N.Y.

5. I-395/Overtown Expressway, Miami, Fla.

6. I-70, St. Louis, Mo.

7. West Shoreway, Cleveland, Ohio

8. I-490/Inner Loop, Rochester, N.Y.

9. I-81, Syracuse, N.Y.

10. Gardiner Expressway, Toronto

11. Aetna Viaduct, Hartford, Conn.

12. Route 99/Alaskan Way Viaduct, Seattle, Wash.

Highway removal and road diets are perhaps the most effective, fastest, and most cost-effective way to significantly improve community and neighborhood quality of life. Does your community have the wisdom and leadership necessary to improve itself in such a rapid, substantial way?

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My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

A story by Dan Tracy in the Orlando Sentinel on February 26, 2012 reported on a study that found that Metro Orlando roads are becoming far more safe for motorists — but not for pedestrians and bicyclists.

This is an all-too-common outcome. Too often, modifying a road for “safety” is a code word for something that will REDUCE road safety – if bicyclists, pedestrians and transit users are taken into account. And exposes the hidden (?) agenda that it is all about cars. Pedestrians and bicyclists be damned.

How can that be? Why are true safety advocates not up in arms about such an inexcusable, callous, selfish state of affairs?

For one thing, conventional traffic engineers claim that their proposed road modification will make the road “safer,” which tends to falsely reassure safety advocates. But what most miss is that “safer” tends to mean “safer to drive at higher speeds without the motorist having to pay attention.” That obviously reduces overall safety.

In addition, when we make roads “safer” in the above-mentioned way, we create what is known as a “barrier effect,” as colleague Michael Ronkin (and I) often point out. That is, roads that are “safer” for high-speed, inattentive driving are, by definition, less safe or comfortable for pedestrians, bicyclists, or transit users.

Conventional traffic engineers tend to “improve road safety” by using what is called a “forgiving” street design. Such design commonly includes widening a road, removing “friction” such as on-street parking or street trees, and aggressively discouraging pedestrian mid-block crossings. Car speeds tend to increase after such “improvements.”

An unintended consequence of this form of “safety improvement”? Such “improved” roads reduce the number of pedestrians, bicyclists and transit users because they are less safe for such users to travel on.

By reducing the number of pedestrians, bicyclists and transit users, we’ll have less crashes for those groups – not because it is safer for such users to use the “safer” road, but because there are less of them (again, because the increased danger has chased many pedestrians, bicyclists and transit users away from the road).

The result is that the modified road creates the misleading impression that it is now safer for all users. After all, don’t the numbers show that there are less pedestrian and bicycle crashes?

Real road safety is the opposite of what conventional traffic engineers seek: Real safety comes from designing roads to obligate slower speeds. Lowering car speeds is most effectively done by narrowing roads, installing on-street parking and adding other forms of “friction,” NOT by putting up signs with lower speed limits. It means, in other words, moving away from “forgiving” road design. Moving away from “forgiving” road design will increase motorist attentiveness, which is essential for increased road safety.

Eighty percent of all crashes are due to motorist inattentiveness. And the single-minded effort over the past 80 years to build “forgiving” roads has, tragically, substantially reduced motorist attentiveness. Motorists multi-tasking by eating, texting, combing hair, or cell phone chatting while driving is now epidemic – at least in part due to the enabling nature of forgiving roads. So rather than increasing safety, conventional traffic engineers have been decreasing safety. And doing so, ironically, in the name of “improving safety.”

Who needs enemies when we have ourselves?

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My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

For decades, supporters of sustainable, walkable, “smart growth” development projects have been stymied by angry, hostile citizens who, while mostly telling pollsters that they oppose drivable suburban sprawl, end up being publicly and violently opposed to nearly all effective tools that would create more walkable town center development rather than sprawl.

Such people, who represent a very large percentage of the American public, are known as NIMBYs (Not In My Backyard!).

While smart growth advocates are rightly frustrated by such a common attitude in America, we should not be surprised by it. After all, America has experienced several decades of hideous, unsustainable, car-happy

development that is rightly opposed by the neighborhoods that have been besieged and degraded by such a relentless parade of these development atrocities. NIMBYs, then, cannot be blamed for opposing all new development proposals, as nearly 100 percent of all development proposals since the 1930s have been awful. NIMBYs rightly expect all new development to be terrible, if our past 80 years is any indication.

Why should a new development be any different?

But for America to have any sort of a sustainable, pleasant future, this knee-jerk NIMBY reaction that all new development is necessarily bad must end. The attitude must end because it ends up rejecting the good with the bad. Preserving the status quo is unsustainable because the American status quo is a collection of vast overbuilding of car-dependent sprawl (that a dwindling number of Americans want, fortunately), and a nearly non-existent offering of walkable, compact neighborhoods (that a rapidly growing number of Americans seek, yet are mostly unable to find due to its scarcity).

We have overbuilt sprawl and underbuilt walkability.

For America to have a future, we need to restore a balance that more accurately matches sustainability and demand for housing. America therefore needs a significant increase in walkable, compact neighborhood development. Rather than the NIMBY effort to stop all development, America needs to strongly encourage a significant amount of new development.

But this time, in contrast to the past 80 years, it must consist of walkable, compact neighborhoods that add value to communities by promoting both sustainability and overall quality of life.

When it comes to walkable, compact development proposals, then, we need YIMBYs (yes in my backyard!) instead of NIMBYs.

What is an example of how a YIMBY would react to a proposed walkable, compact development in a town center?

A few months ago, an opportunity came up in my neighborhood. The proposed project is located within a walkable, compact, pre-1930s historic neighborhood within walking distance of the town center.

Citizen comments were requested by the town planning department. I submitted the following YIMBY comments.

The intent of my recommendations for the project is to see that the design of the project promotes walkability, sociability, neighborhood safety and security, travel choice (particularly for seniors and children), relatively low noise levels, timeless styles and design, and low per capita car trip generation.

Parking

Providing two-car garages for each unit is radically out of character within our walkable neighborhood, undercuts pedestrian ambience by creating more sterile facades that send the message that the area is suburban drivable, rather than walkable. If any is provided, the project must unbundle the cost of the parking provided for each residential unit so that owners/renters have the option of paying less for the residence in exchange for having less parking provided to the unit. Ideally, no parking should be provided off-street for any of the residential units. On-street metered parking is highly preferable. Should this project provide any publicly-accessible parking, such parking must be modest in number and priced or metered.

Street Design

In street fronting this project, must be traffic calmed. On-street parking – perhaps pocketed on-street parking formed with bulb-outs to reduce curb-to-curb width – should be at least one component of the traffic calming. Calming tactics should be focused on horizontal interventions (such as a road diet, roundabouts or bulb-outs) rather than vertical strategies such as speed humps. Sidewalk on the street must be provided along the length of this project. Any street lighting provided for/by the project on the street must be pedestrian-scaled (i.e., no more than 15 feet in height) and full cut-off.

Density

As Christopher Leinberger notes in his book, The Option of Urbanism (2007), in a drivable suburban location, lower densities, less development, and single-use development patterns are more conducive to a car-based lifestyle. Residents in such locations therefore are more likely to be NIMBYs (“not in my back yard”). In other words, “more is less” in such locations. More density, more development, and more mixed use are all detrimental to the quality of life in a drivable suburb – largely because more development tends to lead to more road and parking congestion for cars. However, in a compact, walkable neighborhood, by contrast, the reverse tends to be true. Here, more density, more development, and more mixed use (offices and corner stores interspersed with houses) contribute to improvements in the quality of the lifestyle. Here, “more is better,” as it means more vibrancy, more places to walk to, and more sociability (all of which tend to be sought as part of a walkable lifestyle). Residents in such locations therefore are more likely to be YIMBYs (“yes in my back yard”). This project, therefore, should achieve the maximum allowable density and floor area ratio allowed by the land development code. If allowed by code, this project should incorporate accessory dwelling units. Front porches should be aligned and either abut the front ROW/sidewalk or be no more than a “conversational distance” from the sidewalk (i.e., front porches no more than 10 feet from the back of ROW/sidewalk).

Mixed Use

If allowed by code, this project should incorporate small scale retail and office components to better promote a walkable lifestyle.

Architectural Style

“Nothing if more dated than yesterday’s vision of tomorrow.” Modernism, therefore, is completely incompatible with the timeless, historic character of this historic neighborhood and should not be included as a style for this project. Pre-1930s styles are more appropriate. Front porches should be provided for all units fronting the street.

Re-Zoning (amendments to the land development code)

If not allowed by the land development code, the project property should have its land development codes revised to allow higher densities, accessory dwelling units, more than one-family allowed per property, mixed use (to allow small-scale retail and office), smaller (or no) yard setbacks, a prohibition on modernist architectural styles, and elimination of any minimum parking requirements (maximum parking requirements should replace any minimum requirements).

Summation

This essay did not address another problem that significantly inhibits the creation of walkable, compact new development. In addition to NIMBYs, such desirable development is also significantly impeded by our local government land development regulations, which nearly universally prohibit walkable, compact development, and REQUIRE drivable suburban sprawl.

So in addition to the need for more YIMBYs, American communities need to substantially revise its development laws so that it is legal for new projects to build walkability.

America and its neighborhoods will have a much better future if a large number of YIMBYs start submitting comments such as those above for future proposed projects in our community. Freezing the status quo, as NIMBYs would have it, freezes America in an unsustainable world of a declining quality of life.

America can do better. And being a YIMBY for walkable, compact development (and revising our development laws to legalize walkability) is an essential way to do that.

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My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

It is perverse that the US government so heavily subsidizes and provides for a form of travel (car travel) that is largely or fully responsible for…

About 45,000 deaths (not to mention the injuries) per year

The destruction and abandonment of so many US town centers and their quality of life 

The bankrupting of households and all levels of government

Suburban sprawl

The obesity epidemic and associated health problems

Enormous dependence on foreign oil produced mostly by nations that dislike the US

The gigantic and on-going loss of important wildlife habitat

The loss of peace and quiet

The huge loss of human interaction with their fellow citizens (we have become a nation of loners)

The loss of civic pride as a result of the homogenizing, strip commercial transformation of our communities

The diminishing returns that promotion of car travel now provides

The loss of small, locally-owned businesses

This is a recipe for societal dysfunction.

I believe so few of us are pointing out this elephant in the bedroom at least in part because we believe, mostly accurately, that our lives are impossible without cars, so we put ourselves in a gigantic state of denial with this Faustian Bargain.

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My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

Rochester New York is considering the rectification of a colossal blunder the City committed in its past. The City is considering converting its “Inner Loop” grade-separated highway into a more livable, humanized boulevard.

For several decades, the Inner Loop highway has hobbled and otherwise obliterated the city, as well as its town center neighborhoods and retail. Like town center freeways across the nation, the Inner Loop has drained much of the lifeblood out of town center Rochester.

Current leadership is now admirably recognizing that, and has commissioned plans to reverse the mistake the City made long ago – a mistake in which the City ruined itself by building the Inner Loop. Ironically, the earlier motivation to build the Inner Loop with huge sums of public dollars was based on the thinking that the freeway would “revitalize” Rochester.

We now see quite clearly that it has done the opposite. Rather than revitalize Rochester, the Inner Loop has played an enormous role in destroying Rochester.

My family lived in a downtown Rochester home in the early 1960s. Just as I was entering first grade, my family moved to the very car-happy Rochester suburb of Penfield. I lived in Penfield until I started college at age 18 (1978).

I know suburban Penfield much more than downtown Rochester. My friends and I hardly ever visited downtown Rochester after the family moved to the suburbs — so I don’t have a lot of informed knowledge about what has happened or why. I have since come to learn that downtown is an awful place to live in or operate a small retail business.

Today, I am curious to know whether any friends or family who remain in the Rochester suburbs have any awareness that the millions spent in Rochester to build the Inner Loop was a main contributor to the ruin of downtown and its quality of life.

I suspect not.

My mother, for example, convinced my father to move our family from our downtown home to the suburbs largely because of the high crime rates. Today, over 40 years later, she remains adamantly opposed to EVER moving back to a town center location (even though it would, in my opinion, be very important to do so as my parents lose the ability to drive a car).

Why is my mother so strongly opposed? I think it is because her experience living in downtown Rochester has left her (permanently?) convinced that town centers inevitably produce high levels of crime – crime so rampant that residing in such a place is intolerable.

For my parents and many in their generation, the decision to flee was based on a realization that quality of life in town center Rochester had become wretched. I am sure that my parents had no idea that Rochester highways such as the Inner Loop were the primary causes of the downfall of the quality of life in town center Rochester. For those in their generation, the motivation was the “white flight” being induced by low- income conditions and crime. Indeed, many in that generation probably remain convinced to this day that the highway construction was one of the few GOOD things the City engaged in. To this day, my parents have little awareness of the downwardly-spiraling role that highways have on the health of a city.

Tragic.

I think many in my parent’s generation have similar attitudes. The fear of town center crime burned into their memory will make it unlikely that a meaningful percentage in their generation will re-locate to the town centers – even after the highway disease infesting cities is healed by removal of the highway infection and the sickness is transformed into health-producing people-friendly rather than car-friendly corridors.

Regardless of whether older generations will or will not be motivated to move back to town center living, however, I strongly believe that cities throughout America need to join Rochester in recognizing the pressing need to dramatically improve their economic, community, and neighborhood health by removing these costly “expenseways” and replacing them with rejuvenating, sustainable streets and boulevards.

Our quality of life and overall sustainability depends on it.

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My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

Long ago, I was somewhat enthusiastic about “car-free” efforts. However, my view of such efforts has matured since then. It seems to me that car-free advocacy is both premature and counterproductively extreme. As long as the price of gas, cars, roads, and parking remains reasonably affordable, as it still is in the US, calling for a car-free world has very, very little chance of gaining any political traction.

An analogy is the “zero population growth” movement.

In both cases, there is much to be said – theoretically — about each idea. But neither has a chance of motivating large numbers of leaders, professionals, and planners in today’s world.

By contrast, the new urbanism movement – which strives for a return to the timeless tradition of building walkable, sustainable, lovable neighborhoods — is brilliantly pragmatic by recognizing the toxic-to-cities nature of making cars happy without calling for their elimination.

Calling for the elimination of cars would marginalize new urbanism and make it impossible for the new urbanism movement to do anywhere near as much as it has done to reform our communities. Instead, the new urbanist movement has inspired a great many to reform communities by design that forces cars to behave themselves (which is an enormously beneficial achievement), rather than calling for their elimination.

We’ll eventually live in a car-free world with zero population growth, but not in our lifetime.

It seems to me that both the zero population growth and car-free movements slow down the needed revolutions because such goals seem so kooky and extreme that the entire baby is thrown out with the bathwater.

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My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

Late in 2011, Ethan Kent described how “placemaking” (the art of making wonderful, lovable places for people) was the “new environmentalism.” His article can be found here: http://www.pps.org/articles/placemaking-as-a-new-environmentalism/

The thesis of this article is what has kept me interested in town planning for the past 22 years.

I got a degree in environmental science because I felt 25 years ago that environmental conservation was the key to improving quality of life. But as you will see in this article, environmentalism became too dry and abstract to keep people like me interested.

Environmentalism was also missing a crucial point — missing an essential way to protect the natural environment.

Regardless of how strong our environmental conservation regulations were written and enforced, they would be completely overwhelmed and undermined if the towns and cities where humans had lived since the beginning of civilization were designed to be so hideously repellant to people that a large number of us desperately wanted to flee the city. And that flight resulted in the steamrolling obliteration of much of the important, sensitive wildlife habitat that so often is found in areas surrounding our cities.

In other words, the push since the early decades of the 20th Century to create cities for happy cars rather than happy people was unintentionally inducing an enormous desire for millions of people to seek the “greener pastures” of suburban sprawl.

In about 1990, I learned about place-making – the art of making people happy instead of cars.

It was an epiphany.

The path to a better world – for the work I engage in, at least – is most effectively achieved not by fighting for stronger federal regulations regarding smokestack emissions or water pollution – important as that is in its own way – but by doing what I can to get communities to reach a tipping point, where leaders and citizens start seeing that the return to the timeless tradition of making walkable, people-friendly places (by reining in the dominance of the car) is the best path to a happier, prouder, more sustainable and lovable future.

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My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

Recently, a colleague of mine pointed out that it is common for a town center to have traffic congestion, and that this was acceptable in part because congestion can make walking more safe, or improve the desirability of transit. This is, for him, an example of “good” congestion.”

I responded by indicating that I fully agreed. After all, low-cost, convenient car travel is incompatible with a quality, lovable walking ambience, largely due to the enormous space consumed by cars (that are convenienced by having an excessive amount of space devoted to cars), and the high speeds achieved by motor vehicles (when we design for the convenience of motorists).

I pointed out to him that I believe an essential task for those seeking a more sustainable and quality community is to find a way to build a community awareness that if we are to have a more pleasant community design for PEOPLE, cars must be inconvenienced and more costly to use. Higher residential densities (in town centers), higher gas costs, higher parking costs, and priced roadways are things that will effectively bring about that awareness, and are rather likely in our future due to emerging financial, environmental and energy issues. I believe those emerging trends are inevitable, but hope we can accelerate their emergence through political and rhetorical means.

The faster we take corrective measures, the less painful our future will be.

My colleague also pointed out that there is, on the other hand, “bad” car congestion. For him, that would be the type of congestion that provides no benefits (other than making transit more desirable), and is located in a place where people do not want to be (e.g., the middle of an Interstate highway).

It had not occurred to me, until he mentioned this, that the LOCATION of the congestion is one way to distinguish between “good” and “bad” congestion.

However, one reason I tend to find that congestion is ALWAYS good is that even in a suburban setting where there are no alternatives available to escape the congestion (for example, alternatives such as living closer to work/shop, using transit, riding a bike, walking, etc.), and there is no compensation for the travel delays one experiences in suburban congestion (such as a charming, vibrant, walkable ambience), I would say that even suburban congestion is, on balance, a good thing.

The increased aggravation and the uncompensated nature of suburban congestion, in my view, creates the political motivation that is otherwise lacking in suburban settings to take corrective measures (such as creating suburban town centers with compact, mixed-use development, pricing roads and parking, and creating infill development in places such as unused parking lots…). In other words, congestion accelerates the inevitable redesign of suburbia towards something more sustainable. The danger, of course, is that these progressive reactions can be short-circuited by road-widening as the all-too-common congestion fix. Fortunately, financial woes at all levels of government make counter-productive widening much less likely.

So yes, I told him, I agree that initially, suburban congestion is more unpleasant (“bad”) than town center congestion, but I view the congestion as a bitter medicine that must be swallowed for suburbia to speed up their healing process.

A growing number of communities engage in “planned congestion,” where they deliberately do nothing to address congestion – knowing that the inevitable, positive results of congestion I list above will eventually emerge.

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My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

In my (cold-hearted?) view, the suburbs are inherently unsustainable and unaffordable. From a public policy point of view, if I’m an elected official, I don’t see how I can justify subsidizing people who live in places that are unsustainable, unaffordable, and inefficient to maintain.

Even if those people are low-income.

Anyone who lives in the burbs – including low-income people – must accept the consequences of living there. There is nothing remotely fair or sensible about folks who live in sustainable, low-impact, financially efficient locations subsidizing those who live in the financially inefficient, high-impact burbs (and who lower the quality of life of town center residents with all their car driving).

Nevertheless, I have often pointed out that while it is tempting, I don’t think we should prohibit – by law – people living in the burbs. But if someone wants to live there, they will, as a simple matter of fairness, do it on their own nickel and keep their hands off my bank account.

I see no reason why I should subsidize people – including low-income people – who opted for a lifestyle that requires them to live in the burbs.

[As an aside, I believe bleeding hearts too often believe “less fortunate” people are forced to be in the life situation they are in. I very rarely think that a person is forced to be where they are – speaking as someone who grew up in a large, lower-middle-class household and who busted his butt to be where he is. I have many, many friends and family members who CHOSE to be where they are by opting to have a number of kids, opting to own and drive a (often expensive, new) car and/or by opting to party and watch TV rather than reading or otherwise doing the work that it takes to become educated or obtain an advanced degree.]

The sooner the burbs (which, in the long run, is inevitable) whither away and are bulldozed, the better off we will all be. Subsidizing people – including low-income people – who live in the burbs simply puts off the day when we see the absolutely necessary, eventual disappearance of single-use burbs that cannot exist without cheap gas, cheap parking, free roads, and cheap cars.

What we “owe” low-income people is a regulatory and price system that makes it more possible for developers to provide more affordable housing options in places that provide transportation choices. We should, for example, more commonly legalize “granny flats,” higher residential densities, sweat equity construction that is exempt from many building codes, smaller lot sizes, and mixing residences with retail/office/industrial.

We also “owe” low-income people more banks who will give them location-efficient home mortgages.

I am not convinced that low-income people are financially forced to live in places in single-use (residential only) areas without transportation choices. People such as Todd Litman (http://www.vtpi.org/) have shown that “lower-cost” housing in the burbs is a false economy. That the several thousand dollars a household saves by owning, say, 2 cars instead of 3, or one car instead of 2, is money that can instead be directed to paying rent or mortgage in a mixed use, compact location.

I think that in America, our media overwhelmingly touts the joy and peacefulness and safety of the burbs. My mother (and most or all of my siblings), for example, would NEVER live in a town center because she is TERRIFIED of what she believes are VERY high crime rates in town centers (my telling her that lots of information shows she is safer there than in the burbs doesn’t convince her in the least). Instead, she has opted to live in the burbs, where it is impossible to travel without a car. No one forced her to live there. Why should my taxes be higher so that irrational fears can be provided for and to enable a lifestyle that has no future?

I believe that huge majorities of lower-income and immigrant populations have bought into the American Dream of the drivable suburbs. They live in the suburbs not so much because that is the only place they can afford to live, but because EVERYTHING they have been taught screams to them that the burbs are safer, quieter, cheaper, more convenient, and more pleasant than town centers. I think there are a lot of affordable town center housing options that are not opted for by people such as my mother because of their buying the American Dream, not because there are no affordable options.

By the way, no one forced an immigrant to move to America. Most immigrants come to the US with stars in their eyes about how American streets are paved with gold (as my mother thought). I would NEVER, EVER expect citizens in, say, Denmark to pay higher taxes so that I could live in Copenhagen by buying an “affordable” home in the burbs of Copenhagen. If I could not afford a town center home in Copenhagen, I would not give a moment of thought to moving to Copenhagen. Moving to Copenhagen under the above circumstances is selfish and wrong in a great many ways.

Where is the sense in creating band-aid fixes in the burbs when we know the burbs have no future?

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My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com