Sustainable land use can do so much for a community. It can increase economic, social, human, environmental, and community capital. However, factors such as low density and spread out housing as well as cheap fuel work against community sustainability. One of the ways that these two factors interlink is through the efficiency and compactness of land use patterns. In the United States recently there has been a strong move out of the city. This move leads to cities made up almost entirely of sprawl, with no central point. This creates inefficient transportation within the city, and discourages people from using public transportation. Cheap fuel only serves to compound this problem by giving Americans little financial incentive to change these patterns.
Cities that are more centralized and have higher densities reap great benefits. According to Roseland they have more intense land use, which consists of more people and jobs per unit area, which also leads to increased social and economic capital per area, they are more oriented to non-auto modes of transportation, which leads to greater environmental capital due to less automotive air pollution, as well as place more restraints on traffic, a prime example of traffic calming, which creates an environment more suitable for bicycles and pedestrians. Cheap fuel seems to work as a barrier to becoming centralized. There is almost a stigma to the centralized city and town structure in some areas of the country which can be noticeable from satellite images. Pan over a random city using Google street view and see if the city is grid based or if the roads take on the dead worm form, bending and breaking into culdesacs and roundabouts.
So would the two solutions then be increase density and centralization as well as fuel costs? Saying that out loud you can almost hear the arguments build. Wheeler makes note of how density is often viewed as a negative, people many times feel increasing density as encroaching on their personal space. However, increased density brings residents, jobs, and business to a community, and by using infill development with shops on the bottom floors and housing on the top floors, well executed architecture can create appealing buildings that serve multiple purposes. The arguments against increasing fuel prices are not as easy to address, and it simply stems from America's obsession with the automobile, and until we ween ourselves from the personal auto, or an engine is invented that can run on a literally infinite source of energy, this will continue to be a problem. However, if land use patterns can change as to make a personal vehicle obsolete, at least in the city, the effects and or arguments to increased gasoline prices wil be less profound.
The picture shown are examples of proposed infill for a neighborhood in Baltimore, MD. Here is a link to another blog describing the survey
To end I would like to pose two questions to you. Does Howard's "Three Magnet Model" (from the first reading) pose an accurate description of where most people live nowadays and if so, how do we bring the town-country people back to the town?
When you look at Google Maps, you see most cities are grid in the center and dead worms on the outside. Ick!
ReplyDeleteI don't really know if Howard's Three Magnets really give an accurate or helpful description of how we live now. The dead worm suburb is sort of a combination of city and country, but not a desirable (for me, anyway) or sustainable one. His ideal model seems great, but I think we need more concentrated and mixed-use areas with more wide open spaces nearby.
Awesome graphics!
ReplyDeleteI agree that Howard's Three Magnet Model (as well as many other "ideal community" models) struggles with making the connection between urban and rural. Density is desirable but not to the point that no one ever ventures out beyond the city limits to experience natural space.
I agree with you both, I think Howard's model more or less functions in a predictive manner, while his idea of the town country mix is certaintly not ideal, it does a decent job forecasting what the present has evolved into, a mixture of the three magnets.
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