Friday, August 28, 2009

Resiliant Cities

Resilient Cities: Responding to Peak oil and Climate Change by Peter Newman, Timothy Beatley and Heather Boyer is an important book for anyone interested in transitioning from unsustainable, car based, suburbs to a lower energy, transit based system.

The authors identify seven key elements of a resilient city.

1. Urban areas will be powered by renewable energy technologies from the region to the building level.
2. Every home, neighborhood, and business will be carbon neutral.
3. Cities will shift from large centralized power, water, and waste systems to small-scale and neighborhood-based systems.
4. The potential to harness renewable energy and provide food and fiber locally will become part of urban green infrastructure.
5. Cities and regions will move from linear to circular of closed-loop systems, where substantial amounts of their energy and material need are provided from waste streams.
6. Cities and regions understand renewable energy more generally as a way to build the local economy and nurture a unique special sense of place.
7. Cities, neighborhoods, and regions will be designed to use energy sparingly by offering walkable, transit-oriented options for all supplemented by electric vehicles.

New Urbanism

New Urbanism has become quite popular among city planners, especially in “environmentally conscious” areas such as Montgomery County. The New Urbanists have promoted high density “walkable” communities as an effort to reduce reliance on automobiles. High density neighborhoods are springing up around every metro stop, and even where there is no easily accessibly metro stop.

But Resilient Cities has a warning for the New Urbanists. A study of New Urbanist developments in Perth, Australia, demonstrated some of the weaknesses of a New Urbanist approach. The study compared eleven New Urbanist developments with forty-six conventional suburbs. The New Urbanist developments had a 9 percent switch from cars to walking for local trips, which also came with a 7 percent reduction in obesity.

However the New Urbanist developments showed no difference in total fuel usage for transportation. Fewer car trips for local travel were balanced out by greater use of cars for longer trips and reduced car occupancy.

The quality of transit available was a significant factor. A typical transit trip to work would have taken over 80 minutes compared with 30 minutes for a car trip. None of the New Urbanist suburbs produced the density and mix of uses in their centers to be self sufficient, leaving them reliant on quality transit services to make any difference.

An analysis of transport fuel use across Australian cities has shown several strong relationships between transit quality and fuel use. The closer the development to the city center, the higher the density, and the higher quality of the transit service, the lower the fuel consumption. Quality transit service was defined as whether an area had a better than 15 minute service.

Highways

All of the available data shows that building more highways creates more traffic while tearing up highways and creating pedestrian and bicycle friendly cities decreases traffic.

Surveys show that the higher the average speed on freeways, the more fuel per capita is used. Cities with higher congestion have lower fuel use while cities with the least congestion use the most fuel. Increasing road capacity will cause car use to increase to fill the newly available space. A study by the Texas transportation Institute of US cities over the past thirty years shows no difference in the levels of congestion between those cities that invested heavily in roads and those that did not.

There is a growing awareness among some traffic engineers of this problem. Andy Wiley-Schwartz, from Project for Public Spaces says, “Road engineers are realizing that they in the community development business and not just in the facilities development business.” This new viewpoint has crystallized in the “slow road movement.”

Some cities are ahead of the curve on this development. For the past thirty years, Copenhagen has removed two percent per year of its parking space from the streets and squares and created pedestrian areas. Each year car use has declined while cycling and pedestrian use has increased.

In the US, the Complete Streets movement is attempting to create a similar shift, creating new public spaces in every community. The Project for Public Spaces has also sponsored many similar projects.

Examining what shape cities take in the future is vitally important to our ability to adapt to a lower energy economy.

7 Comments:

At 3:28 AM, Blogger ned01 said...

Great article! I love idea of more walkable and bicycle friendly cities. THis will br a good start to helping more people become environmentally conscious.

 
At 5:43 PM, Blogger GSB said...

Hey, we just linked you up in our blogroll on http://greenfession.com - out blog where you can come confess your environmental sins, haha. we thought it would be a fun way to get people to talk about their efforts, and provide solutions. we're just trying to spread the word! thanks!

 
At 6:28 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

well done!

You want governments to do something about climate change?
Leave a message on http://www.fightclimatechange.eu The best posts will be handed over to the EU negotiators at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Let YOUR voice be heard!

 
At 10:25 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

I suggest you a site with a new alternative for sustainable cities!
www.satproject.com.ar

I think you will be interesting on this!

 
At 2:18 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

A very interesting article. However, the problem remains with the richest of the world; as they are the ones who continue to pollute the planet with the extravagant lifestyles. Another problem is with the pollution because of the developing world. The developing world is getting inspired and trying to ape the west. The percentage of energy and resources consumed by the global south are much less as compared to the west. However with modernisation, India and China are consuming resouces and emitting pollution at a very rapid rate to fuel their development. The sinks are shrinking at a rapid rate. Thus action has to be taken asap, if we have to save the planet earth!!

 
At 1:10 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

yeah... and life expectancy will be pf 50 years... this is real, I mean this is what technology is doing to us, reducing our life time... at least the studies in the pharmacy where i work said this...

 
At 4:43 PM, Blogger Peter Gray said...

I think that it is great that they are trying to stay green and make life better for those kids that they are coming. It is nice to hear that they city that are doing something similar like
xl pharmacy

 

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