Urban Planning Blog

Street parking, driveways and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, near the French and Swiss borders. Vauban’s streets are completely “car-free” — except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community.

An innovative experiment is current in progress in Vauban, Germany where residents of an upscale community, no less, are learning to live without cars in a suburb.

Ants never overtake. Not ever. Instead they form into platoons in which all the ants move at the same speed. Increase the density of ant traffic and the platoons simply join together to form larger groups. This is how the velocity remains the same while the density increases.

Alexander John and colleagues at the University of Cologne in Germany have discovered lessons from ant traffic that can be incorporated in traffic planning. This is just one of the applications gleaned from biomimicry.

As of the 2000 census, the Los Angeles region’s urbanized area had the highest population density in the nation. Yes, that was the word “highest,” not a smudge on your monitor. At 7,068 people per square mile, Los Angeles is considerably denser than New York-Newark

Eric Morris is busy smashing myths about Los Angeles urbanscape over at the Freakonomics blog.

LaHood is a conservative Illinois Republican with little transportation expertise and almost no administrative experience, who has earned a LCV lifetime voting score on critical environmental issues of 27 percent, and who maintains deep financial connections to the very industries he’s now supposed to regulate.

Everything is not perfect, right? Alex Steffen at WorldChanging comments on the disappointing choice of Transportation Secretary after other notable selections. As Alex writes, transportation is not a department you want to skimp out on especially in wake of crumbling infrastructure and Obama’s promise of rebuilding America.

If you want to book a hotel or make a restaurant reservation you can switch on the Transit Layer and look for the public transport line nearest to the location. If you want to travel from A to B you can quickly familiarize yourself with the public transport network and find out which lines to use and where to change.

Google Maps has added a public transit layer for more than 50 cities around the world to help citizens and tourists obtain information on getting around quicker. I see more European cities than U.S ones. It doesn’t take a genius to tell you what that means.

The peak toll in the first month of operation on State Route 167 in Washington was $5.75. I know, I know, you would never pay such an exorbitant amount when America has taught you that free roads are your birthright. But that money bought Washington drivers a 27-minute time savings. Is a half hour of your time worth $6?

Eric A. Morris in a two-part essay at Freakonomics weighs in favor of toll roads that vary in response to traffic levels as a way out of congestion and posits that this way, we may even love paying for roads that we generally consider free to us.

Or are they leaner because they bike, walk, and use mass transit?

Americans, with the highest rate of obesity, were the least likely to walk, cycle or take mass transit, according to the study in a recent issue of the Journal of Physical Activity and Health. The study relied on each country’s own travel and health data.

Only 12 percent use active transportation in the United States — 9 percent walk, 1 percent ride a bike and 2 percent take a bus or train — while a quarter to a third are obese, the study said.

By comparison, 67 percent of commuters in Latvia, 62 percent in Sweden and 52 percent in the Netherlands either walk, bike or use mass transit. Latvia’s obesity rate is 14 percent, the Netherlands’ is 11 percent and Sweden’s is 9 percent.

Overall, “Europeans walk three times as far and cycle five times as far as Americans” [source].

The headlines of the article undermines the actual findings of the study which in fact highlight the lifestyle choices that are the primary reasons for the differences in addition to Europe’s more dense urbanscape. I’m sure cities like New York, Portland, and San Francisco see significantly higher rates of walking and cycling compared to other cities in the U.S. The United States is more heterogenous than most European countries who have had a longer and continued history of social interaction and more interactive urban living.

Stuck in traffic? You could do other things like listen to an audio book of War and Peace, relax to the sound of Wagner’s Ring cycle, or even see the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. Good Magazine measures the time spent by Americans sitting in traffic (not commuting, mind you) in terms of these long arduous tasks. Imagine how much can you get done in Los Angeles.

This video of a transportation system in planning stage somewhere in China is interesting and innovative. It shows that the train doesn’t have to stop for embarking and disembarking passengers thus saving not only energy but also travel time.

In America, driving habits probably aren’t as inelastic as they are thought to be. This graphic [source] definitely shows consumers reacting to the oil price hike by cutting down on their driving. This summer given the gas prices is going to be a low-traffic one. We canceled our summer vacation and instead bought a Wii. Will continued rise in oil prices or even stagnation at this level modify our lifestyles and in the long-term create dense and walkable neighborhoods?

The New York subway is one of those connecting systems that helps us make sense of the complex urbanscape of the Big Apple. Ben Popper at Men’s Vogue shares the evolution of this cartographic beauty that tends to make complex connections decipherable to the common New Yorker (and the confused tourist).

The mashup map of of the Vignelli map and the current edition designed by Eddie Jabbour is one of my favorite versions.

Not providing bike lanes would have been a better option than providing such stupid lanes. They are not only completely useless but also dangerous for bikers.

With the launch of Tata’s new car, the Nano which is priced at Rs. 1 lakh ($2500), roads in Mumbai are prone to congestion in the future. But does the city have enough parking space and what is the government doing to address these concerns? These questions are examined in this Hindustan Times article for which I was interviewed as well and have been quoted as well.

Ever wonder how you can increase mileage without having to convert to a hybrid or electric car? The Cleantech Blog tells us how simple design changes can affect your car’s mileage. I wonder what is keeping the Big Three from at least implementing such simple and basic design changes.

On the other hand, this couple have started out on their Fossil Fuel Free Roadtrip.

The Bicycle Transportation Alliance is relaunching its Bike Commute Challenge next month. this ‘challenge’ hopes to motivate you to bike to work during the entire month of September.