Urban Planning Blog

New Urbanists believe in the power of physical design (of cities and neighborhoods) in influencing user behavior. John Thackara and Sunil Abraham talk to Cluster Magazine about the dynamism of cities in fostering democratic perceptions and influencing user behavior [hat tip: Jinal Shah]:

Tolerance of everything and openness to everybody are not universally accepted principles. This is one reason why globalization and migration have introduced new complications. Most religions advocate tolerance in theory, but organised religion can be oppressive in practice.

I’m glad they recognize the limitations imposed by differentiation of cultural and religious norms within civilizations in creating democratic cities and unless users themselves demand certain freedoms, it will be hard to impose such on them. But at the same time, unless you expose them to certain freedoms that we take for granted they’ll not know what they are missing out on. Considering the current conflict in Iraq which also faces similar dilemmas, can the nature of rebuilding their cities help any?

While often unseen or overlooked, 1 out of every 100 Delhi residents earns a livelihood as a wastepicker. As a group, these informal garbage men and women collect over half of the city’s waste.

The City Fix shares a video that highlights the plight of the wasterpickers and their almost daily harassment by the police. The city government recently passed laws that favored private trash collection companies over this informal sector of laborers.

The opening of the new Planned Parenthood clinic in Aurora, IL was blocked by a judge who agreed with the city attorney that the clinic violated land use and permit regulations. The folks at Feministing right point out that this is more about moral opinions on abortion than any land use policies. The American Prospect has more on the issue.

Having studied the history of Supreme Court rulings for land use planning, I remain surprised at the extent of prejudice and discrimination practiced in the United States under the guise of ‘protecting personal property value’. Fortunately, the law usually rules against such prejudices however, it didn’t in the case of Aurora.

Urban Growth: Top: Dallas, US 1976 Bottom: Dallas, US 2001 [source].

Any Mumbaikar would be proud of the flyovers and bridges built in recent times and use them as an indicator of urban development. It isn’t long before comparisons with Shanghai start taking root. Only after you scratch beneath the surface, you realize the hollowness of the argument and claims. The recent upswing in economic fortunes of the city and also rest of the country have opened the doors to the usual forms of materialistic pleasures, one of which is your own vehicle. In a city with standing room only, the desire to buy your own car as soon as the cash starts flowing in is not diminished in anyway. Realistically you wouldn’t need a car to get around in Mumbai but then when has practical reason and utility dictated the things we choose to buy.

You would assume that after buying a car, you in addition to having a road to drive your car would also have space to park it wherever you go, right? The statistics tell you otherwise:

There are over 15 lakh cars on Mumbai’s roads, but common parking space
for only — hold your breath — 8,000, thanks to the 100-odd pay-and-park
areas across the city. The city’s vehicular density is 591 vehicles per
square metre, compared to 163 in New Delhi and the international
average vehicular density of 300 [source].

Finding a parking spot in Mumbai, if you have driven there, can be an uphill battle and takes longer than it takes you to drive anywhere.

As environmental activists have pointed out, only 9 per cent of the 14
million people in the city use cars and two-wheelers, but over
Rs10,000 crore will be spent over the next few years on road projects [source: as above].

So if you have no space to park, wouldn’t it make sense to invest in mass transit systems instead of investing in infrastructure that only seeks to encourage private vehicle ownership. Being a democratic country, you cannot dictate what people ought not to buy but you can certainly influence public choice by emphasizing or deemphasizing certain sectors of urban development. Congestion Pricing [PDF link] would just one such tool.

Technorati Tags: transportation, parking, Mumbai, India, congestion pricing, urban development

In spite of the fact that humans occupy less than 1% of the total land available on Earth, land scarcity is an omnipresent urban reality. Partly due to urban aggregation behavior and availability of conducive habitable spaces, the fight for space especially in urban areas has been intense. Be it the ever-growing slums in Mumbai or the problem of homeless in New York, the fight is also never fair or equal. Although common sense tells us that economics should be enough to dictate property rights, the point of contention arises at the boundaries of public and private space. As in this case:

A Madison Avenue antiques dealer is suing a group of unidentified homeless people for $1 million, saying that the group has taken up residence outside his posh Upper East Side business, using the sidewalk in front of the shop as a urinal, spittoon and occasional dressing room [source].

more »

Land use planning can be used as an effective tool in reducing the economic and social risks of natural hazards. The local governments provide the better authority to implement planning mitigation strategies due to extensive and comprehensive potential for tapping into community resources and public participation. The local governments are also in a better position to tailor the comprehensive planning strategies to align in line with the region’s specific vulnerability to natural hazards.

The authors advocate a combined strategy of sustainable development and hazard mitigation to draft land use plans. Use of high risk areas such as flood plains, steep slopes, earthquake fault zones, coastal areas should be discouraged for human habitation. Sustainable practices advocate relocating land use away from hazard areas and relying on resilient building practices to withstand natural hazards.

more »

I am neither an anarchist nor a libertarian as I do believe that the government has an important role in our society. But it is often seen that governments do not always function efficiently and sadly, only such cases of ineptness come to light. That said, I would still recommend minimum government control especially to tackle market failures. The decision of a few imposed on many has never worked but unfortunately, it continues to happen everyday. There are plenty of underlying cultural factors that lead to unintended consequences of otherwise well-intentioned or rather politically feasible policies.

In a thought-provoking article, Robert A.Wicks, an Unix administrator in Atlanta succinctly lays down arguments to the weakening consequences for African Americans due to government welfare in the United States [via]:

Black men used to be sold up the river. This was a process in which the patriarch of a family would be sold from one plantation to another, breaking up families. Many slave owners had as much respect for the integrity of a black family as a cattle rancher would for the integrity of a bovine family. Single motherhood had always, therefore, been more socially acceptable among blacks. This was an absolute necessity, obviously, and not some indication of some mass failure of black people’s character. After the end of that wretched practice, many women didn’t remarry, as they had no way to tell if their husband was dead or not. This is one reason black women have always had such an obvious role in black economic development. Many black women have always had to work.

Somethings that we routinely consider as morally unacceptable or causing poverty have subtle historical undertones that still have lingering effects. Unfortunately we have either never thought about this or have paid scant regard to this undeniable effect. Similarly, democracy may not yet be the perfect solution for the Middle East and the Bush Administration trying to impose ‘our’ idea of a perfect governing system may be basically faulty. Food for thought, eh?

Wicks goes on then to tackle the ongoing war on drugs and offers radical solutions to tackle the problem at its root:

Ownership of streets and roads would do more to solve the problem of street crime than just about anything else. Drug dealing usually heavily involves the streets. Dealers perform transactions on the streets, crack fiends hang out on the streets. What if the streets were privatized? How many of you would allow a drug dealer to make sales in your living room? How about allow crack heads to hang out in the kitchen? Then why would you allow them to do the same on your street? Well, the problem is that the streets are not owned by those who live along them. They are owned by government, and government is usually an absentee landlord.

Seems okay in principle but I find it difficult to implement. But to Hicks’ credit, he tries offering some implementable solutions like creating a neighborhood ‘company’ or involving NGOs to micro-manage streets. Basically his arguments are rooted in the principle of property rights and the legal right of an individual to keep away unwelcome elements from it. This also has serious implications for neighborhood revitalization by trying to entrust the residents with the responsibility of changing it themselves, which is not an uncommon strategy at all.

Hicks concludes with a strong statement against the government which I think in principle he is against the government imposing its will on the people:

For me, one of the most troubling aspects of government is how government is always the exception. How many moral codes permit stealing? Yet government taxes are somehow different. How many moral codes permit the killing of children? Yet, government wars are somehow different. How many moral codes permit someone to storm a person’s house in the middle of the night for something they are doing in the privacy of their own homes? Yet government is somehow different. It is always the exception. I often wonder how many ostensibly religious people aren’t simply idol worshipers in the most literal sense, considering how many exceptions they allow government. If there are exceptions that you are willing to allow for in the case for freedom here and there, what exceptions will be allowed in the future?

Read the whole thing even if you disagree with most of it. Definitely an thought-provoking read and it is time well-spent.

Technorati Tags: culture, war on drugs, government, libertarian, African American, Black, slavery, control, choice

One of the few concepts I disagree with liberals in the United States is their stand on immigrants; in spite of the fact that this nation was built on immigrant power. Michael Dukkakis and Daniel Mitchell in a NY Times op-ed offer an economic solution to reduce dependence on immigrants.

Basically their argument lies in raising the minimum wage. As known, the minimum wages causes disproportinate unemployment amongst the least skilled individuals and as many immigrants have a lower skill set than native, any rise in the minimum wage is likely to affect them adversely.

Alex Tabarrok, an economist at George Mason rightly points to the social injustice angle of this move by asking whether the Times would have published this op-ed if it “advocated minimum wages as a way of creating unemployment among
African Americans and raising white wages.” Probably it makes sense and even works perfectly economically but then no nation is a purely capitalistic society where concepts such as social justice is ignored completely. It is always a balancing act that varies with the times. But I guess political climate is a more influential factor.

Technorati Tags: unemployment, economics, minimum wage, politics

According to this article in the NY Times, having to work two jobs in order to afford to live in New York city is an investment portfolio advantage [via]:

Middle-class city dwellers across the country are being
squeezed….In New York, the supply of apartments considered affordable
to households with incomes like those earned by starting firefighters
or police officers plunged by a whopping 205,000 in just three years.

….Firefighters who want to live in high-priced cities can work two jobs, said W. Michael Cox, chief economist for the Federal Reserve Bankof Dallas. “I think it’s great,” he said. “It gives you portfolio diversification in your income.”

Did he really say that? If yes, I hope it was tongue-in-cheek but I fear it isn’t.

Technorati Tags: India, rescue, Haryana, Prince

Often to solve a traffic-related problem in any growing metropolis, flyovers are touted as the ultimate solution especially in developing countries. The organic cities that have known to survive amidst snarls of unruly traffic and undisciplined pedestrian and vehicular traffic often breathe a sigh of relief that a newly-constructed flyover brings to a daily commute.

Mumbai tried this few years back when they built almost 55 flyovers in a span of five years and Delhi followed suit. Bangalore is the latest villain in traffic management. The situation is so bad that industries that flocked to Bangalore and helped it to prosper are now threatening to leave if the situation is not immediately remedied. Madman provides us with incisive analysis, completely with barebones sketches of the traffic woes that even newer flyovers seem to excacerbate.

I have always maintained that flyovers do not necessarily solve the problem; they simply postpone it for a later administration. Nowadays, considering the bureaucratic and legal delays involved in contracting out and constructing a flyover, it is often obsolete as soon as it is completed. That said, flyovers are in fact a necessary evil. Their core function is to eliminate the traffic lights so as to ensure an uninterrupted and continuous flow of traffic. Ideally, it would be great if you do not encounter any intersection between your point of origin and the destination but unless we completely envelope our urbanscape with flyovers that is not possible. Flyovers have to end somewhere and usually where they end or intersect with other flyovers, a bottleneck is the obvious result almost always negating the advantage of the flyover.

I am no road engineeer or traffic consultant to offer profound solutions. Would it be advisable to isolate heavy-traffic zones like the airport or other transit terminals from individual cars and making them accessible through public transit only? I would prefer to take the train to the airport when it takes me directly inside the terminal like at Hartsfield International Airport whereas taking a bus from downtown Houston is definitely a no-no. Flyovers have a capacity limit that is easily surpassed and often near-impossible to fix. Additional flyovers may not be the solution. Probably, it is time to think ‘outside the flyover’.

People ask me why is sprawl harmful to the environment. Among other reasons, my first response is that why build on greenfields when you have so many abandoned sites waiting to be developed back to their glory days. As technology developed and industrialization changed dramatically, erstwhile bustling industrial sites fell into decay. Many of those sites still exist and can be a delight to a photographer albeit in a graphic sense.

Feast your eyes on several such abandoned sites. Never was desolation and abandonment pictured so beautifully. All that is left to be done is to clean up the sites and redevelop them to satiate our need for more urban development. Of course, green spaces sprinkled liberally would do just as well.

“Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.” - Bill Vaughan

Couldn’t agree more.

Tyler Cowen’s love for the suburbs is pretty weird; especially his first and last reasons. His first - We live 30 minutes from Washington but we also have a fox in the backyard. Deer are a frequent sight as well. Probably, it is the other way around i.e. he is living in the fox’s backyard and the frequent deer sightings might suggest increasing human encroachment into their natural habitat. He might not see any more foxes or deer as years go by. His last reason - Many of my friends who live in Manhattan lose interest in global travel or never acquire it. Sadly they feel they already have everything they need from the world right at home. I find that hard to believe if he is making the claim that urbanites do not travel much. In fact, by being exposed to people and cultures from around the world in a more compact living community, their interest is piqued and they may be tempted to experience the new cultures by traveling to the places of their origin. Visit to the nearest Chinatown doesn’t qualify as a cultural experience and people often need more after their first brush with anything foreign especially if they happen to like it.

America’s small-medium towns, for e.g. the one that I live in – College Station – have almost everything that a typical American needs for their daily living; a Wal-Mart, a Target, couple of Krogers or Albertsons’ (big-box grocery stores), scores of fast-food joints and at least one of each franchise-gourmet places. You can live here as long as you want and not miss anything at all. The local Jins or the Panda Express provides your occasional oriental experience and your talk with the odd international student is enough to satiate your “global” experience longings. Only if you are in a big city like New York, would you be faced with a multitude of choices and thus be implored to know and seek more.

The legacy of Jane Jacobs and importance of her work is often doubted by market-based economists. Although I too [for most part] support the market mechanism, I also believe that at certain points, there are other arguments for promoting a cause other than brute efficiency. Jane Jacobs’s seminal work, The Life and Death of Great American Cities addressed the haughty approach practiced back then by evangelist planners who had lost touch with ground realities. Of course, everything fell in place and people were better off but the places that emerged lacked character. People were better off economically but definitely desired more than just a reliable and efficient way to obtain utilities and places to shop. California may be one of the most expensive places in the country yet people choose to live there due to intangible factors like great climate and quality of life that may be difficult to transfer elsewhere. Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolutions considers Jacobs “tiny-teeny bit overrated”. He says,

It is fine to juxtapose the old Greenwich Village against the gargantuan planning of the corrupt Robert Moses. Few other social scientists of her time grasped the idea of spontaneous order. But what to do if a city grows from one million to ten million people, as has happened many times in the Third World?

To be sure, favelas and shanties work far better than their reputations. Drug gangs aside, they embody many of the best qualities of Jacob’s analysis, or for that matter Hayek’s. But surely it is a problem when there is no piped water or reliable electricity. How can you get those services into new areas without some serious planning? You can call for private sector involvement but it is planning nonetheless and it probably will involve some use of eminent domain. Or how about new roads?

I believe he straddles an important middle-ground that has plagued much of planning literature. Planning, everyone agrees is important and necessary but they differ on how much planning or control is required. Libertarians argue that the market should be allowed to let a city organically grow according to the economic needs of the people. But then, we have a resulting city like Houston that you definitely wouldn’t pride living in. Complete top-down approach, like that empowered Le Corbusier gave rise to Chandigarh which I believe, failed to connect with the people and still remains a mystery even to the people who live there. Jacobs may have leaned a wee bit too much toward the left but her opposition to Moses, who built much of New York’s infrastructure, was well-intentioned. Moses’ creations may have helped New York be the city that is today but at the same time, social injustices cannot be overlooked in the name of progress. Equal representation to all sections of the society must remain planning’s overarching objective.

Times are much different from when Moses and Jacobs practices their professions and it may not be possible to adhere to simply one process of planning. Globalization and urban agglomeration has made Jacobs’ idyllic sense of a community redundant whereas the global melting pot of cultures and ethnicities in any metropolis worth its salt has refocused attention on social justice.

Is it time to develop a new theory for planning that focuses on changing times, social and economic, as well as keep an eye on sustainability? Or does one already exist that needs a little tweaking?