Urban Planning Blog

“The type of people we all don’t want in Northgate are going to be loitering in that plaza. I don’t understand how you guys don’t perceive the huge liability with fights out of the bars. Well you just created a boxing ring”

[Source: Left of College Station] As spoken by Aaron Curs, owner of Paddock Lane and Tipsy Turtle (bars in Northgate, College Station). Without commenting much on the “type of people” implication, I am surprised by Mr. Curs’ other implication that when given a pedestrian plaza, people tend to break out into fights and love to box. Somehow given all my years of experience in designing and studying public spaces, I have not come across this concern much. Admittedly, proximity of bars may give rise to these concerns but then it isn’t the availability of public spaces that is instigating such fights but rather the presence of bars. Public spaces can be designed to deter anti-social behavior but the mere presence of a public space doesn’t necessarily lead to a free for all.

The Northgate businesses may have a valid point when they resist changes by saying that the city is “playing puppeteer in something you shouldn’t be messing with” but then the government has always defined public spaces when it comes to safety. If the city government doesn’t play puppeteer, you wouldn’t need traffic lights and drivers would be expected to be on guard while driving through the area. Having lived in the area and currently working, I can attest to the horrible traffic bottleneck that Wellborn and University is. Add to that, the randomly crossing pedestrians in a haphazard manner across a wide road, it is a wonder that more deaths don’t occur on that stretch of road. Further, the loading trucks to the businesses (I’m looking at you, Dominos truck) somehow manage to plan their deliveries around rush hour further jamming up the roads. Given the large number of students who live across University Blvd and cross across to the university at all hours of the day, the idea of wider sidewalks, a 9′ median, and a pedestrian mall near College Main and Houston St seem like a darn good idea. There are plenty of parking lots that are underutilized further down the road toward Wellborn Rd so businesses could just advocate for a parking garage from their TIF dollars.

Researchers discovered homeowners, on average, outweighed renters by 12 pounds. In addition to excess weight, female homeowners were also carrying around more aggravation, making less time for leisure, and were less likely to spend time with friends.

via
Journal of Urban Economics (under review)
.

This paper by Andrew Healy [PDF link], an economist at Loyola Marymount University concludes that “on average, every $1 spent on disaster mitigation prevents roughly $8 of disaster damage over the following five years” but voters tend to reward disaster response and recovery efforts more as compared to disaster preparedness leading to governments underpreparing for disasters.

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?

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?

Build a bridge and you’ll will have someone leaping off it soon. Likewise with buildings – “You know, man is the only animal clever enough to build the Empire State Building and stupid enough to jump off it!” [source: movie Come September].

We all know of the fascination for the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco with people wishing to end their lives. Well, the San-Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge is attracting people for the same purpose down south [hat tip: Randy]. There have been 236 suicides for far. What is about these grand structures acting as magnets for suicidal people?

Rob Cockerham intrigued by the proximity of check cashing places and liquor stores,  conducted a rough distance measurement of twelve joints and found the average distance to be less than 200 steps. Although not entirely scientific, it certainly says a lot about such impulsive and tempting spending joints from check cashing places [via].

This involves painting streets with a high-visiblity mural that creates a public square for residents to gather and one which gently encourages drivers to slow down when approaching these spaces.

A grocery store in China makes you ride a tiny train to shop [YouTube link]. Mind you, not only is this insanely crazy but also lets the store manipulate you into buying goods at eye-level.

While the housing market in the United States is going belly up, the construction boom in India refuses to subside. With the new economy booming, demand for city housing is at an all-time high. However with incomplete and insufficient information and awareness, consumers can be duped by unscrupulous developers who promise the moon but fail to deliver even a rock. Before the age of the Internet, you couldn’t do much except perhaps bad-mouth the developer and warn your friends off. The developer always won after finding enough suckers for his dubious scheme.

But thanks to Youtube, blogs and other new-age Internet technologies, getting your opinion out there is much easier. One such disgruntled customer from property developers, Unitech Group shot a video comparing the promises with the end result and uploaded it on the web. The result – many potential buyers are now warned and have begun withdrawing their bookings with the firm (see comments).

One quick observation about ground realities in India. Suing is not particularly common and even if you do, the lawsuit takes ages and is often considered not worth your time. So in that spirit, spreading the word about dubious practices of developers via a mass-media outlet like YouTube does maximum damage to the property developers. Hopefully, this correction in information asymmetry will give more power to the consumer and make developers more accountable. The video is attached below:

Incidentally, websites set up to complain against errant homebuilders is not a new phenomenon in the United States. The following websites do exactly that – hold homebuilders accountable and spread the word on dubious practices:

1. Homeowners Against Deficient Dwellings (HADD).
2. Homeowners for Better Building (HOBB).
3. Crap Construction.
4. Exposing New Homebuilders.
5. Neighborhoods for Quality Homes.

Targeted sites towards specific construction companies are pretty popular:

1. K. Hovnanian Homes Suck and Not Khov.
2. Levitt & Sons Problems.
3. The Pulte Homes Experience, Fight Pulte, and My Pulte Experience.
4. Stop BEAZER Homes.

Mind you, I am not an anti-business individual but simply believe in holding any organization that is providing a service accountable. More information is always a good thing. So share your opinions and reviews of your home-buying experience. Even if you have had a good experience, you might want to share it so as to encourage good business practices that provide good customer satisfaction.

New Urbanism incorporates neighborhood walkability as one of the pivotal factors in improving quality of life as well as working toward conservancy. Considering that obesity is one of the rising health problems in the United States, walkability measures are also used to promote healthy living. Walkability measures in a neighborhood usually include calculating distances to amenities like schools, grocery stores, parks, libraries, etc. Considering the rise of online mapping services like Google Maps and cross referencing of various locations via innovative mashups, it was only a while before someone came up with a tool to measure the walkability of your neighborhood.

Walk Score is an extremely user-friendly website that lets you measure how walkable is your neighborhood (although the tag line mistakenly mentions how walkable is your house). The website even lists the various benefits of walking; all of which I agree with. All you do is plug in your home address and the website spits out a score between 0 and 100 to measure walkability of your neighborhood; with 0 being completely unfriendly and 100 being extremely friendly. So naturally I put in my home address and got the following result:

As you observe, the tool gave my neighborhood got a score of 54 which is not bad considering I live in a Texan town where everyone loves their cars especially if it is a pickup. Most of the amenities listed are within a mile [a one-mile walk is considered as a standard].

However, I must mention that I live in a relatively amenity-friendly neighborhood and the location was one of the primary factors in choosing this residence. At the same time, if you actually live in their neighborhood, walking to the grocery store isn’t as easy as it sounds even when the measured distance is 0.29 miles. Why? Lack of sidewalks and pedestrian-friendly crosswalks spanning major roads. If you have to go to HEB Grocery, the store mentioned on the map, you have to cross Texas Avenue which has been perennially under construction ever since I got to College Station. Moreover, due to the construction mess, you simply cannot dream of crossing over to the other side without your heart pounding in fear of being run over. This actually is quite a big deterrent to walking to nearby amenities even if you want to. Thus proximity isn’t the only factor in measuring walkability and urban features that actually promote such behavior are important as well.

Proximity to the Wolf Pen Creek park however has made the city of College Station build sidewalks on the way to the park but these are purely meant for exercise or recreational purposes. I would like the city to put in sidewalks not only for recreational purposes but also to facilitate walking to the stores. Like they say, build and they’ll come actually makes perfect sense in creating a walkable community. If you do not have sidewalks, how can you expect people to walk even if the distance is not much?

It seems that the above cities are the best choices for me to live in, according to this website, Find Your Spot. I dunno where Las Vegas came from because I would hate to live in a city that everyone comes to do freaky things in. There are plenty of things that have ’stayed back in Vegas’ that I am fine with not knowing.

Anyway, Find Your Spot asks you a bunch of questions on weather, choice of activities, demographics, amenities to search its database of cities that you would like to settle down in. If you don’t trust your own preferences, you can always look up the ‘Best Places to Live’ list. What do you prefer?

Like the other day, I was nursing an expensive thimble of wine in a
cafe on the Rue de Something, near the Avenue des Whatevers, and to my
immediate left sat a Frenchman in a pose so relaxed he might have been
modeling for Toulouse-Lautrec. He was doing nothing, and doing it with
panache. Between two fingers dangled a cigarette that remained lit even
though he never did anything so animated as puff. It was hard to tell
if he was truly drinking his glass of red wine; the level went down so
slowly it may have been merely evaporating.

Joel Achenbach at the Washington Post writes a beautiful piece on the lost art of doing nothing. People watching is something we have lost in the ravages of our busy lives eager to make the most of every minute. If a cafe has wifi, we must have our laptops with us, right? We simply cannot sit back and relaxing enjoying our daily dose of caffeine and in the words of Longfellow – we have no time to stand and stare.

Technorati Tags: doing nothing, leisure, people watching, cafe

In the brick-and-mortar realm, the plan is for the first Aloft inn to open sometime in 2008, catering to active, urban 30- to 50-year-olds. But the real-world lodge will be preceded by a 3D cyberversion designed to prompt feedback from virtual guests and help guide the earthbound endeavor.The development is a collaboration involving brainstorming sessions, weekly conference calls and the e-mailing of images back and forth between Starwood, ElectricArtists and The Electric Sheep Company, the 3D-design company ElectricArtists chose to build the cyberversion of the Aloft.

Interested parties, real and avatar, can get an early glimpse of the cyberinn at the virtualaloft blog. Electric Sheep is maintaining the blog to track progress and provide a glimpse into the digital construction process of scripting and graphics [source].

Is this SimCity for real or simply taking the feedback loop a bit too far?

Technorati Tags: hotel, user behavior, Second Life, Starwood Hotels, virtual reality

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