Over at Walkable DFW, there’re two collections of photographs of new detached dwellings recently constructed in post-Katrina New Orleans. One group shows dwellings designed or inspired by new urbanists and the other dwellings designed by architecture enthusiast Brad Pitt’s Make It Right program. One’s architecturally innovative and one’s traditional and cutesy pie. One has the [...]
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NEW URBANISM
Is “per passenger km” the right metric for comparing modes?
It might seem intuitively obvious that any comparisons between cars and public transport should be on a “per kilometre” basis. After all, as Steven Smith at Market Urbanism points out, “people take trips of varying length, and longer trips are more expensive than shorter trips, so the desire to standardize and compare makes us want [...]
READ MOREWould Seaside work in outer suburban Melbourne?
When I first saw pictures of Seaside many years ago, I imagined that’s what the outer suburbs of Melbourne could look like one day. Click on the picture and go for a “walk” around the Florida village that had a key role in inspiring the New Urbanism movement. Seaside is famous – you might know it from [...]
READ MOREAre cul-de-sacs a dead end?
The New Urbanism hates cul-de-sacs – they’re emblematic of much that’s wrong with car-oriented suburban cities, including poor walkability, low transit provision, long travel distances, “excessive” demand for privacy, and even low social capital. I might be in a minority, but I’m an admirer of cul-de-sacs. They’ve been around for thousands of years for good [...]
READ MOREWhy do inner city residents walk and tram to work?
There is a strong correlation between density and the use of more sustainable transport modes in the inner city, but density is not the key driver – proximity to the CBD, good public transport, traffic congestion and high socioeconomic status are more significant factors
READ MOREStop making sense!
David Byrne on bicycles, Atlanta’s sprawl and burying highways. On New York: “If I had a magic wand — ahhh, that’s easy — I’d bury the highways, as they’ve done in some other cities. The West Side Highway and the FDR would both go underground, with parks on top that link the city and its [...]
READ MOREAre cul de sacs a curse?
One of the tenets of new urbanism is that streets should be laid out in a rectilinear grid to maximise connectivity i.e. to minimise public transport and walking distances. This research project in Seattle seems to confirm the wisdom of that principle. It compared the distance travelled by residents of two neighbourhoods and found that [...]
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