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Old Posted Dec 20, 2020, 6:53 PM
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We Should Design Cities For Shorter Distances, Not Faster Speeds

We Should Design Cities For Shorter Distances, Not Faster Speeds


December 17, 2020

By Adie Tomer and Joseph W. Kane

Read More: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-a...faster-speeds/

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.....

Decades of suburbanization and highway investment have stretched the distances between where people live and where they want to go. The result is a transportation system that is a top source of pollution and unintentional death, strains household budgets and public coffers, and gives consumers little transportation choice.

- Metropolitan American needs an approach focused on proximity and bringing people and places closer together. This means we can no longer make congestion our top priority; we need to build cities for shorter-distance travel. Today’s structural problems have their roots in how we measure the performance of our transportation networks and prioritize faster vehicle speeds. — Governments tend to use a system called “level of service” (LOS) to measure congestion, which isn’t too dissimilar from the color-coded traffic indicators in a GPS map app. Essentially, LOS delivers higher scores for roads where traffic can more frequently reach posted speed limits. Transportation analysts then use LOS results to judge where to make infrastructure investments and inform the kinds of congestion indexes that the media cites.

- LOS and congestion indexes fail to inform practitioners about where travelers start their trips, where they end those trips, or why they’re traveling in the first place. There is no recognition of the interplay between physical design and travel behavior, nor is there a recognition of broader economic, social, or environmental goals. And with Americans regularly wasting more time in traffic than ever before, the approach doesn’t even work. — Fortunately, new technology can support a new approach. The emergence of anonymized geolocation data allows practitioners and researchers to better track travel behavior at a regional and neighborhood scale, measuring exactly when, where, and how far people travel every day. The COVID-19 pandemic has been the grand demonstration of this data’s power: Media outlets worldwide have used geolocation data to demonstrate how many people were staying home, where people were congregating too much, and a host of other measures.

- Considering these findings, metropolitan planners, elected officials, and other partners should want to create more neighborhoods like Logan Square. Neighborhoods designed at this scale are more socially inclusive, more environmentally resilient, require less infrastructure per capita, and are safer for all. Our findings also reveal why chasing congestion reduction is a fool’s errand: Communities will lose many benefits of proximity while mostly failing to give residents shorter travel times. — Practitioners at all levels of government need a new approach to performance measurement, one that will help build more proximity-focused neighborhoods and downplay the importance of congestion reduction. We recommend any performance measurement suite include three key guiding principles:

• Practitioners should use anonymized geolocation data to accurately measure travel behavior at the neighborhood scale and make inter-neighborhood comparisons.

• Practitioners should build accessibility indexes to measure the number of key destinations someone can reach by multiple modes within certain distances and times.

• A database should include a broad range of complementary datasets—industry location data, sidewalk quality, property values, etc.—to compare how infrastructure supply, neighborhood conditions, and travel behavior interrelate.

.....



Using a pool of 71.5 million daily trips, we found that the average trip in these six places spanned 7.3 miles and lasted 15.5 minutes. But it was also clear that metro areas with less congestion also force residents into longer-distance trips. It’s nice that Kansas City, Mo. drivers encounter less rush hour congestion than their peers in Portland, Ore., and that they save 2.5 minutes per trip—but they’re also likely to travel 1,600 more miles per year.







Neighborhoods associated with longer-distance trips do enjoy faster travel speeds, but their total travel time is often longer. In other words, there’s little to no time savings to counterbalance all the extra miles traveled. Second, physical design matters: Neighborhoods with shorter-distance trips tend to have greater population densities, are situated closer to downtown, and contain more intersections—all features of more proximity-focused designs.







Comparing two specific neighborhoods can visualize the relationship between physical design and local travel behavior. For example, Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood—which was designed for pedestrians and transit use, not cars—ends up having much shorter trips than a suburban peer like Roselle, Ill., which filters traffic to a highway and other wide roads.


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  #2  
Old Posted Dec 20, 2020, 8:24 PM
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Originally Posted by M II A II R II K View Post
Yikes, what a juxtaposition.

Hey post-war america,

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Old Posted Dec 20, 2020, 9:45 PM
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Yikes, what a juxtaposition.

When you see them side-by-side like that, it really makes you wonder who the fuck thought that was a good idea?

(Without getting into a whole debate on the merits of suburbia, I can certainly understand the appeal. It just doesn't have to be so goddamn ugly and inhumane)
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Old Posted Dec 20, 2020, 10:50 PM
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Isn't that the way big cities were before the 1920s (as transportation options were far more limited and people far less wealthy) and the shift away from it afterwards, thanks first to rail then cars, suggests that many didn't like it.

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(Without getting into a whole debate on the merits of suburbia, I can certainly understand the appeal. It just doesn't have to be so goddamn ugly and inhumane)
Because Manhattan 1910, or Hong Kong present is so "humane" and pretty for the average person.

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Old Posted Dec 20, 2020, 11:36 PM
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Isn't that the way big cities were before the 1920s (as transportation options were far more limited and people far less wealthy) and the shift away from it afterwards, thanks first to rail then cars, suggests that many didn't like it.


Because Manhattan 1910, or Hong Kong present is so "humane" and pretty for the average person.

Zaragoza doesn't seem to be so bad though. 700,000 people and 46% walk to work.
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Old Posted Dec 20, 2020, 11:54 PM
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Because Manhattan 1910, or Hong Kong present is so "humane" and pretty for the average person.

Inhumane as in not made for humans. They're designed for cars with people as an afterthought.

In any case the density of early 20th century slums is besides the point when it comes to the design of modern suburbs.
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Old Posted Dec 21, 2020, 12:09 AM
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Inhumane as in not made for humans. They're designed for cars with people as an afterthought.
No, they're designed for people who happen to have cars. Meanwhile, the old cities were designed for a time when people were much more disposable.

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In any case the density of early 20th century slums is besides the point when it comes to the design of modern suburbs.
No it's not, because without the mobility of the car, or at least the rail (which usually has the longest commute by time), the modern city would still look like a lot like the slums of old. The inner city would look a lot different in Manhattan, central Chicago, central London, central Paris, etc if modern mobility hadn't allowed millions to expand their housing and working options.
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Old Posted Dec 21, 2020, 12:10 AM
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In any case the density of early 20th century slums is besides the point when it comes to the design of modern suburbs.
Totally, as if the only two kinds of built environments that one can choose between are Roselle, IL or Manhattan's lower east side circa 1910.

As I often like to say, we could've continued building more oak parks, but we ended up with a bunch schaumburgs instead.

Whoops.
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Last edited by Steely Dan; Dec 21, 2020 at 3:02 AM.
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Old Posted Dec 21, 2020, 1:30 AM
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Originally Posted by accord1999 View Post
No it's not, because without the mobility of the car, or at least the rail (which usually has the longest commute by time), the modern city would still look like a lot like the slums of old. The inner city would look a lot different in Manhattan, central Chicago, central London, central Paris, etc if modern mobility hadn't allowed millions to expand their housing and working options.
Modern American suburbs were fueled by cheap loans from the federal government, along with restrictions on using those loans in inner cities. Without that, suburbs would look a lot different, but Manhattan would look a lot like it does right now.
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Old Posted Dec 21, 2020, 1:33 AM
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No, they're designed [so that] people [have] to have cars, [which is exactly the scenario that the auto industry wants and conspired to create].
Fixed it for you.
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Old Posted Dec 21, 2020, 1:36 AM
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No it's not, because without the mobility of the car, or at least the rail (which usually has the longest commute by time), the modern city would still look like a lot like the slums of old.
This is completely baseless.
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Old Posted Dec 21, 2020, 1:38 AM
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Let me fix it for you.

No, they're designed for people who benefit from the unrivaled mobility of cars, which is why the car completely replaced the legacy forms of travel so quickly while also massively expanding the mobility of the average person.
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Old Posted Dec 21, 2020, 1:40 AM
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This is completely baseless.
Absolutely baseless is that people only live in the modern North American suburb because they have no choice.
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Old Posted Dec 21, 2020, 1:42 AM
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Originally Posted by accord1999 View Post
No, they're designed for people who happen to have cars. Meanwhile, the old cities were designed for a time when people were much more disposable.

They're designed to facilitate driving at the expense of all other considerations of livability or any other modes of transportation. Which coincidentally, actually makes driving less convenient since it forces everyone else to do the same.

I've always found that it's generally easier to drive in urban environments than suburban ones - distances are shorter, fewer other people are driving, and there are more low-traffic routes to choose from because not all through traffic is funneled to a handful of collector routes. And I can also choose to not drive if that's the better decision in a given circumstance. Win-win!



Quote:
Originally Posted by accord1999 View Post
No it's not, because without the mobility of the car, or at least the rail (which usually has the longest commute by time), the modern city would still look like a lot like the slums of old. The inner city would look a lot different in Manhattan, central Chicago, central London, central Paris, etc if modern mobility hadn't allowed millions to expand their housing and working options.

The reaction to the overcrowded, polluted urban tenements of the early 1900s was stuff like this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/hhi2eXZFQngsrBpcA

The shitty sprawl seen above is more recent, and in no way shape or form has any direct relationship to overcrowded urban environments.

As Steely said, there's a whole world of urban options between the Lower East Side circa 1910 and Rosella, IL.
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Old Posted Dec 21, 2020, 1:42 AM
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Let me fix it for you.

No, they're designed for people who benefit from the unrivaled mobility of cars, which is why the car completely replaced the legacy forms of travel so quickly while also massively expanding the mobility of the average person.
Then why are those "legacy forms of travel" still kicking ass in the rest of the developed (and lesser developed) world? And why are so many US city neighborhoods across the US bigger slums now than they were before the urban government-subsidized exodus? I think you're just addicted to cars. It's funny how you only seem to show up to defend them.
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Old Posted Dec 21, 2020, 1:43 AM
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Absolutely baseless is that people only live in the modern North American suburb because they have no choice.
Way to move the goal post. So basically you're admitting your assertion was baseless. Thank you.
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Old Posted Dec 21, 2020, 1:47 AM
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Then why are those "legacy forms of travel" still kicking ass in the rest of the developed (and lesser developed) world?
They're not?





Sure, it's many times higher than what it is in the US but cars still dominate.
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Old Posted Dec 21, 2020, 1:52 AM
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No, they're designed for people who happen to have cars. Meanwhile, the old cities were designed for a time when people were much more disposable.
LOL. There's like 40,000 traffic-related deaths per year in the US alone. And that's not even counting pedestrian deaths, which keep increasing due to the ever-more-absurd sizes of trucks and SUVs. Show me some evidence that "the old cities" were designed for a time when "people were much more disposable." You're just a treasure trove of gems that you've pulled out of your ass.
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Old Posted Dec 21, 2020, 1:54 AM
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LOL. There's like 40,000 traffic-related deaths per year. And that's not even counting pedestrian deaths, which keep increasing due to the ever-more-absurd sizes of trucks and SUVs. Show me some evidence that "the old cities" were designed for a time when "people were much more disposable." You're just a treasure trove of gems that you've pulled out of your ass.
It's easy to see from the housing conditions.
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Old Posted Dec 21, 2020, 2:02 AM
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They're not?
Sure, it's many times higher than what it is in the US but cars still dominate.
Now compare transit ridership in US *cities* on average to that in European and Asian *cities* on average and omit all the commercial-related auto mileage (e.g. mail, deliveries, company vehicles, etc.)
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