America's urban planning on wrong track
Rethinking the asphalt nation
By Arrol Gellner, Thursday, October 23, 2008.What if we paved over the whole state of Wisconsin?
Actually, we already have. According to recent Federal Highway Administration figures, the United States has close to 240 million motor vehicles -- almost 40 million more cars than there are licensed drivers -- and just under 4 million miles of paved roads for them to run on. All told, some 61,000 square miles of the United States -- an area just a little smaller than the Badger State -- is solidly paved over, either with roads or with parking. And of course, there's always more pavement on the way.
We weren't always an asphalt nation. What happened?
There's plenty of blame to go around, from pressure by vested interests such as oil and automobile companies, to political pork barreling, to plain old infatuation with our four-wheeled friends. But the most disgraceful portion of blame for our autocentric landscape goes to people who should know better: our own city planners. For the past six decades, they've swallowed the premise of the asphalt nation whole.
It's city planners who've long uncritically accepted the notion that cars should be the focus of our urban design, turning the built environment into one big playground for motor vehicles. It's city planners who've allowed draconian parking requirements, rather than intelligent land use, to determine what gets built -- a policy that literally puts humans second to their cars. But don't take my word for it. In his book, "The High Cost of Free Parking," UCLA urban planning professor Donald Shoup flatly states:
"Parking requirements create great harm: They subsidize cars, distort transportation choices, warp urban form, increase housing costs, burden low-income households, debase urban design, damage the economy, and degrade the environment."
We make these sacrifices to accommodate a machine that, despite having been civilized a bit by electronics, essentially remains an early 20th century-style, oil-burning, exhaust-spewing contraption. The legacy of this long reign is an utterly car-centered environment of huge, signal-clogged boulevards and buildings adrift in vast oceans of parking.
But this kind of autocentric design isn't just ugly and wasteful -- it also creates a vicious planning cycle. In order to kowtow to all those cars, we have to build everything on a superhuman scale, which in turn uses more land, which in turn lowers density and creates sprawl. And once density gets down to the level of the average suburb, you simply can't walk anywhere anymore. Your kids can't walk to school, and you can't walk to work or to the shopping center, because everything is spread so far apart. The result is that we're ever more beholden to our cars to get anywhere.
If all this seems perfectly normal, it's only because most of us don't have any alternative. On the other hand, in most European cities, not to speak of Asian ones, close-knit, easily walkable neighborhoods packed with urban amenities are the rule. It's not that their planners are any smarter than ours. Rather, it's just the natural result of humanly scaled urban design that predates cars by many centuries, and which will doubtless outlast them by many centuries as well. Whether our own cities will outlive cars isn't all that clear yet.
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Submitted by Jeff Bergstrom on October 24, 2008 - 4:29am.
Yes, there are too many cars, too much traffic. It sucks. The sky is blue and the grass is green. Stating the obvious is easy. We could have had a more European model if our entire country was the size of Ohio. Do you realize how large the United States is? We are a nation of over 300M. Our country has added over 100M in the last 45 years. In that time, we didn't have the technology to create any model that would have worked differently. And, now our structures are in place where turning to another model is almost impossible. Seen any high-speed train systems added in the last few decades.
Yes, what we have isn't right. There are logical reasons why and how it evolved to where are are. Saying things suck isn't helping anyone.
Submitted by Louis Herrera on October 24, 2008 - 8:14am.
As a former urban planner, I was immediately drawn to your article by the headline. After reading your article, I couldn’t disagree with you more. In fact, I am actually a little surprised that as an architect you could draw such a conclusion.
Parking standards did not initially come from urban planners, they came from commercial bankers as lending requirements. Parking standards have always been, and will also be a pro-forma line item that commercial lenders use to protect their vested interest in a project. No lender in their right mind is going to lend “Joe Developer” the funds to build a commercial development that has no parking. Loaning money on the hopes that alternative transportation options are on the horizon is simply too risky for any lender.
The only way to un-codify today’s parking standards is to plan and build real transit options that give consumers a choice to run their errands in an efficient and timely manner.
I’ll bet if you ask any city/urban planner, you will be sure to get an earful on the alternative transportation modes they envision—and it won’t be around asphalt.
Louis Herrera
CEO/Designated Broker (former urban planner)
RT Brokerage Services, Inc.
www.rtbrokerage.com
Submitted by Dan Gobis on October 27, 2008 - 7:31am.
Louis, In Racine, Wisconsin the City Dept. of Development and Planning set the requirements for parking, not the Lender. I do agree that alternative transit modes are necessary.
Arrol, Wisconsin is the Badger State.
Dan Gobis
RE/MAX Preferred
Racine, Wi
www.dangobis.com
Submitted by Steve on October 27, 2008 - 12:09pm.
Have you also latched on to the cliche notion that cars are the root of all evil?
First, your assertion that the car "essentially remains an early 20th century-style, oil-burning, exhaust-spewing contraption" is completely off base and false. Today's car shares as much with the Panhard & Levassor car of 1889 (first standardized production car) as the computer shares with the phonograph. The idea that cars are a backward technology that is somehow ruining our world is simplistic and wrong. Compared to what was offered just 30 years ago, the modern car is many times safer, cleaner, and more efficient. You would also do well to remember that electric, natural gas, and hydrogen cars need parking spaces too.
Although there may be plenty of development related reasons for the continuous promotion of cars, the underlying motivation for our "automobile culture" is that cars represent our most prized national values: freedom and competition. Cars allow people to drive the extra 15 blocks to the cheaper store, pack up for the weekend and head to Vegas at 2 a.m., or visit their aunt in Hazen, ND. Without cars, people have to rely on public transportation that might not run on time, might be closed at "off hours", or simply don't go to your destination. Societies against cars tend to discourage competition and enforce social dependency.
Unfortunately, people like yourself have led to decreased spending and upkeep on our deteriorating and overburdened the road infrastructure. This causes the traffic and congestion which people like yourself use as an excuse to promote public transportation and eliminating cars. The world is not lollipops and sunshine. Pavement is not "evil", it's an expression of amazing power of the American people to pursue freedom and greatness. That some of us now promote abandoning cars in favor of "bubble communities" is a sad statement on how much we've devalued the dreams and principles of our forebears.