Urbanism

Paywalled, unfortunately. Overview from the Guardian here.

Planning and transportation policies aim to promote wellbeing and people’s quality of life. One policy implication of our study that stems from the negative association between high levels of car dependence and life satisfaction involves promoting multimodality. One of our measures of objective car dependence (i.e., the share of car trips out of out-of-home trips) captures to some extent multimodality. The results indicate that using a car for more than 50 % of the time in a typical week, which indicates low levels of multimodality, is associated with a decrease in life satisfaction. Thus, planners and policymakers should continue to implement diverse transportation systems that integrate
alternative modes of travel such as biking, transit, ride-sharing, and micro-mobilities. Our results do not necessarily warrant the conclusion that there is a need for a complete shift away from car use; cars undoubtedly offer numerous benefits, especially given the characteristics of the U.S. transportation infrastructure and travel behaviors of American adults. Instead, our research implies the importance of travel mode diversity, which would facilitate mobility based on needs and preferences therefore reducing car dependence and mitigating its potential negative effects on life satisfaction.

Land use changes are also key strategies that would help reduce car dependence and its negative externalities on wellbeing. While many travel by car because of their positive attitudes toward this mode of transportation, not all Americans drive because of a true choice or personal preference. Some are car-dependent due to land use patterns that favor car-based mobility, which may have negative implications on life satisfaction. Policies that may address this issue include compact development patterns, transit-oriented developments, car-free neighborhoods, and mixed-used urban environments.

Sounds familiar, in practical effect at least.

Most Vancouver renters were long ago priced out of the detached home market. Then they were priced out of the condo market. And now, the city’s zoning laws mandate that most new rental housing gets built in undesirable locations, unfairly exposing apartment-dwellers to the increased health risks that come from living on busy, arterial roads.

One of the legitimate purposes of zoning is to separate incompatible uses: to keep noxious factories and their emissions as far away from people’s homes and lungs as possible, for example. But zoning that bans apartments anywhere except busy streets does the opposite: it boosts the number of people exposed to health risks. On top of that, because renters typically have lower-incomes than owners, those increased risks fall disproportionately on those with less.

There’s a deeper political dynamic here, one that former Vancouver City Councilor Gordon Price has called The Grand Bargain:

From Expo 86 to the 2010 Olympics [Vancouver] has accommodated growth pressures on a small fraction of the city’s land, while avoiding the political unpleasantness of significant rezonings in built-out neighbourhoods, whether on the West Side, the East Side or even the West End.

Under this Grand Bargain, new housing is concentrated on busy streets, or on old industrial sites, while little to no change is permitted in neighborhoods of detached homes

I knew star forts were a thing. I never realised how big a thing they were. Fascinating.

Most of us take cities for granted. We stroll through winding streets and charming grids assuming they emerged naturally — shaped by markets, neighbours, architects, maybe a poet or two. But here’s the plot twist: for most of history, the people designing cities weren’t architects at all. They were military engineers.

I was surprised to learn the scale of their influence.

This film uncovers the unexpected, global story of how armies, empires, and state bureaucrats shaped the streets we walk on. From Hippodamus in ancient Greece to Roman marching camps; from star forts in Renaissance Italy to Vauban’s geometric super-fortresses; from Spanish colonial grids to British cantonments; from Haussmann’s anti-revolution boulevards to the Cold War suburban dispersal — military logic has been quietly directing urban life for thousands of years.

It’s the hidden operating system of global urbanism: streets as troop corridors, plazas as mustering grounds, boulevards as insurgency-prevention tools, grids as surveillance devices, suburbs as blast-radius management. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Featuring historical maps, satellite images, global case studies, and a narrative that drags these military ghosts into the daylight, this film reframes everything you thought you knew about cities. If you care about design, history, power, and why your street looks the way it does… this one’s for you.

A really nice quick piece on induced demand for parking, and the solution. (i.e. Stop doing it!)

This guy's pretty funny. And I endorse the message:

Cycling in London has changed my life in more ways than I could have imagined. I really hope you like this one. It's been a passion project of mine to show just how incredible cycling in London really is. I really hope you get a chance to get out there and cycle sometime soon. 

We set speed limits, we put them on signs, and we expect people to follow them. But in reality, it plays out a little differently. People don’t really drive based on what a sign tells them. So if signs don’t work, what does?

Giant White Houses are white, with jet-black accents: the shutters, the gutters, the rooves. They are giant—Hulk houses—swollen to the very limits of the legally allowed property setback, and unnaturally tall. They feature a mishmash of architectural features, combining, say, the peaked roof of a farmhouse with squared-off sections reminiscent of city townhomes. They mix horizontal siding, vertical paneling, and painted brick willy-nilly.

Like the giant White House just down the road from us in Washington, D.C., the Giant White House may be occupied by a Republican or a Democrat, but whoever they are, they are rich. Once the house next door was finished, it went on the market for $2.5 million. The house has five bedrooms and six baths and is 5,600 square feet.

[…]

Kate Wagner of McMansion Hell argued that this architectural incoherence stems, in fact, from the modern homebuyer’s saturation in Zillow and Redfin. “Design magazines, HGTV, even Instagram—those are really media empires of the past,” she said. “Overwhelmingly, by sheer monthly users, the way people interact with architecture now is through real estate listings. We’re always Zillow browsing.”

And what do you see on Zillow? If you’re one of the lucky Americans who can afford to buy your first home, and you want to live in a neighborhood like our part of Arlington, you may find that the “starter house,” as you once knew it, is awfully hard to find. Because land is worth so much and old houses, comparatively, are worth so little, when families sell small houses here, they sell them to developers, not to other families. And those developers, driven by fear and money, knock the small houses down to build GWHs. The more GWHs they build, the more the neighborhood is made up of GWHs. The more you scan Zillow, the more it starts to make sense: Like nearly a million Americans a year, you’re better off just buying a brand-new house, too.

After all, in an era when a home purchase is likely the most secure, lucrative investment you will ever make, a house really no longer is a house. It is no longer simply the place where you live. It is your future in building form. It is the way you’ll pay for college, the way you might afford retirement. “I don’t think we think of the dream home anymore,” Wagner said. “We now see houses primarily as vehicles for investment. The best way to do that is if everything looks the same.”

Trams FTW!!!