Migrating city fleets to car-sharing has been able to reduce the size of those fleets by 50-75%, and increase vehicle utilization from 30 to 70%, which means way less in the way of city capital costs dedicated to cars. It also means a lot of policymakers getting much more familiar with the sharing economy.
Tag: cities
Between the Lines
Yet another article about the Shoupistas, this time in Los Angeles magazine. Have we reached some kind of cognitive tipping point? Will urban parking policy start changing? Will our downtown business districts be transformed? We can hope…
Taking Parking Lots Seriously, as Public Spaces
An article from the New York Times about the architecture of parking lots, and how they might be much better used as public spaces with some design tweaks. Some cities like Houston and LA, dedicate a full third of their land area to parking lots, creating hard paved urban deserts and storm runoff disasters. They say that simply suggesting that we “buy fewer cars” is glib (I disagree) but clearly point out the folly of requiring vast quantities of parking by law, and then giving it away for free, thus hiding the true costs.
Alex Steffen’s SXSW Eco Keynote
Alex Steffen gave one of the keynotes, at the first SXSW Eco Conference this fall, talking about good cities as the single best leverage point we have in reducing GHG emissions. It’s broadly the same collection of ideas as his forthcoming crowdfunded book Carbon Zero: A Short Tour of Your City’s Future. Looking forward to its eventual release.
The Joy of Slow Cities
It’s entirely possible that in The Future, we’ll come to realize that slower cities are better than fast. A city in which the fastest thing on the street is a bicycle is a place for living, for being, for enjoying in its own right. Walking, chatting, stopping on a whim at any shop or park or patio. We were lulled into a view of the future that was all high speed and high energy by the explosive industrialization of the early 20th century. But our visions of the future can and do change. We get to define what progress means.
Twelve Car-Free City Zones
Twelve Car-Free City Zones in photos, from National Geographic. Many north americans can’t really imagine what cities are like without cars. It took me a long time to realize that what I didn’t like about cities wasn’t the urban space, it was the fact that here, it tends to be infested with rude 1500 kg beasts.
The Death of the Fringe Suburb
News of Suburbia’s demise reaches the New York Times Op-Ed pages. Let’s hope someone out there allocating federal transportation dollars is reading.
Counting Parking Spots, From Above
A couple of researchers inferred the rate of parking supply growth in New Haven, Cambridge and Hartford from aerial photographs, between 1950 and 2010. Both Connecticut cities had explosive parking growth, even while their populations were declining. Cambridge enacted parking maxima in 1985, and its shrinking population trend reversed. Thus parking is not required to facilitate growth. Felix Salmon comments on the paper as well:
Parking lots are — with only a handful of exceptions — the best possible way of destroying a city’s soul. They’re gruesome, lifeless places, and I’m constantly astonished by the way in which governments and developers are convinced that they’re a great idea.
Debunking the Cul-de-Sac
Highlights from a study looking at how different street network designs affect things like health and safety. Traditional interconnected grids fare better in just about every way than the dendritic cul-de-sac neighborhoods of the automobile dominated late 20th century.
Cities as the environmental solution, not the problem
A series of posts from the NRDC on how good, human friendly cities are actually the most sustainable places for people to live, in contrast to our fond fantasies about the country, and especially the suburbs.