Afghan Women Access to Mobile Phones

Check-out the impressive stat's in USAid's cool infographic about Afghan Women's Access to Mobile Technology.

EPA Study Finds More US Communities Are Embracing Infill Redevelopment

Highlights from the EPA's 2012 Residential Construction Trends in America's Metropolitan Regions report indicates that infill development is becoming increasingly more popular. In the US there still plenty of suburban development on the books, interest in urban development continues to increase because of the intrinsic overall access that comes with urban development. As an urban planner I am excited to explore new concepts for urban living that better aligns with transportation networks. I'm sure architects are excited to get out their creativity pens...I can't wait to see new designs for urban residential architecture.

3 out of 4 large metropolitan regions in saw an increased share of new housing development in previously developed areas during 2005 - 2009 compared to 2000 - 2004.

Source: U.S. EPA

21% of new homes in the 209 metropolitan regions examined were infill. 

8 out of 10 new homes in San Jose, California were infill.

Miami increased from 40% to 49% infill, and Providence, Rhode Island, increased from 20%t to 29%.

New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco all saw a majority of new home construction in previously developed areas during the same time period.

Benefits of Infill Development

• Provides economic and public health benefits to metropolitan areas while protecting the local environment
• Saves money and energy
• Takes advantage of previous investments in existing infrastructure such as water, sewer, and roads 
• Preserves open space
• Protects natural resources
• Reduces transportation emissions
• Decreases the amount of polluted stormwater washing off new roadways and other paved surfaces
• Raises property values 
• Increases a community’s tax base 
• Attracts retail businesses to serve the larger residential population

Source: U.S. EPA

The EPA report includes a listing of resources available to local, regional, and state leaders that want to coordinate land use, housing, and transportation policies.

For more information see the EPA press release.

The Original LA Metro Tunnel

From the LA Times archives: here are photos from LA's first subway tunnel from First Street and Glendale Boulevard to Hill street, between Fifth and Fourth Streets that began construction on May 3, 1924. The subway tunnel was a mile long, 28 feet wide and 21 feet high. It varied from 30 feet to 60 feet below the ground.

Source: LA Times

Source: LA Times

Source: LA Times

NYC DOT Rolls Out ILook NYC Campaign

NYC DOT Commissioner Janet Sadik-Khan rolls out the ILook NYC Campaign with US Secretary of Transportation Ray La Hood on September 19, 2012.

The campaign includes innovative pedestrian street markings, and distracted driving ads to alert New Yorkers to walk safely and drive smart.

Click here for more information about the ILook NYC Campaign on the US DOT Fast Lane Blog. 

Retro London Underground Propaganda

In the earlier days of public transit, posters were used to make a case for the efficiencies and benefits of the London Underground in city life.

1915 

1924

1969

More great London Underground propaganda can be found at the Retronaut.

FTA FY2012 Discretionary Grant Appropriations

Curious about which projects the Federal Transit Administration gave discretionary grant funding too? Well so was I. The US Department of Transportation just released a cool interactive map with info about the $787 million allocated by State of Good Repair, Bus Livability and Transit Asset Management Project grants to 255 projects across 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rio.

Here are the grant appropriations for transit systems of cities that I have lived in the US:

New York City - $34,468,000

The New York City Department of Transportation got $14,680,000 State of Good Repair grant to "rehabilitate 20 miles of existing bus lanes. Many of these lanes are in a state of poor repair, and NYCDOT has worked with the Pennsylvania State University to develop a more effective method of applying red lane markings that addresses past maintenance problems and greatly prolongs longevity." They also got a $3,400,000 Bus Livability grant to "implement a package of improvements along Utica Avenue in Brooklyn, making intermodal connection improvements such as better sidewalks, lighting, bus stop amenities, way finding, and subway station stairs."

The NY Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) got $24,000,000 State of Good Repair grant to "replace its obsolete bus radio system and construct a modernized bus command center. Bringing the bus radio system to a state of good repair is critical for day-to-day bus operations and will improve safety, service reliability and overall operating efficiency." They also got a $5,600,000 Transit Asset Management grant for the Integrated Whole Life Asset Management Planning System for the NYCT Bus Rolling Stock Revenue Fleet.

Los Angeles - $20,000,000

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LACMTA) got $10,000,000 State of Good Repair grant to "replace buses in its fleet that have met or exceeded their useful life with Clean Natural Gas (CNG) vehicles." They also got a Bus Livability grant of $10,000,000 for the Metro Orange Line Bus Enhancement project that will provide a pedestrian connection improvements to the North Hollywood Red Line Station.

San Diego - $13,000,000

The San Diego Metropolitan Transit system (MTS) got $10,000,000 State of Good Repair grant to "expand and modernize its East County Bus Maintenance Facility in Cajon. The buildings at this location were originally constructed in 1959, are no longer compliant with city and state building codes, and are hindering MTS' ability to maintain it nealy 100% CNG vehicle fleet. These renovations will also incorporate the use of solar panels to reduce the carbon footprint and energy use of the facility." They also got a $3,000,000 Transit Asset Management grant that is aimed at helping agencies "develop and implement new or improved transit asset management systems and cost-effective ways to manage and maintain the condition of their systems."

NYC Internet Speeds and Infrastructure Map - Inequity at Play?

While doing research about smartphones and urban access I came across this great map of Internet speeds and infrastructure in NYC.

From this map it seems as though low-income neighborhoods have slower internet speeds on the megabytes per second scale and that this is related to the amount of fiber optic in areas. A possible explanation is that there are not many commercial office uses in low-income neighborhoods. However, if you consider the Lower East Side (LES) that is not exactly bustling with commercial office spaces and yet there is an abundance of fiber optic infrastructure it is hard to wonder if this is not just another example of systematic inequities at play.

Mexico City Transit: El Metro y el Metrobus

Mexico City has the most extensive metro system in Latin America, it also has a growing Bus Rapid Transit system (Metrobus). Collectively, the public transportation network moves about 80% of the 13.5 million residents and commuters throughout the city. Below I combine the maps of both systems  to give a quick snapshot of the city's comprehensive rapid transit infrastructure. Despite the service capacity of both systems, many areas in the periphery lack access to the public transport system and must still rely on other forms of transport.

Parking an Amenity, Not a Right

My perspective on easing parking violation policies in New York City is that they should not happen. Parking is not a right, at most it is an amenity. No one likes parking tickets, but it comes with the territory and the privilege. It is the driver’s responsibility to know the conditions of the public or private parking space they use, and decide whether to leave the car or not, and to plan accordingly. Parking tickets are a part of driving, drivers need stop complaining and simply have better parking sense and practice better parking patterns. 

For more on NYC's recent parking policies: http://t.co/74KCB0AX

Chicago On Climate Change

“Cities adapt or they go away,” said Aaron N. Durnbaugh, deputy commissioner of Chicago’s Department of Environment.


For more info check out NYTIMES article

Zoning As We Use It Today In NYC

"Zoning has also become a sophisticated public-policy tool, helping to preserve iconic structures...supporting retail corridors...protecting topography...and opening up access to the waterfront across the city." 

Vin Cipolla 

President of The Municipal Art Society of New York

Over the past 50 years, since 1961 since New York City's second zoning resolution the City and zoning has changed a lot. More than 900 pages have been added, including 41 residential zoning districts, 85 commercial districts and 43 special districts. 

Check out Vin Cipolla's article in Crain's: "Revamp rezoning for city's new age"

A Look Back at Urban Renewal

A theory of Urbanism?...Urban Renewal

Some food for thought on the legacy of the federal urban renewal program that by virtue of providing money to cities influenced development patterns of the time between 1949 and 1974 (this date is debatable, but I'm going with it, b/c Robert Caro used it and Bob Beauregard seem to overlap on it and I trust their judgement). 

From Robert Beauregard's When America Became Suburban: 

"Cities used urban renewal to eliminate obsolete buildings, create large-scale real-estate projects with critical mass to keep existing businesses from leaving and attracting new businesses into the downtown." (2006)

"Urban renewal and public housing were linked." The slums targeted by the public housing program were often adjacent to the main commercial districts, and their condemnation and demolition were central to the vision of the renewed downtown. Multiple mid-to-high-rise buildings set amid lawns and playgrounds replaced slums." (2006)

NYC Zoning Trivia

The original 1916 New York City Zoning Resolution was amended 2,500 times between 1916 and 1961, when the 2nd (and current) New York City Zoning Resolution was finally passed (efforts had started in the late 1930s).

Grad School Reflections: Starchitecture, the New Beauty and the Beast

Like a fool in love, before my International Placemaking course I viewed starchitecture and monumental development behind rose-colored glasses. I was especially enamored with Calatrava-like bridges, more so than with Hong Kong and Dubai global city mega-project fabrications.  I was smitten by the economic development benefits and the brilliant ingenuity and engineering behind jaw-dropping design. As a result, I neglected to see the lurching dark side where the quest for starchitecture leaves the poor in the shadows.

I found Miriana Fix’s article, “Bridge to Speculation,” very interesting. For me it highlighted the power of agency showing that it matters who tells the story. Her article also made me think about what is really going on with Sao Paolo’s planners. Is Sao Paolo simply not planning for low-income people who live in the favela’s because it is full of bad planners who could care less about the public’s welfare and only favor the rich?  Is it that planners are pushing projects based on political agendas that they have no means of influencing even if they disagree with the direction? Or is it a little bit of both? I would like to think that Sao Paolo is not full of bad planners, but even this is very arbitrary, my notion of bad might be very different from someone else’s notion of bad.

What puzzles me the most is how governments can completely ignore certain undesirable populations within their jurisdictions, as if ignoring them will make them go away. Continuing to ignore the poor and further marginalizing a subset of a country’s population is not an appropriate method to diminish poverty and it can also be argues that it negatively affects the middle and upper class. Governments are very vain. They want to be able to show-off spectacular cityscapes and at the same time pretend that the poverty that hovers over them will disappear with the trickle down effects of city beautification projects like the cable-stayed bridge over the Pinheiros River in Sao Paolo. Unfortunately, this is seldom the case in the real world.

I am also deeply puzzled by the issue of what planners should do when larger political agendas are in direct contradiction to their ideologies and pareto optimal solutions. To be fair, this problem is not unique to Sao Paolo it appears in cities over and over in many different forms. Throwing in the towel is not an option. Like entrepreneurs, planners need to be idealistic, innovative and believe that we can make a difference in the constant uphill battle between social equity and market inequality.

This course offered a robust survey of the different elements and politics planners have to deal with around the world. Every week it made me think about who planners plan for? And why some people are ignored in the planning process. I think this course could better prepare planners for international and national practice by including more material about the planning infrastructure and framework in place in different countries. Exposure to the rules of the game and will help us better understand why certain projects and policies happen.

Grad School Reflections: Segregation A La Carte in Latin America

As I read both Clara Irazabal’s “A Planned City Comes of Age: Rethinking Ciudad Guayana Today,” and Nora Libertun de Duren’s “Planning A la Carte” I couldn’t help but think: “Is this a planning success or a planning failure? Was it the plan that failed or was it the system that caused the plan to fail?”

Plans for the most part start off with good intentions, the problem is that good intentions of what “ought to be” are subjective, and they are in the eye of the beholder. Another other problem is that plan as you may, a plan is simply not enough to produce or ensure what “ought to be.” Ciudad Guayana and the gated communities of Buenos Aires give us two examples of how planned cities and communities are not what they were meant to be.

In the case of Ciudad Guayana I think the system caused the plan to fail. And by the system I mean the political culture and political will pushing the project forward. Irazabal discusses how the economically-based idea of development resulted in a “somewhat inhuman quality: scattered, large buildings in vast areas, the social classes clearly separated with the poor marginalized outside the planned areas.” I find it ironic how the recently elected national democratic government of Venezuela invited planners from MIT and Harvard and put their best people on the team to plan a city that did not include the poor and created a spatially awkward landscape of scattered buildings. Did they think that poverty would somehow disappear or fix itself over night?

The excessive fiscal avarice and myopic planning vision of the municipalities in the Buenos Aires metropolitan region are the main reasons that I think the gated communities of Buenos Aires are a planning failure. While the municipal flexibility to rezone land uses for development projects spurred the development of gated communities, the municipalities should have been more exigent and required developers to pay higher development fees so that municipalities could put in place distributional programs for the un-gated poor. In the end, as seen in the picture above, gated communities have created more class segregation and distributional disparities within Buenos Aires than the good that came from the increased local income from tax-payers and permits, job creation, and infrastructure development provided by developers in exchange for project approval. Evidence of these distributional disparities can be seen in this video news story: http://www.france24.com/en/20100814-report-argentina-buenos-aires-gated-communities-barbed-wire-violence linking the public safety issues in Buenos Aires today to the segregation of the ‘haves’ and ‘haves nots’ exacerbated by gated communities.

Poverty is an extremely complex issue that planners need to plan for unlike the case of Ciudad Guayana. Similarly, planners need to think of more comprehensive plans and consider long-term effects and not just worry about how to increase revenue and or put in place piece-mail infrastructure like the case in the suburban gated communities of Buenos Aires.

Grad School Reflections: No Metro Cards & Taxi Wars

I really enjoyed both of the assigned New York Times articles as they detailed the jarring tribulations of one of the most crowned planning solutions of our times: bus transit rapid systems. In fact, each article made me chuckle a bit. As each article retold very vivid scenarios of why planners should not and cannot operate in a vacuum in any circumstance they were also great reminders of the reality of the implementation process and the ultimate test of any project: the people.

It is quite alarming to read about the taxi wars in the greater Johannesburg metropolitan area against the newly established bus system, but it is hard to merely discount them as illicit acts of rage. In a way, the acts are understandable, because even though the BRT system solution has many positive qualities for the general good of society and it aims to promote greater social equity, in this case it also has at least one negative quality: displacement. Its existence will displace the current small business operators that own the minibus taxis that provide transportation for over 14 million South Africans. The minibus taxis owners are understandably enraged because to them this new bus system is equivalent to a new Wal-Mart store that provides exactly what they do at a much lower price that they cannot compete with.

In New York City the problem with the newly implemented BRT system along Second and First Avenue manifest itself in a slightly different way: the transition process. The transition and integration of the new system is simply not logical to customers, New Yorkers cannot understand why they cannot pay with the customary Metrocard – and I quite frankly can’t either. Especially since the New York BRT system hardly incorporates any of the other BRT characteristics such as the elevated passenger loading zone and much more exclusive lanes that have distinguished the BRT’s performance from regular bus service performance. Thus, the critiques around the new system are dominated by the dissatisfaction with the general lack of foresight in the mechanics of how riders can use the new system. From the article we get that this small detail may be enough to dissuade customers from using this great new system and may make the difference in the ultimate success of the BRT in New York City.

The scenarios presented in both New York Times articles are clear reminders that citizens still have the last word in the success of any planning idea, even if it is meant to be benevolently inclusive. The people will apply basic tests to demonstrate if it is in fact inclusive or not.  The evidence from Soweto and Johannesburg, and the streets of New York highlight different ways in which citizens may exercise their ability to make or break a planning solution as heralded as the bus transit rapid system.

Grad School Reflections: Public Parks, The Key to Livable Communities Book Talk

At the AIA Book Talk at the Center for Architecture in NYC on November 30, 2010, Professor Alex Garvin from Yale discusses his book, Public Parks, The Key to Livable Communities. The book focuses on the important role that public parks play in the daily lives of citizens. To Garvin public parks come in many forms, are constantly changing and are usually manmade. He sites the conventional Central Park and Prospect Park Olmstead models, the greened boulevards in Paris and in San Antonio’s Riverwalk and in traffic islands, beaches as great models, but stresses that there is not a one-size fits all model. He argues that there are six key roles that parks play in urban society: (1) enhancing personal well-being and public health, (2) incubating a civil society, (3) sustaining a livable environment, (4) providing a public realm framework for private development, (5) evolving interaction between people and nature and park stewardship. Parks train citizens to coexist without conflict, lower crime rates, and prevent stormwater run-off pollution. Lastly, for Garvin proper park maintenance is just as important as a convenient location and good design.

Grad School Reflections: Who's at the Haiti Reconstruction Planning Table?

What happened in Haiti, or perhaps a better question is “what will happen in Haiti after the January 12^th earthquake,” especially in terms of planning.

It is evident that each speaker at the panel on Monday, November 1, 2010 at Columbia University, Before Design, Rebuilding Haiti after the Earthquake, has a unique connection to Haiti that has influenced their ideas of how the reconstruction of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince and its peripheries should materialize. For better or worse, each speaker also represents a player (it may not be them per se but certainly someone that will exemplify similar ideologies) that will help determine the reconstruction plan and the ultimate rebuilding process in Haiti. Marc-Andre Franche, represents the passionate civil service diplomat; while Charles Marks is the unassuming condescending foreigner (and architect) ready to build, help and protect the ignorant locals from the predators of capitalism; on the other hand, Jesse Keenan embodies, the land tenure equity advocate disguised as an attorney; and Dowoti Desir personifies the educated Haitian Diaspora that will help ensure cultural sensibility remains acute in the reconstruction efforts. To craft the appropriate reconstruction plan these players will also need to be joined by two other main players: the Haitian government and the Haitian locals from all social strata.

Ninety seconds and a 7.0 magnitude earthquake shook Haiti on January 12, 2010 crumbling a significant portion of its capital’s city centre down to bits and rubble. Certainly, it was not just 90 seconds of shaking that implicated such a catastrophic effect on the Caribbean nation, but rather the problem in Haiti came from deeper roots than just the earth’s tectonic shakedown. As Marc-Andre Franche suggests, the deeper roots of the problem  are found in the fallacy of the Haitian government’s short-sighted planning efforts and its belief that short term and long term planning could start at the same time. However, to me it seems that Franche is too generous in his assessment, and that in fact only short term and piece-mail planning happened in Haiti. Congruently, the severity of the impact on the built environment suggests that real long term planning was continually de-prioritized and indefinitely pushed out to a never present future that finally arrived on January 12, 2010. Today, the earthquake is regarded as both a natural and manmade disaster, with the human component taking more of the blame because of the lack of regulation and planning foresight from the Haitian government.

For me, the biggest lesson learned from the panel was the underlining cultural components that are and will continue to be present in Haiti’s reconstruction process. Who really are the people at the table that will plan the new pillars of Haiti, and are their morals in the right place? Sure, the four speakers agree that Haitians should rebuild Haiti, but what does this mean? Do they mean: Haitian planners, Haitian architects, Haitian money, Haitian workers, or Haitian construction companies? If we take the panel to represent some of the ideology creating the Haitian reconstruction plan, as I have, then equity, cultural sensibility and quality infrastructure seem to be paramount. However, I am left wondering if the earthquake’s present memory is enough to motivate Haiti’s government to move towards more equitable planning, or will it continue to procure more socially stratified infrastructure; my hope is that it will seize the opportunity to “build back better (Marc-Andre Franche).”

LA Transit Culture, Will it ever stick?

Mass Transit and LA in the same sentence always seems to garner up a sense of: "Are you serious? Nope, never going to happen." The thing is, that it is happening. Los Angelenos do ride public transit, but not enough to make positive headlines. So the question is, "If they build it, will they come?." I think the problem is that everyone is trying to solve is the basic home to work commute problem, but for travel needs go beyond the simple work and home point A to point B commute.

For some, even if the new infrastructure is in place (as it is) and makes it easy for them to get from home to work and vice versa they won't choose mass transit over their car for two reasons. One,people are obviously obsessed with their cars and the other is that life is just not that simple. People need more than just mobility options to and from work. For instance, if you have a work meeting in the middle of the day and mass transit is not an option, how will you get there? Taxis? Unlike in New York, London and Paris, in LA it is only legal to hail a cab in downtown LA (meaning the City of LA, not the County of LA which is comprised of 66 cities)...exactly, it makes you think twice about leaving the MINI at home.

I'm optimistic, once there are better options, and better interconnectivity between mass transit agencies I think mass transit will become more popular in LA and better yet a real option to go from many point As to a multitude of points Bs and Cs. Need evidence? Just look at the way Angelenos embraced the Prius (Sorry Toyota, it wasn't aesthetics). Even Beverly Hills residents traded in their European luxury toys and SUVs for the Prius. Thus my advice for Toyota: watch out, Angelenos will eventually move to greener solutions, the Prius must go greener!

BTW check out an interesting NY Times article on the state of mass transit in LA: "In Los Angeles, Big Step Ahead for Mass Transit."

The Sense of Place: New York

This is a great article on New York: My Endless New York by Tony Judy who moved on to better worlds this pass August.


My favorite part:
"New York — a city more at home in the world than in its home country ... we all have our complaints. And while there is no other city where I could imagine living, there are many places that, for different purposes, I would rather be. But this too is a very New York sentiment. Chance made me an American, but I chose to be a New Yorker. I probably always was."