Obidos, Portugal
Walled medieval city
All photographs ©2006 J.Crawford

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Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.

A Walk in Obidos

The town is not completely carfree, although there are very few cars in evidence. Only residents are allowed to drive into the city. The peace is only broken by a highway about a kilometer distant.

I have studied Obidos since I first visited it almost ten years ago. It is a casebook example of a city that was designed in response to the opportunities and constraints of the site. The resultant city has its own internal logic, as you will see. This is, I believe, a central principle of city design, and the one that I am advocating in Carfree Design Manual.

News Bits

Raising Density, a Lot

The greater density is expect to reduce peak-hour per-capita car trips by 47% and 25% for residences and offices respectively. A real town center with a public square will be created, and parks are included. Support for the initiative in car-choked Washington appears to have been widespread.

Fixing Shanty Towns

Every second, someone in the world moves into a slum. Over the next 30 years, the world's slum population will, on average, increase by 100,000 each day. Globally, we are seeing a shift from rural areas to cities....

Jonathan Watts's article about the growth of a megalopolis in China rightly illustrates some of the startling effects of rapid urbanization. Watts's picture of a teeming city, smothered in dense pollution and crowded with tower blocks and shopping malls incongruously overlooking slum huts mirrors what I saw on a recent trip to Dhaka, in Bangladesh - and what I have seen in many cities around the world, from Luanda to Mumbai, and Puerto Suarez in Bolivia.

But there is a deeper reality that Watts does not report: in these rapidly growing cities, the proportion of people living in poverty grows at the greatest rate. The population trend to urbanization is important not just because of the numbers, but because of governments' inability to deal with its rate of growth, and this has an impact on every other aspect of life for the poor.

We know from our work in cities around the world that the massive impact of rapid urbanization can only be dealt with when we address the disenfranchisement of the urban poor and generate the political will from city leaders to put resources into poor areas.

Prince Charles Gets Traction

The Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment promotes traditional building design. The Lincoln City Council asked the foundation to draw up a 30-year plan for renewing the city. Based on sustainability principles, the plan identifies 20 separate building projects that will restore the web of connections in the city and create lively streets and public spaces.

It is really about organic town planning that has as a goal better pedestrian routes, improved public transport, and lively public spaces. The plan also helps to restore a clear sense of local identity.

Hank Dittmar, a former adviser to President Clinton, said, "For the past 40 years or so, cities have been seen as machines for moving around people, usually in cars." He wants to reverse the trend and get rid of the "typical, inward-facing 1960s shopping blocks, with very tired buildings" all built in the same faceless style.

Public safety is a major concern. This requires eliminating abandoned, unpopulated concrete spaces and returning to the small-scale design that makes people comfortable. Most places always had their own character, which was nearly always at a comfortable scale. All that is needed is to return to the local styles and materials that were widely used until recent times.

Prince Charles has long been the subject of ridicule by the architectural profession, but his ideas struck a chord with the British people. Lincoln's adoption of the Prince's Foundation plan shows that his ideas are becoming mainstream - the Council seems confident of public support and private funding. He recently said that people in towns and cities "instinctively understand that we need to learn again how to make walk-able, liveable, well-mannered, beautiful, places" where it doesn't take two litres of petrol to buy one litre of milk.

Even Petrolheads Are Impressed

... a new generation of homeowners [is] being lured away from their cars. It's a fast-growing trend. There are already quite a few developments - mostly urban new-builds - that aim to diminish car use among their residents, if not to phase it out entirely. Philip Igoe, of the charity Carplus, an information centre for car clubs and lift sharing, says that property developers are finding it the vital key to gaining planning consent. "Residential developments have to have a travel plan, and are finding that the fewer parking spaces they include, the more likely they are to get permission," he says. "It's particularly the case with city-centre and waterfront developments."

Wilf Parsons of Car Free Developments says that cars are being eliminated at a dizzying rate. "It's the Section 106 agreements," referring to the planning code section that allows a development permit to carry the proviso that cars not be allowed. "They're catching on all over the place, from Brighton, Bristol and Portsmouth to Edinburgh and Leeds." Some projects costing £400,000 (about $700,000) per dwelling are included. Car-sharing is part of most projects, so many of their residents still make occasional use of a car.

The Section 106 provision is backed by the Department for Transport, which requests that "planning applications with significant transport implications should be accompanied by a travel plan. This applies to residential developments as well as workplace, and includes any new development or redevelopment which requires planning permission."

Igoe claims to be "frantic" with calls from local authorities and developers looking to reduce car use. The 1980s-style "executive estate" with its twin parking spaces is seen as archaic and unsustainable. And people don't seem to be missing their cars as much as they had expected. The conclusion:

Indeed, one wonders if the cities of the future will allow private cars at all. It is hard to find an urban planner who still advocates car use. One of the most influential planning movements, the New Urbanism, aims to rewrite the nature of urban and suburban communities, with one of its planks being the car-free development: the better to tackle obesity, attract small local shops to areas that rely on driving to ring-road retail sheds - even to encourage fraternisation among neighbours. It's all part of the new social engineering.

Are Cars Killing the Planet?

We have already turned the global thermostat up by 0.8 degrees from the pre-industrial average. The EU has adopted a target of not going above the 2 degree mark: 1.2 degrees to go, in other words. To have a decent chance of staying below 2 degrees, we can "afford" to emit no more than 400 billion tonnes of carbon, and probably much less.

What are the alternatives?

The first involves America, guzzler of 20 of the world's daily 84 million barrels of oil consumed. 12 of these 20 are imported, five of them from the Gulf. In a recent study, part funded by the Pentagon no less, a group of American energy-efficiency gurus concluded that all the oil the United States now uses could be displaced for less capital outlay than it would take to buy that oil. [read that again!] To replace oil use with cheaper alternatives in this way, the US would have to invest $180 billion over the next decade, for which the return would be $130 billion in annual savings by 2025. There are four steps to this particular feasible utopia.

• Use oil twice as efficiently as today [easy!]
• Substitute biofuels for gasoline [impossible!]
• Save some natural gas [easy]
• Introduce hydrogen fuel (optional) [impossible or inadvisable]

Leggett therefore concludes that we could cut oil use dramatically, if we but had the will. Most interesting, however, is his insight that emissions are closely related to the character of the built environment.

Buildings and cars are related, in terms of design. Today, the suburbs spread inexorably, and car use grows with them....

We have to design and plan our way to survival and that is not in the direction of more suburbs. If we opt for high-concentration urban design, we can take great steps in both emissions reductions and social enhancement: from the renaissance of community through the chopping of the asthma rate, to many other social goods.

There is another reason why we need to marry a redesign of urban living with a redesign of car use. There are more than 700 million cars on the planet today, At current growth rates in vehicle ownership, we can easily cancel out efficiency gains. But if we redesign cities to eschew the car, maximise public transportation, and stop the spread of suburbs, we can cut the need for growth in absolute vehicle numbers. I do not own a car. Living as I do In London, this absence of vehicle actually improves my quality of life. Living where my parents do, in rural Sussex, carlessness is not an option. That is where vehicle redesign comes in.

Thanks to the peak oil problem, we will have to come to grips with all this whether we like it or not. As Hugo Chavez pointed out when visiting London recently, accelerating oil depletion and rising oil prices are going to leave many in the British middle classes in a state of enforced carlessness, and soon.

Grass-Roots Sustainability in Curitiba

He is that rarity in local government: a visionary. After his 12 years as mayor, his successors elected to sustain and expand his vision. The secret of successful town design is not centralized planning but organic designs arising from the people themselves. In Curitiba, wide-ranging public debate and discussion and broad participation were employed to reach consensus. And the best ideas and implementation came from the citizens. Once consensus is reached, solutions are rapidly and easily implemented. The results have been exceptional.

Myriads of small, multi-purpose projects have been implemented. These are cost-effective, people-centered, fast, simple, home grown, and based on local initiatives and skills. When people, especially children, are regarded not as a burden, a nuisance, and a bunch of troublemakers, but as its most precious resource, the path to the future is easily found.

One of the key successes in Curitiba is the integrated bus transport system. Curitiba was the first city to implement bus rapid transit (BRT), which has now spread to a number of other cities in South America. At peak times, there is a bus a minute. The service is relatively inexpensive and the fare fully covers costs. When the bus routes were in planning, the city bought up the adjacent land to prevent speculators from pocketing the profits arising from public expenditures.

The bus stations are connected to 150 kilometers (nearly 100 miles) of bike paths. The result is that despite an unusually high level of car ownership for Brazil, people use their cars less than in other cities. Two-thirds of all trips in the city are made by bus. Car traffic has declined by 30% percent since 1974, at the same time that the population doubled. The BRT lanes carry a remarkable 20,000 passengers per hour. The system carries three-quarters of all commuters, some 1.9 million weekday passengers.

The city has been arranged to work with, not against, nature. Waterways and lowlands prone to flooding were made into parks. One-sixth of the city is woodland. Public open space has grown faster than the population; in fact per-capita public space increased 100-fold. A municipal shepherd and a flock of sheep crop grass in the parks, making the grass a resource, not an expense.

A 1989 initiative, Garbage That Isn't Garbage, recognized that waste has value. Today, 70% of households sort their wastes for curbside collection. Two-thirds of the bagged and separated waste are recovered and sold, offsetting the cost of collection and disposal.

Curitiba did not achieve its successes because of any great inherent advantage. In 1980, its per-capita GDP was only 10% above the average for Brazil. By 1996 it had risen to 65%. Today, companies are attracted to Curitiba because of the pleasant environment, lack of congestion, and ease of commuting. Curitiba's poor are better off because the cost of living is low and benefits are effectively targeted to those who need them most.

The important principle enumerated in Curitiba in 1971 was: respect the citizen-owner of public assets and services, both because people deserve respect and because Lerner insisted: "if people feel respected, they will assume the responsibility to help others." Top-down systems have not worked. We must put citizens in charge of running their cities, as they once were in Athens. Sustainability requires this.

Most Japanese Favor Environmental Tax

Once again, people are out in front of their politicians on these issues. The problem is even more acute in the USA, I believe, where the sleeping Democrats still seem to think that the road to success is aping the predations of the Bush administration. They will learn...eventually.

Fuel Cells Find a Good Use

The prototype train consists of a single car powered by electric batteries and capable of traveling at up to 100 km/hr. Two 65-kilowatt hydrogen fuel cells will provide about one-third of the power required. A generator will provide the rest. Railroads are a difficult environment because of the high levels of vibration, so a test of this kind is very wise. The train is expected to consume about 20% less energy than conventional trains. Presumably, if the pilot project succeeds, trials will be conducted with a 100% fuel-cell powered prototype.

If this technology proves feasible, it is a huge advance for railroads. The very expensive and terribly ugly overhead power supply systems could simply be eliminated. On-board power generation, using clean fuel cells provides an ideal alternative. Let's hope this works!

Peak Oil Hits San Francisco

The resolution won unanimous support of the Board of Supervisors. It cites the Hirsch Report, a study commissioned by the US Department of Energy, which concluded that action is required to avert a crisis in fuel supplies.

The measure comes in the wake of a grass-roots campaign that targeted Bay Area elected officials for two years. San Francisco was already a leader in reducing energy consumption. A year-long study by Sustainlane.com concluded that San Francisco is the US city third best able to cope with an energy crisis.

Michael Poremba, spokesman for SF Informatics, congratulated the Supervisors on their action. "We are thrilled to see the city finally acknowledging the peak oil issue," he said. "Our society runs on oil, our economy runs on oil, and farsighted local governments should begin planning now - indeed years ago - for an era of declining supplies, because that era is starting now."

Groups used a colorful poster called The Oil Age to publicize the issue. The poster traces the history of global oil production and includes energy statistics from a number of sources, including the US government. The poster was hand-delivered to dozens of Bay Area elected officials in January. It was helpful in getting access to city officials to discuss the issues. Activist Jennifer Bresee said, "Plunking down this poster in front of a supervisor is a lot more effective than trying to explain it in words alone."

Gorbachev Takes the Solar Route

Gorbachev, chairman of Green Cross International (organized to tackle global environmental problems), warned G8 leaders not to relegate renewable energy to a secondary role, behind oil, gas, and nuclear power. He said $50 billion, invested over ten years, could be raised by re-allocating the subsidies given to fossil fuels and nuclear energy. He said, "In the US, for example, direct subsidies to nuclear energy amounted to $115 billion between 1947 and 1999 with a further $145 billion in indirect subsidies. In contrast, subsidies to wind and solar combined during the same period totalled only $5.5 billion."

We might ultimately need nuclear power, but Gorbachev is right to emphasize renewable sources for the time being. If combined with an aggressive program to reduce energy consumption, this might obviate the need for further development of nuclear power, with all the risks that entails.

Mega Mass in Budapest

As a result of these Critical Mass demonstrations and other forms of pressure from NGOs, the Budapest Municipality accelerated its program of bicycle path constructions, and in May 2006 accepted a very ambitious program for reduction of air pollution which includes all the proposals of the environmental and cyclists organizations, including:

• Better conditions for pedestrians and cyclists
• Priority for public transport in traffic
• Redistribution of road space on some of the main arterials of the city in favor of pedestrians, cyclists and public transport.

Just Hang Up and Drive!

A proposed "pedestrian charter" was recently unveiled. It is expected to serve as a starting point for reinventing Montreal as a world-class walking city. Supporters are under no illusions: "We are talking about a major shift of culture for a North American city," said Andre Lavallee who helped develop the charter. "Montreal was essentially designed over the years around the needs of the car. Now we must rethink the city around the needs of the pedestrian."

The charter proposes other changes besides the cell phone ban and lower speed limits:

• Replace 800 old-style pedestrian crossing signals with numerical count-down signals
• Identify portions of downtown streets suitable for pedestrian malls
• Continue to oppose right-turn-on-red provisions
• Crack down on construction and delivery companies that block sidewalks
• Create a road safety office to correct dangerous intersections

Feature Article

Prague Field Test of User Design

J.H. Crawford

Following this year's Network Training Meeting at Tábor, we conducted a full-scale test of user design in the field. On Sunday 28 May 2006, a dozen people gathered with me on a site in Prague to test some of the principles I am developing for the next book. Rain and wind appear to have held down attendance, which we had hoped would be closer to 30 or 40 people, but the people who did come were tireless and devoted to the process, which was more frustrating than I had anticipated.

We used string and stakes to lay out a carfree neighborhood on grassland site in the shape of a right triangle about 300m (1000') long and 200m (660') wide. We assumed that the point of the triangle would be at the center of a much larger carfree district. We were attempting to lay out about ten blocks housing 900 people on three hectares of land. Each person was assumed to have the right to 2m (6.6') of street frontage in a building four stories tall, giving relatively comfortable space allocations for living and working. Densities would be roughly the same as in the Reference District presented in Carfree Cities.

People felt that decisions during this part of the process were rather arbitrary. I agree with this assessment. In this case, the problem was exacerbated by the absence of features on the site that would influence design (notice how the site affects the design of Obidos, above in this issue). It also became clear that the "urban villages" that I have proposed in the book really are not optional. Each urban village would comprise one block. It is now evident that we must first assemble people into intentional villages, then ask these groups to find areas of the site that they like, and only then begin design of the various villages/blocks on the site in a way that suits the needs of all.

Two things somewhat surprised me. First of all, people were willing and even eager to make very narrow streets, down to 2m (6.6') wide. Streets this narrow exist in old cities in large numbers but are almost never laid out today. Car traffic has much to do with this, of course, but emergency access is a more stubborn problem. Japan has coped with this by devising fire engines of a size that can penetrate into the narrowest alleyways, and there really is no reason that this approach could not be adopted in other places. The yearning for narrow streets with non-parallel sides and complex geometry surprised and pleased me.

Conclusions

People enjoyed the process itself. They thought that it would tend to start the process of building social cohesion in a new neighborhood. The process was carried out in a spirit of cooperation, although some conflicts must be expected when the process is first applied to a real site, with real streets and buildings at stake.

The urban village must become the foundation of user design. It is too much to expect a group of thousands of strangers to assemble into meaningful groups on the same day that a carfree district is laid out. Months of preparation will be required for this. Since the definition of blocks first requires an identification of their residents, it is difficult to see how field design by users can proceed until they have decided how to group themselves after a long process involving careful consideration and probably the striking of compromises.

The placement of blocks with respect to one another also requires considerable thought. The temptation will be to do this using at least crude sketches on paper. I would prefer to avoid the use of paper entirely, except once design is complete, and only then to record the results. Perhaps the process of urban village formation should take place on the site itself, with villages gravitating towards areas of the site they like best and which are most suited to their needs and desires.

The feasibility of in-the-field design at a smaller scale than the full block does seem to have been demonstrated by this exercise. People understood the issues immediately, and there were no difficulties with scope or scale. I am only concerned that more thought might be needed regarding changes in the feeling of space as comparatively tall buildings are erected alongside quite narrow streets. People might then decide that they wanted their streets a little wider after all. I will be addressing this issue.

I will revise Part IV of the book quite extensively to reflect the results of this test. In particular, more stress will be laid on the formation of urban villages.

Thanks

I would also like to thank Jakub Sklenka and Jan Jelinek of CODECO Real Estate Development for making the site available and for assistance in obtaining municipal permission for the exercise.

Hot New Links

The links below will open in a new browser window:

Motorcycles and Bicycles: Debunking Myths

Hirsch report on peak oil (Wikipedia)

Climate Change is the Major Problem Facing the World by David Attenborough

Parking Taxes Evaluating Options and Impacts (VTPI) [PDF!]

Evaluating New-Start Transit Program Performance: Comparing Rail And Bus [PDF!]

Planning Principles and Practices (VTPI) Summarizes principles and practices of effective land use and transportation planning. [PDF!]

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