In a number of comments attached to the various posts thus far on this blog, issues of designing for a sustainable, or green, future have been raised. Today I shall try and dissect what this might mean if we were to start and apply this, not in “new towns” or “new neighbourhoods”, but in the fabric that already exists on the ground.
Principle #1: Deal in Health
A sustainable community begins life by being one that is built around the prospects for health for its residents. This begins, as far as I’m concerned, by removing the emphasis on the automobile. Walking is the foundation of good health.
10,000 steps/day is a maintenance level required, generally, to avoid many of the degenerative diseases, such as Type II Diabetes, Heart Disease, High “bad” Cholesterol, etc. Such is quite within reach when we remember that movement around the office or school, walking to and from lunch, etc. is part of this base.
Steps add up, however, when one walks to/from transit, or around one’s neighbourhood. A standard Manhattan city block, for instance, represents roughly 180 steps (with a step based on “from one foot, to the other foot, back to the first foot (L-R-L or R-L-R)” at around 1.5 m/5 ft each) in the long direction, and 52 steps in the shorter direction (blocks traditionally are rectangles). For a person living four “long” blocks from effective transit service — less than 10 minutes between pickups in either direction, and with an average speed of 25 km/h or better between stops including time spent at the stops — and two “long” blocks to a place of work/schooling at the other end of a daily journey, this basic commute introduces over 2,150 steps/day. Add another 2,000-3,000/day in movement around the office and/or to/from lunch. In other words, neighbourhood amenities need only create rational behaviour leading to another 5,000-6,000 steps to be designed for healthy living.
What, in this term, is “rational”? Consider the length of time it takes to get in a car, move it from its parking space, move it to the destination, find and secure parking at that end: a distance of 400 m, somewhere between three and four blocks, represents 12±2 minutes on foot. Oddly enough, this also represents a typical time of 12±2 minutes behind the wheel, in a neighbourhood with a high street for shopping. Beyond this time frame, the car begins to be “competitive” with the foot traveller, at least on paper.
(I picked these as this represents a pair of journeys I know well, from living in Vancouver: one block off Dunbar St. on W. 27th Ave., to a parking lot stretching back one “short” block at Dunbar St. and W. 30th Ave., also known as “from (then) home to Stong’s Market”. At my stride, this was typically only 10 minutes, including “red light” delays to cross Dunbar St., so 12±2 minutes is certainly favourable to people less mobile than a mid-fifties me. At the same time, traffic levels on the side streets made the delays in coming out of an on-street parking space roughly equivalent to having left a laneway garage.)
That 400 m each way represents another 560±30 steps, depending on my efficiency in the store.
We lived in a neighbourhood in The Hague (The Netherlands) where every 4 blocks or so there was a short shopping strip: a small grocery plus one or two specialty stores (e.g. bakery, deli, barber, dry cleaner, etc.). These neighbourhoods were built on the principles outlined here. 90% of all errands could be handled with a trip to no more than two of these strips. As this pattern was repeated regularly, a round trip of 800-1,000 m was sufficient to meet — on foot — almost all needs. Manhattan is laid out similarly. By regular personal experience, I can also say that in The Hague, Manhattan and in Vancouver, making two or three such trips a day (to handle all packages by hand while not overloading myself as a walker) fit comfortably within the same “time window” used for these errands while living in suburbs (Trumbull, CT and Coquitlam, BC), where using a car to handle the distances involved thanks to the zoning policies barring the mixing of retail and residences was required.
(Living now in Toronto, I live in a similar pattern: 700 m to the subway on foot, 350 m from the subway to the office, with a “90% of needs” shopping district accessible in an 1,000 m trip from a different subway station to home. In other words, in terms of paces and timing (even the shopping return after work fits into 15 mins.) I effectively live in a walking-scale community.)
Neighbourhoods can be constructed around these principles, using the existing street grid and fabric, simply by allowing mixed-use zoning. The construction of 3-4 storey blocks of flats with street-level retail along transit corridors provided needed density to promote frequent service; the retail, in turn, turns at least three long blocks on each side of the transit/retail street into “walking zone” residences. Ensuring the side streets are kept narrow helps hold down auto speeds, making the neighbourhood favourable to walking. On-street (not store lots!: storefronts should be built out to the sidewalks) parking insulates walkers from the cars on the street. (Merchants detest this at first, until they discover that their neighbours are their customers, and still coming: this is the Manhattan experience, where most stores also pickup if appropriate, and generally deliver to make walking and shopping a pleasant experience.)
What about bicycles, you might say? Keep them on the road. Sidewalks are for pedestrians, especially ones loaded with bags. Install, by all means, bicycle locking loops at the sidewalk’s edge.
Service vehicles and delivery vans should be relegated to the service lanes, or to the early morning hours if store front loading zones are to be in use.
Finally, the use of through street blocks — one way streets are not advised, as making a street one way encourages speeding! — periodically converts a neighbourhood full of cross streets into a neighbourhood full of “T”-junctions. These promote slower speeds.
Such simple techniques take us a long way to a more sustainable neighbourhood and to healthier people, at low cost. As you’ve seen, we haven’t yet reached (in this thought experiment) a 10,000 pace/day society. One would hope such a rich set of neighbourhoods would provide further reasons to walk: trips to small theatres, restaurants and the like, trips to the library or community centre, trips to walk the dog in the park. (This, too, is the experience of Manhattan, parts of Toronto and Vancouver, The Hague and other European centres.) It is generally not necessary to actually bar cars: simply making it more sensible to not use the car is enough. The important three points, though are:
- Stop engineering streets for speedy auto traffic, and instead engineer them for walkers, bicycles and transit, with the residual space “left” for cars and trucks. Walkable streets are treed (for shade), have room for outdoor tables (for the pleasure of being there), interesting shops (a function of the density of stores), reasons to go to the neighbourhood (the special amenities that require “larger catchment areas” to make them viable) and have enough people living in them to make transit facilities financially viable on an operating basis.
- Mixed-use zoning is essential: the more opportunities to walk (or cycle a short distance) to work, to shop, etc. the better. This implies the need to insert such facilities, as current single-use zoning systems create long “dead zones” where cars are essential (consider any typical suburb of your choice).
- While focal points (e.g. “T”-junctions) are pleasing places to be and slow traffic, they are not currently “engineered in”. These must be created out of the existing fabric. Keep traffic two-way, but limit the number of lanes (e.g. today’s “six lane” road [four for traffic, two of parking] becomes a pair of parking lanes, a pair of bicycle/transit lanes and a pair of lanes for cars and trucks).
Rather than dream of carbon taxes, tax credits, incentives and regulations, or of massive urban re-engineering schemes, this is a model we know works, know how to move to, and can do inexpensively. What, pray tell, is holding us back?
Sometimes the obvious is anything but . . . Linking the idea to people’s health might just be the key but it will still be difficult to get them out of their SUVs and crossovers.
My partner doesn’t drive so we’ve always tended to live close by public transit but to the detriment of my health and pocketbook I’ve always preferred the convenience of driving. Recently though we’ve given serious consideration to utilizing a car share service to fulfill our automotive needs. Living where we do (and where we are likely to live in future) it makes sense environmentally, financially and physiologically. It would require a bit of planning
The larger challenge in all this will be what to do with all the vast tracts of suburbs inhabited by multi-car families? Unlike most long-established urban centres, these communities were designed with vehicles in mind and lip-service treatment of spaces where the inhabitants might actually enjoy walking.
Yes, it requires planning — a lot of it, in fact. As someone who has lived now three different times, in three different neighbourhoods, without benefit of a car, I can honestly say that it took those two prior experiences, plus the walking experiences living in New York City, The Hague and Vancouver, to get to the point where I could “size up” a neighbourhood easily and determine whether I was unleashing grief upon us by planning for a carless life.
The suburbs will require a lot of work, because there not only was there single-purpose zoning, but also the notion of clusters, often with single entry/exit points, and collector roads which have the “services” at their intersections. Taking half a block to rebuild it with shops under offices, near transit stops, will be a first step. It will be necessary for the types of shops to include “the basics” and not simply convenience stores and the odd pizza/chinese food take-away.
An obvious stimulus for neighbourhoods would be zoning in the concept of the local neighbourhood pub, with no parking lot. One every two suburban blocks might do wonders. But overturning the “big grassy lot/not in my backyard” approach taken by people who love the suburbs as they are will be the hard part.
But it’s either that, or time will make slums of them all.
Awesome article, and I like your number crunching on steps per distance (I may steal some of them for my project!). I love the idea of this transformation for more neighborhoods as I live in a community in Pittsburgh where this city was once built upon similar notions of fulfilling shopping/living purchases nearby but has largely become a commuting city. Even in my fairly walkable neighborhood it’s at least 10 blocks to any shopping, groceries or restaurants. Thank you for sharing this!
Hi, Keechelus: thank you. Having just had a look at your blog (http://100days1000miles.wordpress.com/) I wish you all success with your project.
For whatever it’s worth, last year I managed to shed 35 pounds. This was fully due to merely skipping the local grocery store four blocks away and going to the next competitor, which was at a more Pittsburgh-like eleven further blocks. A fifteen block round trip with two canvas tote bags daily (we lived in Europe and so really got in the habit of buying fresh food daily — something to do with a refrigerator the size of a bar fridge tucked under the kitchen counter!) was all it took. Since losing that weight not only dropped me two clothing sizes around the waist but also sent my Type II diabetes and hypertension into remission so that I now live free of pharmaceuticals completely, I got hooked and interested in how anyone can put walking into their daily routine.
Thanks for stopping by and good luck with your project — I’m really looking forward to seeing if you find any “hidden gems”. James Howard Kunstler says in his writings and public appearances that smaller town America is mostly looking pretty dead dull ordinary and decrepit these days, but that many of these communities can be restored as real communities where people will love, work, shop, and be entertained locally. I’d be interested to know if you echo that from your travels on foot through them.
Where I live, streets seem to be engineered neither for cars, nor for bicycles, nor for pedestrians!
Sidewalks are obstructed and narrow, having trees, but planted in a way that there is not room to walk on the sidewalks, so people walk in the street. Bicycle lanes are not provided, and the people on bikes and motorbikes weave all through traffic and often ride two, three, or even four abreast (never single file). This causes cars to never drive in the proper lanes alloted but to straddle lanes. In the past year, a lot of bike riders have moved to the center between opposing lanes (not that there is anything there but a center painted line) which seems even more dangerous for all concerned.
Mary
Hi, Mary: good to see you here. It’s been too long.
Your part of the world was built with a very different cultural matrix than that of Western Europe. Although Mediaeval streets (where such areas have survived the centuries intact, such as the Marais in Paris or a tiny corner near Chester Cathedral in Chester, Cheshire, England that I know) were similarly wandering, obstructed and narrow, Western culture — unlike Islamic culture — was built to the “street as a room”. In Orthodox Christian, Islamic, Jewish, etc. areas the street is merely a necessity: both public spaces and private residences are built only with concern for the inside, with the outside being of “no import”. (There is a mosque being built about 15 minutes away from where I now live in Toronto and this is precisely the form it is taking: even the existence of windows [narrow strips just to let light in] is hidden on the outside by brick screens whereas no effort appears to be being spared [judging by the materials stacked on the sidewalks] to make the interior artistic and elegant.)
Now add in modern technology (which generally derives from Western culture). In the Gulf States, there is a mix of traditional streets and multi-lane “auto mover” carriageways. The deserts and recent wealth make such building possible. Over near the Atlantic in North Africa, however, the long settlement and more restrictive local geographies mean that even new construction to move people around has to “fit” into a smaller space — and, more important, into a settled cultural matrix.
The parallel is to look at North America or Australia, where (more) recent settlement and open land likewise has created a culture where giving enough room to establish separated facilities has been possible.
The other factor I think you see in your current city is a culture with a different sense of personal space. A visit to a souk is an experience in crowding. Indeed, tight quarters, the mass of people, etc. isn’t accidental: it is a cultural design factor as common in that setting as is leaving enough space to be able to see the advertising signs, even for a stall in a farmers’ market in a town square in, say, Cannes, France (and certainly so in Canada or the United States). We Westerners design, quite unconsciously, for our sense of personal space — a sense not shared by other cultures. As a result, straddling lanes, mixing people, bikes, cycles and cars, etc. isn’t seen as a “deficiency”, but just “how life should be”.