One of the successful entries to the Urban Voids competition was Front Studio’s cleverly named Farmadelphia concept. Farmadelphia was another competition created to generate ideas for urban agriculture in empty urban spaces.  

Here is an aerial view.

Some more detailed images. Here is a pasture for urban cows.

We wouldn’t want to leave out the chickens.

What is a farm with out some goats?

Farmadelphia knits together a couple of ideas we’ve discussed about urban farming  and food insecurity. Specifically Farmadelphia challenges us to consider the end of the dichotomy between rural and urban. This idea of connecting farming with urban life is not new to the Northwest. And new doors are opening as urban properties remain undeveloped.

Seattle’s Greg Smith has allowed a great food truck to park right around the corner from the Sightline offices on property that is no longer going to be developed. Portland has been doing this for years. Seattle, Portland and Vancouver allow chickens and thanks to City Councilmember Richard Conlin Seattle allows goats.

Seattle has a municipal farm, the Marra Farm, that is not only in an urban area but in part of the city that’s downright industrial, South Park. The Marra Farm is a working farm that is right near the day-lighted Hamm Creek. The Marra Farm was one of the many farms operated by Italian immigrants in the Duwamish River Valley that supplied produce to the Pike Place Market in the early years of the last century. Today it provides for a city food security program called Solid Ground. Portland and Vancouver have similar programs. Vancouver has also entertained a skyscraper farm called Inhabitat.

Putting farms on more and more vacant lots makes sense on several levels: transportation costs would be cut for hauling produce, green spaces help reduce runoff into streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans; healthy food would be more available in more neighborhoods. And just as important urban farming reminds us food doesn’t come from the grocery store but from the land, animals and water.  

So perhaps, one day, our region might realize a version of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City, a city of tall buildings surrounded by open space and farms. Something about this concept is very appealing.

It’s the ultimate: density paired with open space and proximity to healthy food. But…maybe it’s the flying machines that would really seal the deal.

This article originally appeared on sightline.org

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Urban Design and Planning at 11:36 AM) ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/Bm9sahyXDsE/010176.html/feed/ 0 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/VTYtd01hR8U/010149.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/VTYtd01hR8U/010149.html#comments Wed, 15 Jul 2009 23:31:09 +0000 WorldChanging Team http://www.greendesign.com/2009/07/15/urban-farming-takes-root-in-surprising-ways/

by Lisa Stiffler

There's a move afoot to spread urban farming and its healthful benefits to folks without their own plots for planting.

Will Allen is gaining national attention for Growing Power, a Milwaukee program that's growing food in the city for 10,000 urbanites (including schools and low-cost market baskets delivered to neighborhood drop off points); trains want-to-be growers in the ways of intensive farming on small plots; turns organic waste into rich soil; and employs local residents, including some from public-housing project.

His inspiring efforts were profiled in a great piece in Sunday's New York Times Magazine. For Allen, it's about more than helping the environment by supporting organic, local foods. For him, it's also a matter of equality. Low-income city 'hoods tend to have limited access to good grocery stores and are dominated by fast-food restaurants and convenience stores, creating what Allen calls a "food desert."

As Allen told the NYT:

“It’s a form of redlining. We’ve got to change the system so everyone has safe, equitable access to healthy food.”

In Seattle, a gardening twist on Match.com is expanding the reach of the urban-farming movement.

Urban Garden Share links homeowners with land available for planting with folks eager to grow food but lacking a place to do it. The site explains:

Condo and apartment dwellers are faced with containers or p-patches as
their only prospects for vibrant gardens. Homeowners can be overwhelmed
by yet-another-garden-project. Together, we make a great team.

Recent requests to partner include:

"Give lame grass-covered yard a purpose!"

"Large plot on north Beacon Hill, easy to get to, next to bike path, near buses

"Friendly garden space in South Seattle"

Another option for urban farming is the city's Department of Neighborhoods P-Patch Program, which aims to "serve all
citizens of Seattle with an emphasis on low-income and immigrant populations
and youth." The p-patchers provide 7 to 10 tons of produce to food banks each year. 

Additionally, the Seattle Market Gardens program provides veggie baskets to low-income neighborhoods. The produce comes from two community supported agriculture (CSA) plots farmed by Seattle residents.

Portland has a really impressive-sounding program called GROWING GARDENS. A description from their site:

We organize hundreds of volunteers to build organic, raised
bed vegetable gardens in backyards, front yards, side yards and even on
balconies.  We support low income households for three years with
seeds, plants, classes, mentors and more.  Our Youth Grow after school
garden clubs grow the next generation of veggie eaters and growers!

This article originally appeared on Sightline.org.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Urban Design and Planning at 3:31 PM) ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/VTYtd01hR8U/010149.html/feed/ 0 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/VTYtd01hR8U/010149.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/VTYtd01hR8U/010149.html#comments Wed, 15 Jul 2009 23:31:09 +0000 WorldChanging Team 10149@http://www.worldchanging.com/

by Lisa Stiffler

There's a move afoot to spread urban farming and its healthful benefits to folks without their own plots for planting.

Will Allen is gaining national attention for Growing Power, a Milwaukee program that's growing food in the city for 10,000 urbanites (including schools and low-cost market baskets delivered to neighborhood drop off points); trains want-to-be growers in the ways of intensive farming on small plots; turns organic waste into rich soil; and employs local residents, including some from public-housing project.

His inspiring efforts were profiled in a great piece in Sunday's New York Times Magazine. For Allen, it's about more than helping the environment by supporting organic, local foods. For him, it's also a matter of equality. Low-income city 'hoods tend to have limited access to good grocery stores and are dominated by fast-food restaurants and convenience stores, creating what Allen calls a "food desert."

As Allen told the NYT:

“It’s a form of redlining. We’ve got to change the system so everyone has safe, equitable access to healthy food.”

In Seattle, a gardening twist on Match.com is expanding the reach of the urban-farming movement.

Urban Garden Share links homeowners with land available for planting with folks eager to grow food but lacking a place to do it. The site explains:

Condo and apartment dwellers are faced with containers or p-patches as
their only prospects for vibrant gardens. Homeowners can be overwhelmed
by yet-another-garden-project. Together, we make a great team.

Recent requests to partner include:

"Give lame grass-covered yard a purpose!"

"Large plot on north Beacon Hill, easy to get to, next to bike path, near buses

"Friendly garden space in South Seattle"

Another option for urban farming is the city's Department of Neighborhoods P-Patch Program, which aims to "serve all
citizens of Seattle with an emphasis on low-income and immigrant populations
and youth." The p-patchers provide 7 to 10 tons of produce to food banks each year. 

Additionally, the Seattle Market Gardens program provides veggie baskets to low-income neighborhoods. The produce comes from two community supported agriculture (CSA) plots farmed by Seattle residents.

Portland has a really impressive-sounding program called GROWING GARDENS. A description from their site:

We organize hundreds of volunteers to build organic, raised
bed vegetable gardens in backyards, front yards, side yards and even on
balconies.  We support low income households for three years with
seeds, plants, classes, mentors and more.  Our Youth Grow after school
garden clubs grow the next generation of veggie eaters and growers!

This article originally appeared on Sightline.org.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Urban Design and Planning at 3:31 PM) ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/VTYtd01hR8U/010149.html/feed/ 0 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/_Xo8GzDaXJ8/010148.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/_Xo8GzDaXJ8/010148.html#comments Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:03:42 +0000 Sarah Kuck 10148@http://www.worldchanging.com/

Eager to help cities adapt to climate change, more than 130 design groups from 18 countries entered the Rising Tides competition to come up with a plan to protect the inhabitants of the San Francisco Bay Area from predicted sea level rise.

In December, the <a target="new" href="Bay Conservation and Development Commission announced the competition to help spur creative answers to climate change. Today, BCDC announced the winners.

According to the Rising Tides site, "the selection of six winners was an unexpected twist in announcing the competition results and illustrated just how many different promising solutions were offered. Juror Walter Hood said it best when he stated, 'San Francisco Bay is not the place for a single idea. Taken as a whole, the six winning entries begin to tell a story about adaptation to sea level rise.'"

The judges picked the winners based on their design's ability to protect new and existing communities, to protect wetlands, retrofit valuable public shoreline infrastructure and anticipate changing shoreline configurations.

Winning designs:

Wright Huaiche Yang and J. Lee Stickles, "Topographical Shifts at the Urban Waterfront."

Derek Hoeferlin and Ian Caine, "The 100 Year Plan."

Faulders Studio, "RAYdike"

SOM and Moffatt + Nichol, "BayARC: A Tidal Responsive Barrier."

Kuth/Ranieri Architects, "Folding Water."

Yumi Lee and Yeon Tae Kim, "Evolutionary Recovery."

(The six winners of "Rising Tides: An International Ideas Competition" each received prizes of $4,166)

If you are in San Francisco, you can see the 130 competition entries on display at the Ferry Building until July 19th. Otherwise, you can view all the winners by clicking here.

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(Posted by Sarah Kuck in Urban Design and Planning at 2:03 PM) ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/_Xo8GzDaXJ8/010148.html/feed/ 0 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/J7odSKthK94/010084.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/J7odSKthK94/010084.html#comments Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:22:36 +0000 WorldChanging Team 10084@http://www.worldchanging.com/

by Paul Jaffe

The entire family of San Francisco city agencies responsible for maintaining its streets made an unconventional decision to close a portion of a street to cars and convert the new space into a simple, yet elegant, public plaza. The project combines all the important elements of plaza creation that have been successful in New York City and elsewhere: take space from cars, use simple treatments to convert the space into a pedestrian sanctuary, including movable furniture and leftover granite blocks from city salvage yards, and engage commercial interests around the plaza to help maintain and care for the new public realm.

Though some neighborhood constituents voiced skepticism that the plaza would be empty at best, or filled with miscreants and vagabonds at worst, the plaza's success is hard to dispute. In fact, so many people are using the new space and enjoying the tables and chairs, the businesses around the plaza have contemplated leaving the furniture out later than sunset, which was the initial closing time agreed upon between them and the Castro/Upper Market Community Betterment District. This film takes an in-depth look at the construction of the plaza with some of the agencies responsible for it, and includes some entertaining man-on-the-street interviews.

This piece originally appeared in Streetfilms.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Urban Design and Planning at 1:22 PM) ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/J7odSKthK94/010084.html/feed/ 0 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/mFES069iq9g/009944.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/mFES069iq9g/009944.html#comments Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:42:06 +0000 WorldChanging Team 9944@http://www.worldchanging.com/

by Bill Becker

• The choice:  Will they use the money to become cities of the past or cities of the future?
• The question:  What is a city of the future, anyway?

The choice should be simple. A city official’s first responsibility is to ensure the health and safety of the people in his or her community. Insofar as stimulus funds are available to repair failing bridges, dams, roads and vital infrastructure, that’s where they should be invested.

But as more funds are available -– for example, the $100 billion earmarked in the stimulus package for energy grants to states and localities, or the $6.3 billion targeted for clean energy grants, or the $17 billion for transit or part of the $40 billion for roads, bridges and other infrastructure — a high priority should be to begin putting each city on the road to the future.

That means building communities that are secure from energy supply disruptions and crippling energy prices; free from the air pollution that threatens the health of 186 million Americans today; laced with safe routes for people to walk and bicycle; able to provide a variety of mobility options so that everyone – including the young, old and disabled – has access to vital services. Cities of the future condemn no neighborhood to be the dumping ground for waste, pollution or traffic; conserve vital resources such as water; prepare to withstand the anticipated impacts of climate change, including heat waves and extreme weather; protect and restore natural places so that kids of all ages have contact with nature; foster social interaction; and avoid urban sprawl, to name a few criteria.

If the benefits of building for the future are not clear, the urban leaders should think of it this way: If they plan to invest in buildings, transit systems, streets or infrastructure and those improvements are meant to last more than a decade, they are not building the city for themselves. They’re building it for their children. The goal should be to create a community that remains competitive for generations to come as a wonderful place to live and do business.

A more interesting way to define a city of the future is to see one. For example, check the work of Jonathan Arnold, an architect turned computer artist in Kansas City. Arnold shows how his home town could evolve to become greener and better in the not-too-distant future.

Or take a look at the animations for the greening of Manchester, England, produced by the global development firm Arup -– the company that designed Dongtan, China, which when it’s built will become one of the most sustainable cities the world has ever known.

Or check out this animation of a new transportation system being built at London’s Heathrow Airport – a technology that may soon come to a street near you. Or look at this image of a vertical garden – a farm within a skyscraper, growing food without producing those nasty CO2 emissions that come from fertilizers and soil disturbance.

If you’d like to redesign your own street, check out Good magazine’s site. If you want to explore the features of a green home, go to the site created by Global Green and Yahoo. If you want to learn the features of a carbon-neutral neighborhood, check out the graphic by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

As these visuals demonstrate, becoming a city of the future is not out of reach. The necessary designs, tools and technologies already exist to make each community in the United States a thriving and sustainable member of the emerging clean energy economy.

To better empower cities, Congress and the Administration can do more than stimulus money. If and when if finally emerges from Congress, the Waxman-Markey climate bill should empower rather than preempt the power of urban leaders and citizens to innovate.

The climate scientists within the Administration should make sure their work is translated into terms that business and community leaders can understand and factor into their planning. Among other things, federal climate science must pay more attention to the expected local impacts of climate change so that communities and companies can prepare and adapt. That translated knowledge also will help define new markets for green and carbon-reducing goods and services, new niches for business to fill.

Let’s make sure our scarce taxpayer dollars are investing in the future rather than the past. That means de-subsidizing carbon in federal policy in favor of support for clean energy, resource conservation and the restoration of natural systems –- in other words, America’s natural capital.

If you are a local leader deciding how best to invest your city’s stimulus dollars, I encourage you to contact and partner with some of the outstanding people and organizations that can help you build for the future. Among them:

• Global Green is the U.S. affiliate of Green Cross International, the organization created by Mikhail Gorbachev to promote a more sustainable world. Run by Matt Petersen, Global Green has helped design homes for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, operates a green building resource center, and runs programs on green cities and schools, climate action, water conservation and other critical elements of a sustainable future.
• PlaceMatters is a fascinating nonprofit operated by Ken Snyder, formerly an expert in the Department of Energy’s Center of Excellence for Sustainable Development. PlaceMatters offers a toolbox of cutting-edge software that enables more intelligent community planning and more civic engagement in urban design. Those tools include iCommunityTV – a program that allows citizens to post local news videos about developments in their communities.
• I mentioned ICLEI U.S. in Part 1 of this post. Led by Michelle Wyman, it is the California-based U.S. affiliate of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives. Among other sustainability offerings, ICLEI operates one of the nation’s best programs to help communities prevent and deal with global climate change. Its Climate Resilient Communities Program trains local officials on adaptation; its Climate Mitigation program coaches cities through a five-milestone program that starts with an inventory of local greenhouse gas emissions and ends with the implementation of greenhouse gas mitigation plans.
• Another important ICLEI initiative is the STAR Community Index, a national system to help cities develop sustainability indicators and to certify their progress. The U.S. Green Building Council and Center for American Progress have partnered with ICLEI on this new tool, which is scheduled to be available next year.  Three new cities are joining ICLEI every week — but there are nearly 20,000 cities in the United States, and more of them should be working with ICLEI.


• Speaking of the U.S. Green Building Council, its internationally popular LEED rating system now involves not only green buildings, but also green neighborhoods. The USGBC has built a national network of local chapters and local green building experts, including some that may be near your city.


• In its 2030 Challenge, Architecture 2030 has rallied key organizations in the U.S. building industry around the goal of making all new and renovated buildings carbon-neutral by 2030. Its leader, Ed Mazria, has developed guidelines for communities to modify their building codes to meet this goal, as well as dramatic visualizations of how much of the nation’s coastal areas will be lost with climate-related sea level rise.
• Rails to Trails Conservancy, led by Keith Laughlin, who helped guide environmental programs in the Clinton White House, works with communities to build hiking and biking trails. One of Keith’s goals is safe routes for children to walk or bike to and from school.

There’s no lack of vision or help for cities that want to build for the future. With the stimulus package, there’s also some money. And with the imperative that we reduce our reliance on foreign oil and our greenhouse gas emissions, there is no shortage of critical milestones.

The cities that help America create its new energy economy will be tomorrow’s prosperity places, where people will want to live and businesses will want to build.

This piece originally appeared in Climate Progress.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Urban Design and Planning at 1:42 PM) ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/mFES069iq9g/009944.html/feed/ 0 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/7VkF1dlA0IM/009817.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/7VkF1dlA0IM/009817.html#comments Tue, 05 May 2009 16:27:30 +0000 WorldChanging Team 9817@http://www.worldchanging.com/

By Herbert Simmens

Some 57 speakers from a half dozen countries presented projects and ideas spanning three continents - all in three days - at the Ecological Urbanism: Alternative and Sustainable Cities of the Future conference at Harvard this past April 3-5.

What was possibly the most intensive conference ever focusing on the intersection of ecology and urbanism brought together 500 academics, practitioners and students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Accompanying the conference was an exhibition of leading edge designs for ecological urbanism from around the world. Many of the proposals and ideas are influenced by the marriage of biology and design, in part as a result of support from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard, which sponsored the The Wyss Prize for Bioinspired Adaptive Architecture for best exhibit.

While impossible to summarize the presentations, the organization and ecology (if you will) of the event deserves comment. Put together an emerging discipline of worldwide interest, a group of confident and often compelling speakers whose perspectives necessarily differed -an attempt at having a common definition of ecological urbanism was not even attempted - and you have an environment both rich with information and innovation and with an intense creative tension.

The array of speakers from such fields as religion (presented by a Buddhist scholar), public health (examining the compelling relationship between social justice, health and neighborhood residence), and even olfactory science (featuring an analysis of the common smells of neighborhoods in Mexico City) brought diversity of perspective to the conference.

Diversity was also in evidence with the selection of projects shown. They were as large as new eco-cities - MASDAR in Abu Dhabi is the largest and probably the best known - and as small as guerilla style streetscape improvements, as in the work of Rebar in San Francisco.

Yet despite the geographic range of the speakers and projects, and the many disciplines represented, there were virtually no speakers who were actual ecologists. How do common concepts of ecology such as niches, overshoot, succession, density, competition, and behavioral adaptation relate to urbanism? What can we learn from ecology and ecologists? These questions surprisingly were never directly addressed.

A second limitation of the conference was the absence of community or indigenous representation. Whether it was the heroic architect imposing his or her ecological vision on a community or region, or an interdisciplinary team of experts from around the world presenting their vision, it was still a top-down model that was on display.

Changing the world requires that we find more effective ways to marry the expertise being developed in universities and private practices all over the globe, with the grassroots knowledge embedded in local communities. What are the best models of cooperation across disciplines and between experts and local communities? Answering that question requires a series of conversations between those who inhabit our neighborhoods, our public institutions and our academies. We’re still waiting to see who will take on that challenge.

Podcasts of presentations from the conference are available here. The exhibition will remain at the Gund Hall Gallery at Harvard through May 17th.

Herb Simmens is a longtime advocate for and practitioner of sustainable development. As director of state planning for New Jersey in the 1990s, he led development of the first statewide master plan with a focus on sustainability. Simmens also recently served as executive director of an organization of New Jersey colleges devoted to becoming sustainable.

Editor's Note: We encourage "Reader Reports" -- submissions from members of Worldchanging's global audience who volunteer to write up their notes from travels, conferences, workshops and other worldchanging happenings they participate in. If you'd like to contribute your own report, please email editor[at]worldchanging[dot]com.

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by Roger Valdez

Smart growth and affordable housing advocates struggle to find answers.

Last summer, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) prepared a report to the Vancouver City Council on the city’s EcoDensity Initiative pointing out the initiative’s weakness on affordability.

The backers of EcoDensity, a City initiative to make environmental sustainability a primary goal in all city planning decisions, argue that increasing supply by adding density will result in a decrease in housing costs. That follows basic economic principles, but we have also seen that increasing density, by itself, does not necessarily lower the price of housing. It’s well know that dense cities like New York and San Francisco aren’t very affordable, for example. According to the CCPA report, the same is true of Vancouver.

The good news is that Vancouver is a poster child for increasing density and smart growth. In fact, Vancouver is actually Sightline’s model for avoiding sprawl through compact development, and our studies show that Vancouver has led the region in actively promoting density (although recent data shows that Vancouver’s edge may be slipping). As one measure of increasing density, the mix of housing in Vancouver made a steady shift away from single family and toward multifamily housing.

The bad news is that Vancouver has become increasingly unaffordable. The monthly cost of a standard condo (as defined in Royal LePage’s historical database) in Vancouver rose from Can$1000 per month in 2000, to Can$1600 per month in 2004 to Can$2200 per month at the end of 2007. That is an increase of more than 100 percent in only 7 years.

It is tempting to draw a causal link between density and affordability, but reality is much more complex. I don’t think there’s a simple answer as to why more units in a city like Vancouver don’t automatically decrease prices. (By the same token, it’s not clear why the increase in supply of houses in ever-expanding suburban sprawl didn’t automatically decrease housing prices in the US Sunbelt.) My guess is that housing price is affected by more than a simple supply-demand curve set exclusively by number of housing units. Materials, the mortgage resale market, inflation, and regional factors also play a part. My colleague Eric de Place did a great three part series on affordability and growth management that sheds some light on these issues.

Consider also that housing prices throughout much of Canada showed the same hyper-escalation they did in the United States. In fact, in Western Canada prices rose 79% from 1996 to 2006 and, like in the United States, prices are now falling in Canada as well. The big price run-up and subsequent decline isn’t obviously connected to density, sprawl, or other land-use patterns. It is possible that as housing prices fall back to earth across Canada that housing in Vancouver’s compact neighborhoods will follow, thereby fixing some of the city’s affordability problem. It’s just too hard to tell what caused prices to rise so dramatically, but saying that density leads to increased housing costs is probably just as dubious as saying more supply automatically leads to lower prices as the EcoDensity proponents argue.

Regardless, there’s clearly a serious affordability issue in Vancouver, and it’s one that greens should take seriously. Among the many problems with steep housing price increases in the city is that the lack of affordability encourages people seek housing farther from employment centers and other major destinations, which in turn increases driving. As one recent study of Toronto shows longer drives by people living farther from job centers is a major source of emissions, a phenomena which could erode the environmental benefits of the EcoDensity Initiative. 

So how to fix Vancouver’s affordable housing problem?

The CCPA report recommends several policy changes:

• Require 20 percent of all new development be affordable
  
• Reduce parking requirements or more density in exchange for meeting affordability targets
• Designate city owned land and facilities for redevelopment into affordable housing
• Increase property taxes (which are low in Vancouver compared to other Canadian cities) to pay for affordable housing

CCPA’s solutions have been proposed elsewhere, but each carries political costs for elected officials and they can be a challenge to implement. What’s more, programs like inclusionary zoning (requiring developers to build affordable housing in new development or pay a fee in lieu of including units in their project) have had mixed results in part because many developers have opted just to pay the fee instead of building affordable units into their projects. In fact, Seattle is trying the same kind of incentive zoning program and there has been skepticism on all sides about the results.

Incentive zoning is a good idea because it could increase the supply of housing by allowing more density even while it captures some of the additional revenue created by the new density and uses it to subsidize public benefits like affordable housing. But because each development project has a different set of financial assumptions, developers can sometimes find that the incentive acts more like a tax that discourages them from adding density.

It will be interesting for Vancouver’s policymakers to see whether Seattle’s incentive zoning program actually creates additional housing or if developers shy away because the program doesn’t offer enough flexibility.

The challenge in each of Cascadia’s major cities is to do what most everyone agrees is beneficial for the climate, the environment, and even human health: create more opportunity for people to live in our cities.

This piece originally appeared in Sightline Institute's blog, The Daily Score.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Urban Design and Planning at 1:32 PM) ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/oRSZpELcn5I/009780.html/feed/ 0 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/quyk6uvl2vs/009776.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/quyk6uvl2vs/009776.html#comments Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:58:23 +0000 WorldChanging Team 9776@http://www.worldchanging.com/

By Elizabeth Press

Transportation Alternatives' Safe Routes for Seniors campaign started in 2003 to encourage senior citizens to walk more by improving their pedestrian environment. Funded by the New York State Department of Health's Healthy Heart program, this was the first program of its kind to address the needs of elderly pedestrians.

In 2008, the City of New York launched its own Safe Streets for Seniors initiative based on TAs Safe Routes for Seniors. Focusing on 25 areas with high senior pedestrian fatalities, this program is paving new ground. Yet, some including seniors not in these zones are asking, is it enough? Stats released by Transportation Alternatives show that:

• People aged 65 years and older make up 12% of the population, yet they comprised 39% of New York City's pedestrian fatalities between 2002 and 2006.
• The fatality rate of senior pedestrians is 40 times greater than that of child pedestrians in Manhattan.

This video is an overview of what Transportation Alternatives, New York State Department of Health, NYC DOT, community groups, and elected officials are doing to promote safe streets for seniors.

This piece originally appeared in Streetfilms.

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Streetfilms voyaged across the pond to visit some of London’s innovative transportation and public realm projects. We interviewed Paul Harper, a head urban designer at Design for London, who was in charge of the 100 Public Spaces Programme.

The 100 Public Spaces Programme improved the public realm of London through streetscaping, transportation and public space planning. In this interview, we take a special look at—and a visionary zoom around—Aldgate, a neighborhood in East London undergoing considerable change, including an inclusive transformation from car-dominated streets to a large public park.

Design for London is now part of the London Development Agency's Design, Development and Environment Directorate. The 100 Public Spaces Programme has transformed into new public space initiatives under the current mayor, Boris Johnson, with a focus on the legacy of the Olympics site in East London. The Aldgate neighborhood's public realm continues to become more people friendly with transportation planning and parks.

this video was posted on Streetfilms by Alice Shay

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Urban Design and Planning at 11:32 AM) ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/IcgrKILr3I0/009735.html/feed/ 0 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/547344503/009493.html http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/547344503/009493.html#comments Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:51:13 +0000 WorldChanging Team 9493@http://www.worldchanging.com/

By Aaron Naparstek

Before and After: A rendering of a car-free Broadway at 7th Ave., Times Square, looking north. Download a larger image.

New York City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan unveiled plans to pedestrianize a large swath of Broadway in Midtown Manhattan at a small briefing in City Hall this morning. Intended to improve motor vehicle traffic flow, enhance safety and provide more and better public space to pedestrians, the plan seeks to solve what Sadik-Khan called a "problem hidden in plain sight for 200 years."

As the only Midtown street that pre-dates the 1811 street grid plan, Broadway "creates pinch points and traffic congestion as it traverses Manhattan crossing busy avenues," Sadik-Khan said. Extending from 59th Street at Columbus Circle to 23rd Street at Madison Square with substantial pedestrian-only areas at Times and Herald Squares, Mayor Bloomberg's plan for Broadway is, arguably, the boldest and most transformative street reclamation project since Portland, Oregon decided to tear down Harbor Drive in 1974.

Before and After: A rendering of a car-free Broadway at 6th Ave., Herald Square, looking south.
Download a larger image.


In addition to creating a vast swath of new pedestrian space in "pedlocked" Midtown, DOT estimates that the plan will reduce southbound motor vehicle travel times by 17 percent on 7th Avenue and northbound travel times by 37 percent on 6th Avenue. To measure the plan's effect, DOT will be closely monitoring a number of criteria including economic data. With numerous storefronts vacant and office and retail rental rates lagging behind other prime Midtown corridors, Broadway is currently "underperforming" by a number of economic measures, Sadik-Khan said. Based on experience in other cities, a more pedestrian-friendly Broadway should "get more people out on the street. They will buy more coffee and do more shopping."

Construction on the street redesign -- which is being presented as a pilot project and being built with temporary materials -- will start in May and continue through August, Sadik-Khan said. Work around Herald and Times Square will be done during the Memorial Day weekend to ease concerns about traffic congestion.

While Broadway's existing bike lane will remain intact it was, notably, de-emphasized in DOT's renderings. Broadway will now be considered a "pedestrian priority" street and Sadik-Khan said she expected the bike lane would mainly be used by tourists and pedicabs. The bicycle rental company Bike Roll is considering setting up a rental facility somewhere along the route. "Fast cyclists are not going to be interested in going through this. Messengers will be directed to use 7th Avenue," she said.

This piece originally appeared on Streetsblog.org

Image credits: NYC Department of Transportation

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Urban Design and Planning at 1:51 PM) ]]> http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/547344503/009493.html/feed/ 0 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/474044304/009123.html http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/474044304/009123.html#comments Wed, 03 Dec 2008 21:48:13 +0000 Geoff Manaugh 9123@http://www.worldchanging.com/

Waiting Room

[Image: The Waiting Room, Rome, by Jeffrey Inaba/Inaba Projects].

Jeffrey Inaba of Inaba Projects has a new pavilion on display now in Rome, sponsored by Enel, Italy's largest utilities provider. Because of that sponsorship, Inaba "wanted to use numerous forms of alternative energy applications," but decided, in the end, to apply "just one that was highly productive and cost effective." The pavilion is thus solar-powered – Inaba describes it as an "Alice in Wonderland mushroom meets solar-ray chomping Pac-Man."

[Images: The Waiting Room, Rome, by Jeffrey Inaba/Inaba Projects].

So what is the project? Solar-powered and lit from within, with a DVD player and monitors, it tries to rethink the hospital waiting room; in fact, the cartoon-like, festive structure with a kind of external tattoo of abstract graphics, is "sited at Policlinico Umberto 1, Rome's largest public hospital, and one that has been recently controversial because of scandals of unsafe and unsanitary conditions."

As an "enlightenment" era hospital, it was planned in a decentralized way, with specialties (pediatrics, respiratory maladies, contagious diseases) distributed throughout the campus, with no single central space. The project attempts to create a centralized space for all kinds of waiting (waiting for an appointment, to be picked up, the diagnosis of a loved one, for treatment, convalescing to recover).

As Inaba himself explained in a recent issue of Art Review, the real purpose was “to create an environment to cope with our restlessness, if not through easing the irritation of having to wait, then at least through distraction from it."
"The aim," Inaba writes in a short essay about the project, "is to produce a distraction from waiting by introducing a mix of people, activity and stimulation to thwart the inward feeling of inertia that is triggered by delays."
Of course, this raises the possibility of a building so immersive, visually interesting, or simply distracting that you don't realize you're waiting for something. Time passes; nothing happens; you don't notice.
It's a sort of anti-prison.

[Images: The Waiting Room, Rome, by Jeffrey Inaba/Inaba Projects].

The website for Enel Contemporanea adds that "[c]olours, lights, geometric shapes and various environmentally friendly elements" bring "an element of comfort to an architectural space normally seen as a temporary and highly emotional environment."

[Images: The Waiting Room, Rome, by Jeffrey Inaba/Inaba Projects].

All of which is another way of saying that the project enlivens the experience of waiting inside architecture – highlighting the general but overlooked surreality of the waiting room, as a space in which you simply wait for something else to happen.

[Image: The Waiting Room, Rome, by Jeffrey Inaba/Inaba Projects].

It's up until February 2009 – so if you're in Rome, check it out.

This piece originally appeared on Geoff Manaugh's website, BLDGBLOG.

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