How to design a city?

Given posts in car appreacition thread thought be interesting to post on how you would design a city....

I think that public transport, cycles and walking are a good things and cars are bad - in the 1960's architects tried to plan the opposite and this was rubbish

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20mph limit.

that you sorted mate.

why? seems strange given average speeds in london well below that so doesn't make much difference.

also costs a sh.it load of cash to implement.

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http://www.cebe.heacademy.ac.uk/learning/habitat/HABITAT4/simcity2.gif

a well-designed city blends the availability of different modes of transport, harmoniously enabling citizens to make the most appropriate choices for their own circumstances.

/wank. but you know what i mean.

I went to a great exhibition in Prague about 8 years ago called "Shaping the Great City: Modern Architecture in Central Europe, 1890-1937" (to be exact!); it looked at the inspirations behind the design of 'modern cities', and what they hoped to achieve, in places such as Budapest, Vienna, Prague.
The artwork and drafting was amazing, and all the pictures of the cityscapes looked so appealing, but all you had to do was catch a bus 1/2 hour away from the exhibition hall to see the grim reality.
A utopian city would I think, like a utopian countryside, be one that allows complete freedom of movement in all areas for all the people therein - obviously not a possibility.
I would love to see a city where private car access (inc. cabs) was not possible/allowed, only public transport, freight, bicycles and walking.
It would be interesting to see what it would be like, whether it would be peaceful and clean, or not, for example (there would certainly be less aggression I think, once you get rid of the car-owning schizophrenics who turn from mild-mannered people into screaming hit-and-run merchants once in their bubble)

not really.

'shared space' people are pushing users to mix but i feel that cars and people really don't mix. one is in a steel box and the other is not.

^We have a transport planner on board!

My home town, St-Brieuc in Brittany was transformed in the 60s to make way to cars, the old town was demolised (beautiful houses from the middle ages) to give space to a huge car park. There used to be a very small train line to take people to the local beach, they closed it. The local beach was abandoned and polluted. People moved to the outskirts of town, got a couple of cars per family and started shopping in the hypermarkets. The town cinemas have also all closed down, people now drive to the multiplexes. There are very few food shops left. People now only come to the centre of town on a Saturday to look at the clothes shops.

The town Dinan, 50km away, was redeveloped at about the same time but radically different, they refurbished the old town, planned for cars and pedestrians and it is has been a booming tourist city ever since.

I went to a great exhibition in Prague about 8 years ago called "Shaping the Great City: Modern Architecture in Central Europe, 1890-1937" (to be exact!); it looked at the inspirations behind the design of 'modern cities', and what they hoped to achieve, in places such as Budapest, Vienna, Prague.
The artwork and drafting was amazing, and all the pictures of the cityscapes looked so appealing, but all you had to do was catch a bus 1/2 hour away from the exhibition hall to see the grim reality.
A utopian city would I think, like a utopian countryside, be one that allows complete freedom of movement in all areas for all the people therein - obviously not a possibility.
I would love to see a city where private car access (inc. cabs) was not possible/allowed, only public transport, freight, bicycles and walking.
It would be interesting to see what it would be like, whether it would be peaceful and clean, or not, for example (there would certainly be less aggression I think, once you get rid of the car-owning schizophrenics who turn from mild-mannered people into screaming hit-and-run merchants once in their bubble)

i agree on the comments about dressing up urban architecture. drawing pretty pictures of utopian cities is effectively what architects did in the cities to sell us housing commission flats..... until grassroots activism challenge them.

best example of change i've seen is Bilbao in spain. used to be crap industrial city now they are trying to turn it around by banning cars from old city, building trams to new areas (where there are no cars), and making spaces nice to be. They also have a f.cing great new buidling.

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This thread represents a massive can of worms for me. I refer you to an architectural competition i was involved in earlier this year, for the south korean government, that attempted to do exactly that- design a completely new city from scratch, the land reclaimed from the sea. it was 400km2. I asked on here about cycle commuting distances as my specialism within the team was infrastructure/public realm:

http://www.londonfgss.com/thread3715.html

We won the competition, joint-first with MIT. For those interested it was quite well covered by Building Design journal:

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=426&storycode=3108110

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=426&storycode=3122242

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=428&storycode=3128496

i agree on the comments about dressing up urban architecture. drawing pretty pictures of utopian cities is effectively what architects did in the cities to sell us housing commission flats..... until grassroots activism challenge them.

best example of change i've seen is Bilbao in spain. used to be crap industrial city now they are trying to turn it around by banning cars from old city, building trams to new areas (where there are no cars), and making spaces nice to be. * They also have a f.cing great new buidling.*

No and no.

not really.

'shared space' people are pushing users to mix but i feel that cars and people really don't mix. one is in a steel box and the other is not.

but you need to provide access for both. unless you're living in some fantasy land people are going to need cars for a variety of common purposes, and there's no point planning a city without adequately catering for that.

not everyone has the same ability to replace cars with bicycles as I do.

shared space is a wonderful approach that has been proven to work unanimously. It is, again in my opinion, the only way forward for traffic management, for various reasons.

shared space is a wonderful approach that has been proven to work unanimously. It is, again in my opinion, the only way forward for traffic management, for various reasons.

Does the idea of shared space necessarily have to rely on a certain degree of tolerance? Or does tolerance develop with 'acclimatisation' to shared spaces?

but you need to provide access for both. unless you're living in some fantasy land people are going to need cars for a variety of common purposes, and there's no point planning a city without adequately catering for that.

not everyone has the same ability to replace cars with bicycles as I do.

I don't think you need to provide access for 'both'. in central london there is no need for the private car.

you can provide accessible public transport rather than facilities for non-accessible private transport.

you can also limit freight activities to certain times but provide incentives (to reduce costs so consumer doesn't pay).

planning needs to be sensitive to needs but must also have vision

Does the idea of shared space necessarily have to rely on a certain degree of tolerance? Or does tolerance develop with 'acclimatisation' to shared spaces?

the answer is unknown and arguable. although the city of london has implemented a fair few with cyclists and pedestrain and it works whereas when mixing cars with pedestrains it has been less successful and, due to lack of ongoing political backing, they implemented traffic lights where shared spaces existed beforehand.

I like this idea of shared space.

the answer is unknown and arguable. although the city of london has implemented a fair few with cyclists and pedestrain and it works whereas when mixing cars with pedestrains it has been less successful and, due to lack of ongoing political backing, they implemented traffic lights where shared spaces existed beforehand.

adding bike lane in the city doesn't necessary mean sharing space, especially when it's separated from the road most of the time, that just made the road to be focus by motorised vehicle only (such as Bloomsbury).

I don't think you need to provide access for 'both'. in central london there is no need for the private car.

you can provide accessible public transport rather than facilities for non-accessible private transport.

you can also limit freight activities to certain times but provide incentives (to reduce costs so consumer doesn't pay).

planning needs to be sensitive to needs but must also have vision

perhaps if you were designing a city from scratch perhaps you could do away with cars. but a statement like "in central london there is no need for the private car" is just not true. there are plenty of necessary uses for cars (or let's say "personal motorised transport") in central london. the entire city would need to be radically reconfigured to avoid this.

besides, even if people didn't need to own cars individually, you would still need to provide road access for vehicles like ambulances, delivery vehicles, taxis etc.

the car is here to stay for the foreseeable future, and like it or not city planning has to take that into account.

My automatic reaction to shared space ideas is to reject them, because I just think of the cycle path near me which are inundated with peds who moan at you if you ask them to get out of your way.
They usually look at you like you're a rapist, and suggest that you should be on the road, whereupon the car drivers all screech at you that you should be on the cycle paths...

I know it's not that oppressive in reality, but if the average urbanites can't even share a little space like that, how would they manage on a large scale city-wide basis? It would be interesting to see an example (am I right in thinking that Holland is the place to see this in action?)

adding bike lane in the city doesn't necessary mean sharing space, especially when it's separated from the road most of the time, that just made the road to be focus by motorised vehicle only (such as Bloomsbury).

i didn't mention bike lanes. i meant 'shared' space where pedestrains and cyclists are both allowed. e.g. queen street

i think tolerance is one of the major benefits of 'shared space'. streets in the city are currently rat-runs, where movement of people and cars is controlled to the nth degree. when driving, we have our eyes too much on signs and markings and too little on the behaviour and actions of those around us. Shared space encourages the individual to take responsibility rather than be directed mindlessly.

increasingly metal barriers line the roads, separating the pavement and impeding pedestrian movement. meanwhile, even in 'bad traffic' huge swathes of the roads are left empty whilst a lump of cars advances from traffic light to traffic light. this is because such systems are poor at allocating the road space, resulting in the erratic stop-starting that causes confusion and disorientation. drivers, rightly frustrated by wasting so much time, are forever either accelerating or decelerating sharply. Shared space, in places where it has been employed, has been proven to lower the speed of traffic just by spreading cars out! the result is a more fluid road infrastructure where people relate directly with other people rather than through the mediation of conventional traffic management techniques.

The above image is of a road in Brighton. Examples I would cite in London include Kensighton, where the council are starting to (successfully) develop shared space, and Seven Dials, a beautiful traditional example that you might not ordinarily think of. for more info, check out...

http://www.shared-space.org/

based on a random survey of 1000hh in london -

'Evidence suggests that pedestrians and cyclists do not necessarily conflict, and of those walking or cycling on a shared pavement at least once a month, 3 in 5 (60%) said they are satisfied and less than a third (30%) are dissatisfied. '

although to me that is inconclusive.

does this all come back to how fast should a car go in a city?

what about marginal users?

http://www.guidedogs.org.uk/index.php?id=6550

i think that it is better to discuss less specific points as when you argue on minor streetscape points the arguments are far more compelling but also mean that the lines are drawn between cars/peds/cyclists. it is better to discuss what we really want the city to be - quiet, plesant, fun....etc or dull like canberra and Brasilia.