#car-centric developmnent

[atlurbanist]

Classism. Racism. Ageism. Ableism. Climate denial.

No matter how we rationalize the wasteful destruction of nature through car-scaled urban sprawl, or how we rationalize the act of robbing people of chances to live with dignity unless they can drive, those evils are at the core.

[atlurbanist]

Same view of Downtown Atlanta, before & after freeways destroyed city fabric, displaced residents, and established a car-centric framework.

I highlighted City Hall & the Capitol.

I post this not to make everyone depressed, but to emphasize how much work we need to do.

Overcoming this major wound to our urban fabric is a huge task and it will require a laser focus on great urbanism for every property, so we can establish a pedestrian-centered density that reduces reliance on cars.

[atlurbanist]

Thinking about public health and car-centric places

Unwalkable places fail to promote good health, and fail to be inclusive of people within the full spectrum of abilities and ages. 

by Darin Givens, 1/18/2022

I saw a tweet today that really nails the negative association between car-centric urban design and public health. It's a major problem. I think about it a lot these days:

As of three years ago, I’m unable to drive due to neurological issues. If I still lived in the car-centric suburbs instead of in a walkable urban place, I’d be up the creek. But as it is, I was recently able to walk to CVS a few days ago to pick up a prescription -- something I do regularly. I’m also able to get onto two different bus routes within a block walk.

I feel very privileged to have that ability, but it shouldn’t be a privilege. It should just be the way we do placemaking for the sake of equity and good health. 

Many studies over the years have found that people living in neighborhoods that are easily walkable, and that have transit options other than driving, get more exercise per week.

Unfortunately, we’ve built far too many places that fail to be walkable, fail to promote good health, and that also fail to be inclusive of people within the full spectrum of abilities and ages. 

And for that latter group, the problem isn’t just about the inconvenience of not being able to take a stroll safely for some exercise. It’s about death and injury -- the extreme end of ‘health’.

I’m thinking of the Clayton County 12-year-old with autism who was killed on a typically awful suburban road after being struck by a car, and their caregiver who was seriously injured trying to save the child. And the 7-year-old girl with autism who was killed in a hit-and-run in Acworth while walking near her home.

When we build our developments to be dependent upon cars, and our roads to be prioritized for maximum car flow and speed, we exclude many people from reaping the health benefits of safe spaces for walking. It feels to me like a wrong thing to do; like something that local governments should disallow. 

Maybe it’s something that the federal government should penalize counties and cities for: show us that you’re actively working on creating walkable places that are accessible to all, or we’ll withhold federal money for transportation. 

[atlurbanist]

This tweet has the usual “but people want space and a yard, and Atlanta offers that” stuff from commenters, defending our low-density sprawl.

Which is ridiculous. There's no Barcelona-like option in Atlanta that people have shunned and left empty because they want yards. We literally made it illegal to build Barcelona.

The image in the tweet is a 1990 comparison of Barcelona and multi-county Metro Atlanta, showing the difference between a sprawling land use and a compact one. Heavy rail transit lines are in red.

A much higher percentage of Barcelona's population has access to rail transit, vs Atlanta.

When I look at this image I see:

1.) 2.8 million people (Barcelona) in an area compact & walkable enough to be served well by rail

2.) 2.5 million people (Metro Atlanta) sprawled out into pedestrian-hostile places that can’t be served well by transit.

It's a choice. You want to make compact, mixed-use development illegal? Is enforcement of yards your priority?

OK, well that means we'll be dominated by car dependency and sprawl -- which will lead to inequitable outcomes for access, safety, health, and more. It also means destroying large, contiguous forests.

Metro Atlanta is in a depressing situation with sprawl and low access to high-frequency transit, plus all the negatives that result. But I'm generally hopeful for the future. There are great folks here who understand how to build better places.

By the way -- some folks like to make the "Atlanta has no natural boundaries" argument, as if we're doomed to car-dependency due to lack of a coast or mountains (we're not).

Atlanta's local governments can choose to make compact, mixed-use neighborhoods legal. We can choose to stop demanding, through zoning laws, that most of our developable land be occupied by nothing but low density sprawl.

Just because Barcelona had to be compact due to natural boundaries, that doesn't mean that Atlanta has to sprawl due to the lack of them.

[atlurbanist]

We over-adjusted chaotic streets by making them too focused on car flow.

1928 streets had quite a mobility mix – horse wagons, pedestrians, cars, streetcars, and bicycles, all sharing space. This is the Five Points intersection, Downtown Atlanta, but plenty of other streets had this same mix.

This kind of scene was chaotic and it needed some order. But the 'order' we got after 1928 was the wrong kind. We evolved city streets in a bad direction, designing them to prioritize movement of automobiles above all else. Which was a particularly troubling change when you consider the high rate of pedestrian deaths caused by cars in the 1920s.

At this point, we need to undo the car-focused evolution of streets from the mid 20th century, and de-center car flow in our street designs -- yes, let's allow cars, but don't allow them to continue keeping our urbanism as compromised as it has become.

Below: car-sewer streets in Downtown Atlanta

We need to do it for safety, sustainability, equity, and to take better advantage of the things cities do best (a list that doesn't include 'suburban levels of car flow').

I know people will argue that we shouldn't change the car-centric design of city streets until transit is expanded in the suburbs. But I say that it's not fair to prevent Atlanta from achieving better urbanism by maintaining the status quo of car capacity.

Plus, as we've seen with the More MARTA program, expansion of transit is a very difficult, costly, lengthy process. Will the suburbs buy into that process by approving higher taxes? I hope so. But I don't want to stifle Atlanta's capacity for urbanism-excellence based on that bet.

Top-photo source: GSU Digital Collections

[atlurbanist]

Thoughts from a suburban intersection in the city

Slip lanes, free-standing fast food restaurants with drive-thru windows, and a lot of cars -- while standing at the intersection of Ponce and Boulevard, I had to assure myself I hadn't been instantly transported to the suburbs. 

We've got a lot of work to do when it comes to redesigning the city so that it can do some of the key things that cities do best: 

 Prioritize walking, cycling, and transit usage on the street, and... 

 Supply developments that are oriented primarily toward those modes instead of toward driving.

Of course, all of the above needs to be achieved in a way that prevents displacement of lower-income residents, and adds new residents in an equitable way that includes affordability.

I want to specifically address transit: sometimes people will claim that we can't change the density of the city until we've first expanded transit, but I see that as a losing argument. Yes, there's some small expansion of transit that could happen within the status quo. But one thing that works against the success of transit is the existing suburban layout of much of the city. 

It's hard to serve lower-density places -- especially ones with pedestrian-hostile roads and car-centric developments -- with buses, let alone trains. At some point all transit riders are pedestrians, and that walk needs to be a great one if transit is going to appeal to anyone other than the desperate folks who can't drive (like me).

[atlurbanist]

Emory University Hospital Midtown has some giant parking decks (the two highlighted in red on the left are theirs; the one on the right is for a federal office tower). They sit in between two MARTA rail stations. That’s a problem. It makes our major investments in rail less valuable than they should be.

Studies have found that the availability of parking has a negative effect on transit ridership. It’s hard for MARTA to compete with car trips when rail stations are next to masses of parking.

Campuses like these might as well be located several miles from rail so that this space can be filled with something that actually supports transit ridership.

But honestly, I point this out not to slam Emory or to claim that hospitals or federal offices shouldn’t have any parking. That’s not what I’m saying with this post. This is simply one easy-to-highlight example of a problem that exists all around, and the blame belongs with the city.

What I want to emphasize is this: Atlanta has done a poor job with planning transit-supportive density near rail stations; and we have a lot of serious work to do when it comes to rectifying that situation. We need to create great urban places that provide excellent pedestrian experiences while emphasizing sustainable transportation.

People complain that ‘MARTA doesn’t go anywhere’. The part of the city that's in this image should be a 'somewhere’ place. All the places around our city's rail stations need to be delivering many rail passengers, and providing great walking destinations.

[atlurbanist]

If you have zoning codes that force developers to provide housing that comes with parking spaces, what you are implicitly saying is that it is illegal to build housing explicitly for people who are too poor to own cars

Redesigning American Cities for Less Driving | Planetizen, 8/1/2013

[atlurbanist]

How the US became Car Country

This is a great little video promoting the book "Car Country: an environmental history" by Christopher Wells.

It takes a concise look at some of the steps that led to much of our urban landscape being entirely dependent on car travel -- and the way that government and zoning policies nationwide favored car-oriented developments throughout the 20th century.

[atlurbanist]

Automated cars may be the future, but is this good urbanism?

I've been reading a lot about automated cars as a revolutionary technology for road safety. Here's a recent news item on them from Fox Business.

A quote:

The timeframe varies, depending on which expert you ask, but they all agree the driverless car is coming. They believe that autonomous vehicles will save lives, cut commute times and improve mobility for the elderly and disabled.

Undoubtedly, increased road safety for drivers is a good thing, as is reduction in congestion. But the notion that this is a big transportation improvement is coming from a windshield perspective. What's not being taken into account is the hindrance to good urban growth posed by a continuation of car-centric living, whether or not the cars are safer.

Bottom line: the most helpful thing that cars can do in the future is not to become more automated, but to become less ubiquitous in our lives

Unless automated cars weigh no more than a bicycle and miniaturize after use for easy pocket storage, color me unimpressed. At the end of the day, this is still a two ton piece of metal that's inefficiently being used to cart around a 200lb person.

A transportation type that requires such a significant amount of storage space (at each destination) and infrastructure, even during the 20 hours a day it isn't being used, is one that doesn't work for a growing population. Particularly when that population has already taken up too much land space and destroyed too much nature with car-dependent sprawl.

Car safety is important and this automated technology certainly has value. But when it comes to the future, our primary focus should be on advancements that offer Americans livable, attractive and compact places that can be safely and conveniently traversed without the necessity of car ownership.

Photo of Atlanta traffic by Flickr user laurelpagetseekins

EDIT: in the comments, John makes an interesting argument. He points out that driverless cars may be part of a future that has an increase in shared-car services (taxis, Zipcars) and a reduction in the need for car ownership. Sounds good to me, if that's true.

Also, in my comment response, I hit upon the idea of driverless buses. Shpadoinkle! That's something I'd like to see. No more MARTA drivers talking on the phone at the station and being late to depart. Or else you shift the staffing: instead of a driver, you have a MARTA employee on the bus who's just there to kick out drunk loudmouths.

[atlurbanist]

Trying to walk safely on car-centric roads

Please take a few minutes to read today’s excellent post from Kaid Benfield: The disturbing and sometimes tragic challenge of walking in America

Among other things, he points out the often tragic results of putting cars far ahead of pedestrians in importance when it comes to land-use patterns and transportation infrastructure.

Here’s a quote:

“…from 2000 through 2009, more than 47,700 pedestrians were killed in the United States. This is the equivalent of a jumbo jet full of passengers crashing roughly every month. On top of that, more than 688,000 pedestrians were injured over the decade, a number equivalent to a pedestrian being struck by a car or truck every 7 minutes.”

He also mentions the problem of roads that are just plain inhospitable to pedestrians and how they prevent people from easily walking to nearby destinations when they should logically be able to. This is a problem I’ve encountered often in Atlanta.

For example: my family took a bus ride to the Beltline last Saturday for a walk. We had a great time both there and at the Old Fourth Ward Park. But getting on a bus back home involved making an overly long trek on Ponce de Leon Avenue in order to safely cross to the other side — and to avoid a stretch of road that lacked a continuous sidewalk.

But we were lucky compared to many pedestrians. At least we had a sidewalk and a crosswalk. The metro area is full of roads, including the one where my office is located, that lack even the most basic pedestrian amenities, even when they’re located near transit.

Crossing Ponce photo from Flickr user Eric Langley

[atlurbanist]

Judge Doom's freeway plan

Holy cow! It looks like much of the metro-Atlanta built environment may have been planned by Judge Doom from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit."

I found this clip tweeted by Streetsblog Network. And while I had a good laugh about it for a few seconds, it's really kind of sad how accurate it is regarding car-focused sprawl along freeways.

Many "corridors of crap" came out of the car-centric developments of the mid/late 20th century. They've proven stubbornly difficult to undo, though I have hope for the concepts behind suburban retrofitting and their potential to build better places.

I'm reminded once again of a quote I've posted before:

The Department of Transportation, in its single-minded pursuit of traffic flow, has destroyed more American towns than General Sherman. – Andres Duany

[atlurbanist]

Atlanta's highways and the drug trade

A new Forbes list names Atlanta the sixth most dangerous U.S. city with a population over 200,000. An article from 2009, also in Forbes, gives a clear reason for Atlanta's high crime rate: it's a major drug trafficking hub.

From the recent Forbes piece:

"Atlanta has become the East Coast distribution hub of the violent Mexican cartels that now dominate the drug trade...Consequently, the Atlanta area has started to see an increase in violent crimes..."

The US Justice Dept website has a detailed review of Atlanta's prominence as a drug trafficking hub and the increase in street gangs because of it. Obviously, the city needs to renew its effort to fight drug trafficking here if we want to see the level of violent crime reduced.

One thing that comes up repeatedly in reports of Atlanta's status as a hub for drugs is its network of highways. They offer easy routes for traffickers in and out of the city. Yet another downside to a transportation system focused so heavily on moving a high volume of cars.

Highway removal, anyone?

It sounds crazy, I know. But highway removal in city centers has become a hot topic among urbanists and there are examples of success with it. Removing one or more of the intown highways could do a lot of good, and not just with putting a dent in the drug trade. Instead of an infrastructure that prioritizes getting masses of cars in and out of the city, we could put a focus on the mobility needs of people within it.

The Department of Transportation, in its single-minded pursuit of traffic flow, has destroyed more American towns than General Sherman. – Andres Duany

Photo by Flickr user bclinesmith

[atlurbanist]

Will big-box retail spoil the walkability of Glenwood Park? (updated)

When blogger Kaid Benfield wrote about Glenwood Park in 2009, he was effusive in his praise for its walkability and the sustainable nature of its construction:

If you're looking for an example of a newly designed and built neighborhood that embodies just about all things smart and green, I know of few that can rival Glenwood Park in Atlanta....it's one of the best places in the city to live, and also one of the most environmentally sustainable in the country.

Soon after, a widely circulated video by American Makeover found Glenwood Park to be a perfect example of a new-urbanist antidote to car-centric sprawl in the US.

So you can bet that many people will be concerned to find out that, next door to this walkable paradise, a new development may bring the kind of big-box retail that not only favors car traffic but makes safe pedestrian travel difficult.

Thomas Wheatley reports that a developer is planning a large-scale retail development that will abut not only Glenwood Park but the Atlanta Beltline path. One of the rumored retail tenants is Walmart, though nothing is confirmed. 

To prevent this pedestrian/bike friendly space from having its potential compromised by car traffic and infrastructure -- the type that usually (though not necessarily) accompanies big-box stores -- the developer will have to be committed and the community will have to be assertive. WIll this be the exception to the big-box rule in Atlanta, where large retail spaces throw pedestrians a bone but stop short of good connectivity and safety, or will this development spoil Glenwood Park's record of walkability? Stay tuned.

GP photo by Flickr user peterlfrench

------ UPDATE -----

Wheatley has now posted images of the project, sent by the developer.

The group of images contains neither the parking nor the big-box anchor store. It pretty much just shows the smaller retail spots and the sidewalks. But from what is shown, it looks promisingly walkable. This could end up being pedestrian-friendly after all, but I want to see the rest of the plan.

[atlurbanist]

Is this what transit-oriented development looks like?

Nope. This is not what transit-oriented development looks like. And yet this plan for a new Walmart, complete with an enormous surface parking lot, has been proposed for a piece of land one block away from Atlanta's Lindbergh MARTA station.

Thomas Wheatley reports on the project today in a post that includes some very encouraging remarks from the Neighborhood Planning Unit for this area:

Sally Silver, who chairs NPU B, says she and many residents have high hopes for the area. According to the long-range plan, the area would be served by an improved grid system, new streetscapes, and a park - all features that, when coupled with the nearby transit stop, residents think would attract more residents and improve the area's walkability.

I particularly liked this quote since I'm not a Walmart hater in general but a specific hater of suburban-style, carcentric shopping malls in the city:

"It could be a vibrant area and more like the long-range plan we wanted it to be, with parkspace, active street life, people living there, shops," says Silver. "There are better ways to do it without a sea of parking lots."

Here's me hoping that this plan gets either shot down or majorly re-tooled so that there's not yet another sea of surface parking needlessly located next to a MARTA station. Also, I really like Silver's plan for the area! Park space, street grids and walkability are exactly what this part of Atlanta's Buckhead area needs.

EDITED TO ADD:

Blogger Cityhaul has some good comments in a re-post of this, focusing on the question of what happens to the low-income people currently living in the apartments in this spot. A quote:

Even in the somewhat unlikely event that the units are planned as mixed income, the current residents have to live somewhere between the time they’re forced to move out for the demolition and when the new project is finished.

...Forgotten in all of that are many of the people who are already here - people for whom being able to walk to a transit station isn’t part of some car-free/car-lite lifestyle fantasy. It’s the only way they can get by.

[atlurbanist]

Dallas & Atlanta share a car-centric conundrum

In a Dallas Morning News piece called What if our real problem is too many cars?, Michael Lindenberger looks at problematic highway-funding and congestion issues in Dallas and comes to a conclusion that sounds familiar to me and others in Atlanta.

He decides that efforts to make it easier to be a car commuter may be doomed to failure. As population expands in our metros, developing urban areas so that they require shorter commutes and offer expanded mobility options could be a better plan.

A quote from the piece:

Is it really a great idea to keep making it easier for more and more cars to speed along our highways? Will we ever wake up and realize that the sickness wasn’t the congestion, but the traffic that causes it in the first place? It’s not, perhaps, that commutes take too long to complete, but because they are simply too long to begin with.

As I've written before, one of my concerns about the upcoming vote for Atlanta's transportation tax is that it might be doing harm by making it easier to be a car commuter in so much of the region where car-dependent sprawl is the main problem source, not congestion - in essence, propping up an unsustainable system and promoting its continuation.

Sounds like car-dependency is causing the same problems and raising the same questions about our built environment across the US. I hope that voicing these concerns can help point us into a more sustainable, healthy future.

Photo of Dallas traffic (top) by Flickr user nffcnnr | Photo of Atlanta traffic by gt7348b