Solarpunk Urbanism

Oh sure, these cafes and bars in a public square in Vilnius, Lithuania, attract a great crowd on a weeknight.

But.

Ask any Melbourne shopkeeper and they'll tell you this scene couldn't possibly be real. You know why?

No parking spots out the front.

#urbanism #UrbanPlanning @[email protected] @[email protected]

Well, mods have enabled walkable cities for some years, but it didn't work well. Recently, the modders of SimCity 4 invented a new way of building walkable cities. And I have to say, it's pretty fun.

SimCity 4 is a game that has well-internalized the automobile-centered urbanism of the United States. But despite these faults, community interventions through game modification can allow players to design entirely new urbanisms in the game that breaks with car-centrism.

Doug "quickly" goes through his 13, tongue-in-cheek ways to kill a community. IMO it's a great companion piece to Strong Towns and makes for a great discussion piece with other community members.

In brief, the right to the city is the right to the production of a city. The labor of a worker is the source of most of the value of a commodity that is expropriated by the owner. The worker, therefore, has a right to benefit from that value denied to them. In the same way, the urban citizen produces and reproduces the city through their own daily actions. However, the the city is expropriated from the urbanite by the rich and the state. The right to the city is therefore the right to appropriate the city by and for those who make and remake it.

This book is about that.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1367812

0:23

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=23s

But there's one lame excuse that is so common, so prevalent, so ubiquitous, that I want to talk about it and that's the excuse that "My country is too big to have trains, bicycle infrastructure, walkable neighborhoods or whatever."

1:27

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=87s

So when someone new to walkable cities sees an example of a great City and they realize it's clearly better than where they live, their first gut reaction is to grab any difference between the two and make that the reason as to why their city can't be the same.

2:26

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=146s

So why is this argument so stupid? Well, quite simply, Americans aren't traveling from Fluffy Landing to Hump Tulips every day. Canadians aren't traveling from Dildo to Spasm every day, and Australians aren't traveling from Chinaman's Knob to Useless Loop every day

2:55

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=175s

They travel within their city, so the only thing that really matters to most people is the design of that City.

3:05

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=185s

For example, in the United States, over 45 percent of trips - all trips - are three miles or less (that's five kilometers for the rest of my audience). These are distances that could be easily done by walking or cycling. So despite the size of the country, and the sprawliness of the cities, Americans don't actually travel that far for most trips, but unsurprisingly, almost all of those trips are taken by car because it's too dangerous to walk or cycle, and public transportation is non-existent, which again is the whole point.

4:18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=258s

The problem is not cars, it's car dependency. We need to give people the freedom to not to have to drive.

4:35

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=275s

This is where Americans will claim that America is too big for trains, which is absolutely comical, because America was literally built by the railroads, and so was Canada.

5:01

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=301s

Nearly every town, city and village in the United States and Canada had a train station and was connected by rail, with very few exceptions. And almost every city and town had a streetcar line too, with very few exceptions. And every one of those places was built to be walkable, as every one of those places was built before automobiles were common. Again, with very few exceptions.

A hundred years ago, you could get a train from almost any city to just about any other city on the continent, and even many towns and villages, too. The reason those train stations don't exist anymore is because they were bulldozed, often to make room for highways, along with the walkable downtowns they were connected to.

5:46

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=346s

American cities were not built for the car, they were bulldozed for the car.

6:03

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=363s

There are dozens of city pairs in the U.S that are the perfect population and distance for high-speed rail or high frequency rail, and CityNerd has made a video about this if you'd like more details.

6:16

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=376s

Canada may be a huge country, but about 50 percent of the entire population lives in this little area, which is literally in a line.

6:27

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=387s

This is Japan to scale, the country famous for all it's trains. So yes, Canada, you can build a high-speed train between Toronto and Montreal.

6:37

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=397s

Here's China with it's high-speed rail map.

7:17

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=437s

The Schengen zone is not constant and new countries are being added every few years. For example, Croatia was just added in 2023 and Bulgaria, Romania, Cyprus and Montenegro plan to join in the near future. But if that happens, will Amsterdam need to tear up all their bike lanes, because the Schengen zone is too big? No, of course not, that would be stupid. Which is the same reason why saying America is too big for bike lanes is also stupid.

7:45

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=465s

The fact is, it is possible to build walkable neighborhoods everywhere. They have existed in every country on Earth for thousands of years, and it is possible to connect those walkable places together by high quality public transportation, to make it so that people can go from any walkable area to any other walkable area regardless of the size of the city the country or the continent.

8:18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=498s

Even if size did matter, then why isn't Maryland covered in bike lanes and train tracks, or Hawaii, or Prince Edward Island?

10:22

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=622s

The United States destroys over 750'000 acres of natural and agricultural land every year [note: the source talks about 1,200 square miles] to build sprawling suburbs. And Ontario, Canada (where I'm from) destroys 175 acres of farmland per day to build more car-dependent suburbia. That is a choice.

10:43

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=643s

When Americans say something like "U.S cities are too big and spread out to do - whatever" then yes, that's true. But that is literally the problem that urbanists are trying to solve, so it's not really helpful to restate the problem, and then use that as the excuse as to why it can't be solved.

11:26

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=686s

The Dutch make great places, while North Americans make excuses.

Personally, I think Sydney could have an amazing and iconic public square at Circular Quay, if only it tore down that ugly freeway.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/city-and-state-should-join-forces-to-give-sydney-the-public-square-it-deserves-20230510-p5d77w.html @urbanism

cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/652429

https://twitter.com/Ollie_Cycles/status/991440149606264833

mobilitate.eu/tpbi-consulta-pi…

In 1957, Valencia experienced a devastating flood that forever changed the city’s relationship with the Turia River. Nearly 3/4 of the city was inundated by floodwater and over 60 people lost their lives. The following year, the city embraced a plan to divert the river around its western outskirts to the Mediterranean Sea.

A park wasn’t the city leadership’s first idea—in an effort to alleviate traffic congestion, they envisioned an elaborate highway system through the heart of the City. But by 1970 the citizens pushed back and protested the highway proposal under the motto “The bed of Turia is ours and we want green!” By the end of the decade, the City approved legislation to turn the riverbed into a park and commissioned Ricard Bofill to create a master plan in 1982. The plan created a framework for the riverbed and divided it into 18 zones. Currently, all but one of the zones has been developed.

The resulting design establishes a monumental 5 mile green swath within a dense and diverse urban fabric, including the historic center of the city, and has an average span of 600 feet, from bank to bank. The park comprises over 450 acres and is characterized by bike paths, event spaces, active recreation fields, fountains, and many notable structures.

A bit more history and a lot of pics of the park in the former riverbed.

Fun fact: now the traffic bridges don't go above the river, they go above the park.

Openstreetmap, for those interested in a detailed view.

Do you know of any other weird parks like this?

Using ideas submitted by residents, Rijnvliet is implementing an ecologically resilient 150,000 m2 urban food forest with over 200 species of (edible) flora that doubles up as green infrastructure offering recreational benefits and ecosystem services, including water management, reduction of heat, and cleaning the air.

With the projected 75% of the world's population living in Urban centers by 2050, forecasters are pushing for "bolstering" nature within cities for resiliency and economic reasons.

“The Avalon Village is an eco-village in the making,” Mama Shu says. “We’re rebuilding our neighborhood. We are using all things that are healthy for the environment and more economical to rebuild our space in this community.”

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/110687