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17 May 09

Germany Imagines Suburbs Without Cars - NYTimes.com

Discussion of Freiburg suburb, Vauban, and its "car-free" environment:
QUOTE
Street parking, driveways and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, near the French and Swiss borders. Vauban’s streets are completely “car-free” — except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community.
UNQUOTE

www.nytimes.com/...12suburb.html - Preview

suburbia cars green_strategies vauban germany

In Germany, a country that is home to Mercedes-Benz and the autobahn, life in a car-reduced place like Vauban has its own unusual gestalt. The town is long and relatively narrow, so that the tram into Freiburg is an easy walk from every home. Stores, restaurants, banks and schools are more interspersed among homes than they are in a typical suburb. Most residents, like Ms. Walter, have carts that they haul behind bicycles for shopping trips or children’s play dates.
The original buildings have long since been torn down. The stylish row houses that replaced them are buildings of four or five stories, designed to reduce heat loss and maximize energy efficiency, and trimmed with exotic woods and elaborate balconies; free-standing homes are forbidden.
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- In the past few years, Vauban has become a well-known niche community, even if it has spawned few imitators in Germany. But whether the concept will work in California is an open question.
  More than 100 would-be owners have signed up to buy in the Bay Area’s “car-reduced” Quarry Village, and Mr. Lewis is still looking for about $2 million in seed financing to get the project off the ground.

16 Nov 08

The Bellows » Economics for Dummies

A great post by Ryan Avent critiquing the notion of "sunk costs," particularly as (speciously) applied to suburbia. In particular, Avent shows why, when talking about suburban housing, the concept of "sunk cost" is not (or should not be) a disincentive to selling.

www.ryanavent.com/blog - Preview

the_bellows ryan_avent oil peak_oil suburbia transportation sunk_costs economics

14 Jul 08

With Gas Over $4, Cities Explore Whether It's Smart to Be Dense - WSJ.com

Have had this article open in a browser tab for days now -- time to bookmark. Along with posts by CEOs for Cities, or Richard Florida, this article too points to the effect that gasoline prices are having on suburban housing, and on the "sudden" desirability of urban living. (Well, I say "sudden" because I've *NEVER* understood why anyone would want to live in suburbs instead of living in cities/ densely packed neighbourhoods where you just have to walk a block or two, or less, to find social activity...)

From the article, QUOTE:
"Expensive oil is going to transform the American culture as radically as cheap oil did," predicts David Mogavero, a Sacramento-based architect and smart-growth proponent.
(...)
Even though the area's housing market has been wracked by price drops of 25% in the last year and one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, Mr. Friedman says he already has sold nine of 28 town houses near downtown that he recently completed, and three more are under contract, "which is not bad considering the dismal state of the Sacramento real-estate market."

Mr. Morris, the developer, says the housing downturn is hurting the places that have the "dumbest growth. Smart growth works when the rest of it doesn't."
UNQUOTE

online.wsj.com/...SB121538754733231043.html - Preview

smartgrowth wsj_opinion urbanplanning cities suburbia gasoline cost_of_living

"Expensive oil is going to transform the American culture as radically as cheap oil did," predicts David Mogavero, a Sacramento-based architect and smart-growth proponent.

28 Apr 08

New Urbanists Point the Way Forward by Catesby Leigh, City Journal 18 April 2008

"The New Urbanism and suburban sprawl have something in common: they’re uncool. New Urbanism is uncool because it is basically traditional; modernism is still the thing in architecture, notes Andrés Duany, the most influential New Urbanist."

For some reason, City Journal is impossible to annotate (neither highlights and consequently "stickies" work), which is too bad. Some good ideas in this article, but I can't mark it up.

www.city-journal.org/...bc0418cl.html - Preview

urbanism new_urbanism suburbia sprawl smartgrowth density modernism architecture style city_journal

A gifted crew of architects and planners, they have changed the conversation about urban planning in the United States. They reject conventional postwar developers’ essentially quantitative, two-dimensional, single-use-oriented blueprints for residential subdivisions and office parks in favor of a qualitative, three-dimensional, mixed-use approach to designing neighborhoods and towns that generally involves reliance on traditional architectural styles.
Perhaps the New Urbanists should cherish their outsider status. A gifted crew of architects and planners, they have changed the conversation about urban planning in the United States. They reject conventional postwar developers’ essentially quantitative, two-dimensional, single-use-oriented blueprints for residential subdivisions and office parks in favor of a qualitative, three-dimensional, mixed-use approach to designing neighborhoods and towns that generally involves reliance on traditional architectural styles.
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- To make the most of these changing public preferences, the New Urbanists need to focus on a vision that supports the resurgence of an architectural culture—which is precisely what we haven’t got now.

19 Apr 08

Modern suburbia not just in America anymore, by Haya El Nasser - USATODAY.com

Fascinating article on how planned "new urbanist" American suburbs are being studied by international delegations (specifically China) for replication in those countries. Kind of scary.... (Blogged this, April 18/08)

www.usatoday.com/...2008-04-15-suburbia_N.htm - Preview

suburbia usatoday sprawl planning master_planning suburban_style china

Members of the group studied the streetscape, the golf course, the spa, the cybercafé, the health care amenities and the design of the single-family homes at Sun City Festival, a 3,000-acre, planned community for people over 55. They commented on the cleanliness and orderliness of it all.

The 25 Chinese who toured the Del Webb development were not seniors planning their retirement but government officials and their spouses, a couple of architects and a banker. Their mission: study American suburbia with an eye toward replicating it back home.

For good or bad, the USA's suburbs have become a living laboratory for the world. Developing countries contending with explosive population growth and economic expansion are looking here for hints about how to manage growing cities. For many, modern suburbia — a largely American concept and lifestyle for more than 50 years — is a nirvana worth emulating. Others want to avoid it.
"They both admire and fear it," says Robert Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. "There are two lessons they take out of the U.S.: unfettered development or sprawl and an appreciation for well-done, master-planned communities."
- Eeek! - on 2008-04-19
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- The push is on to inspire developing countries to do what more American communities are doing: steer away from sprawling, cookie-cutter subdivisions popularized after World War II and create sustainable communities that will not deplete natural resources.
  
  That includes developments built around mass-transit stations to reduce reliance on cars and projects that mix homes and businesses so that people can walk from home to stores and other services.
- After touring Tysons Corner, he said: "I'm overwhelmed by the lack of coherent design. … It's 'build where you want.' "
- The first true suburb was born in the 1830s outside Manchester, England, Lang says. It was Victoria Park, a gated community of luxury homes that now is part of Manchester. About 20 years later came the first U.S. suburb — gated Llewellyn Park in West Orange, N.J., about 12 miles from Manhattan. Streetcar suburbs followed, first along the route of horse-drawn streetcars and later along rail corridors such as Philadelphia's Main Line.
  
  After World War I, pedestrian-oriented suburbs flourished, including the Country Club Plaza district in Kansas City and Beverly Hills. Suburban expansion came to a standstill during the Great Depression and "the great burst comes after World War II," Lang says.
  
  Tract-style subdivisions dependent on the automobile flourished. The most famous is Levittown, on New York's Long Island. Then came larger, 1960s-era split-levels and colonials on cul-de-sacs.
  
  Within 20 years, suburbs exploded in the booming Sun Belt around Dallas, Atlanta, Phoenix and other fast-growing cities.
  
  Then the craze for large luxury homes — dubbed McMansions — pushed development to the farthest fringes of metropolitan areas, where land was still cheap and plentiful. That helped spark an anti-sprawl fervor still alive today that has the backing of many environmentalists, preservationists, health professionals, farmers and big-city mayors.
- Suburban sensibilities began to change.
  
  Town centers designed to mimic small cities sprouted in suburbia. New light-rail lines were built and transit-oriented developments along the tracks followed. More people embraced "new urbanism," a movement that strives to capture the essence of turn-of-the-century communities. Central cities enjoyed a renaissance as young professionals and empty-nesters embraced the urban lifestyle.
  
  Today, the dialogue about suburbs among urban thinkers around the world is intensifying largely because of universal concern over global warming. There is worry about traffic congestion and air pollution. That's why designing suburbs that require residents to drive to get anywhere is losing relevance.
- The Chinese delegation that visited Phoenix suburbs last month "had a keen interest in finding out what is this Petri dish of Del Webb communities they've been hearing about for many years," says Jacque Petroulakis, a Del Webb spokeswoman. She says hundreds of foreign architects, planners, developers and private investors from Japan, China, Germany and South America have visited the company's developments in recent years.
- The rise of the middle class in developing nations is happening as more of the world's population shifts from rural to urban areas. More than half of the world's population and about 80% of the U.S. population live in urban areas.
  
  "Every year, we add 60 million urban residents on Earth," Stanilov says. "The countries most susceptible to embracing the American model are particularly those with a booming economy and an emerging class of affluent residents and consumers really eager to embrace the American lifestyles. They don't want just the house but the whole package, the three-car garage, the mall, all of that."
  - - useful to keep in mind that global urbanization really means global suburbanization,too - on 2008-04-19
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- For many developing nations, however, the suburban ideal is stuck in circa 1980: a sea of lookalike single-family homes and shopping malls on the edge of the city. It's a model that many Americans increasingly are rejecting.
  
  "Most intellectuals say it's horrible. Most environmentalists say the same thing," says Nora Libertun de Duren, urban planning professor at Columbia University and an expert on suburbs in developing countries. "But developers say it's good business, and architects say it's good business."
- In Argentina, developers are building gated communities in poor neighborhoods. Shantytowns pepper the outskirts of Buenos Aires, areas that had no roads and other infrastructure until a major upgrade in the 1990s, Libertun de Duren says. Once highways were built, gated developments went up and lured commuters who worked in the city. The developments provided employment to the residents of shantytowns, she says.
- "You have the gated community phenomenon across the classes," Heinrichs says. "In principle, Latin American cities follow the U.S. model. The idea of living somewhere green outside the hustle and bustle of cities and all the contamination is pretty much the same."
  - - brrr... - on 2008-04-19
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- China, where major cities are choking on stifling pollution, is striving to build the world's first sustainable city — Dongtan, which broke ground last summer. Designed by a London-based global consulting company and built on an island outside Shanghai, Dongtan, ultimately to house 50,000, will ban cars that pollute (even hybrids), grow its own food, recycle almost everything — including wastewater — and create its own energy from wind, the sun and human and animal waste.
  
  "The Chinese are very interested in doing the latest and most interesting things," says Paul Lukez, an architect from Somerville, Mass., and author of Suburban Transformations. "There's a recognition by the government that something needs to be done. … If something is cutting edge, whether it comes from the United States or Europe, they want it."