Got into discussion with several people about cities. I was saying according to my calculations (I freely admit I’m no expert) that you could build cities to house one million people in such a way that you need no roads, that population density is less than that of the London suburb Ealing, and that all you need is one underground train North-South and one East-west and everything will be in easy walking distance to everything else.
See the Radiality Report from earlier inventing trips (link below)
It turns out the Swedish Green party is advocating along the same lines.
People have been getting really irate when I suggest it (what about goods transport, what about old people, what about how could I carry my XXX to my customers?).
Cool. I like a good debate. I still maintain it seems no sense in A LARGE PERCENTAGE OF URBAN SPACE BEING TAKEN UP BY ROADS. Is this the best we can do?
Monday, October 18, 2004
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2 comments:
I've been pondering about this a lot lately because I started riding the bus to work. However, the nearest bus stops are a 25 minute walk from my house. Especially in the early mornings and late evenings when there are very few cars on the road, the miles of pavement certainly seem to be a waste of tax money as well as an environmental nuisance. Now, it would be nice if I had a good path, trail or sidewalk to use to get to the bus because currently about half my walk is through dusty fields so it's difficult to get to work and still be presentable. :-)
You might want to take a look at TODs (Transportation Oriented Design) and PODs (Pedestrian Oriented Design) community development. The book Pedestrian Pocket Book is a good start to this concept. It is fairly similar to your ideas of Radiality. It proposes light rail from the town center to each POD of residential and retail so the car becomes non existant.
I will also recommend books by Paul Hawken and William McDonough...
carry on...
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