As a guy who spends 3 hours a day schlepping to work and back, I’m interested in anything that makes transit faster or more convenient. According to J.H. Crawford’s wonderful book “Carfree Cities”:http://www.carfree.com/book/, designing cities around people instead of cars doesn’t just reduce the time we spend getting from point A to point B, it improves quality of life.
“!/images/sticker-carfree.png!”:http://www.carfree.com/
Like the book, the site is a great mix of human-scale observations and engineering ideas. Crawford has a way of blending photos, designs, and description to make it compelling reading. Be sure to check out the photo tour of Venice at the very least.
I’ve looked around on that site before…it’s got some pretty neat ideas. What did you think of his topology ideas? And what multi-billionaire land developer can we convince to implement a city like this?
I liked the topology enough that I asked him to let me make a “poster”:http://www.zazzle.com/contributors/products/gallery/browse_results.asp?cid=238052228949059314 out of it. (I’m still working on the full-color version.) My favorite aspect is the district design, which almost makes it a string of charming towns rather than a City.
Crawford points out that there’s a place near SF called Montezuma Hills which would be perfect for implementing a carfree city. It would be neat to put together a long-term staging plan for such a city, with the idea that it would serve as a satellite of SF and Sacramento until it was self-sufficient. Of course, that means yet another side project for me… :)
Revisiting this post: After almost having been hit by a vehicle during my *first week* of riding a bike a few short blocks to UCSD (or, more accurately, having a big black pickup pass me and then turn right in front of me, causing me to have to slam on my brakes), I’m all for ousting the menaces from bike and ped spaces. I’m tired of driving myself and wish I could get to all my work locations in another way.