#city planning

[spaceshipsandpurpledrank]

#talkin #tik tok #🇨🇳 #china #city planning

[fixing-bad-posts]

car culture is so fucking annoying.

#fixingbadposts #fixing-bad-posts #blackout poetry #walkable cities #walkability #city planning #urban planning #urban design #miscellaneous

[itsbansheebitch]

Rants at the Hairdresser

her, behind me trimming my hair: "it's so wild how big cars are. Seems a bit dangerous, ya know?"

me, enjoying the smell of the stuff she sprayed in my hair: "Yeah, apparently that's because it's cheaper to have a car classified as a 'light truck' since you can get past safety regulations and they have different frames."

her, who has paused working on my hair: "Wait, are you serious?"

me: "Yeah, apparently it's a lot cheaper for companies to do that. And it really sucks since driving one of those cars is super dangerous, but it's even more dangerous for other people, especially if they're in a smaller car. Since it would be more safe to be another driver if they ALSO have a 'light truck,' everyone is caught in a cycle of getting bigger and bigger cars. All of which are extremely dangerous and have made being a pedestrian even more dangerous."

her: deep in thought, silent.

me, happy that someone is letting me rant about this: "Oh, the new Cadillacs are the size of tanks. That's not an exaggeration, by the way."

her, stunned: ???? "what the actual hell???"

we're silent for a bit

her, hesitantly, since I look like white trash and she has at least 10 piercings and pink hair: "I feel like America has been that way for a while... ya know?"

me: "Oh yeah, I totally get what you're saying, like, putting profit over people's safety?"

her, assured now that she knows we're both too commie pilled for this kind of conversation with someone else: "Yes! Exactly! It really sucks, right?"

me: "God, tell me about it"

I was very happy with my haircut, btw. She's so good at her job. :D

#politics #us politics #world politics #lgbt #lgbtqia #lgbtq #lgbtq+ #queer #green energy #5 minute cities #light truck #light trucks #hairdresser #hair salon #barber #rants at the hairdresser #solarpunk #environment #environmentalism #community building #city planning

[reportsofagrandfuture]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/headway/hoboken-floods.html?unlocked_article_code=1.9kw.gbCb.cy56uUXSa4W2

"A study released by researchers for Rebuild by Design and Ramboll, an architectural engineering firm, suggests that every dollar invested in green infrastructure ultimately yields $2 in “avoided losses” (office closures, waterlogged inventories, flooded basements) and other benefits (improved home values and public health) [...] Just days before the September storm, New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, slashed $75 million that had been slated for the city’s Parks Department to deal with a budget crunch. Disinvestment in parks is going to cost the city in the long run because parks are a first line of defense against climate change."

#city planning #resilience #climate change #severe weather #mitigatingclimatechange

[elderscrollsconceptart]

Dementia Street Decor

Concept art for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Shivering Isles DLC

Art by Adam Adamowicz

#adam adamowicz #the elder scrolls #art #concept art #tes #sheogorath #shivering isles #cyrodiil #city planning #street art #oblivion

[draciformes]

#walkable cities #Car centric infrastructure #fuck cars #city planning #car dependency #car dependent infrastructure #capitalism #anti capitalism #Anticapitalism

[rmmgy-blog]

I find it fascinating that Judaism is the only religion with explicit commandments pertaining to urban planning, setting out how cities are to be built for the Leviites. The Torah specifies that their core cities must be dense, surrounded by an undisturbed green belt, only allowing for agricultural work outside of that belt.

It seems as if Judaism is an inherently urban religion due to the requirement to live in walking distance of a Synagogue for Shabbat, making Jews the earliest advocates of something like a 15-minute city.

I wonder what the impacts of religion on urban planning are more broadly and which religions promote ideals conducive to good planning. Judaism most directly encourages density and green space as a mitzvah, but what other religions have unique and religiously inspired ideas on how cities should be planned?

I think this is an important and often overlooked question for urbanists as lobbying for change with a diverse coalition of religious communities aligned with urbanist goals of various shades would be hugely helpful towards the causes of both good urban planning and positive incorporation of religions, especially minority religions, in society and decision making.

#urbanism #jewish culture #judaism #urban planning #religious #religion #jumblr #city planning

[governmentissuedclone]

Listen to me okay!!!

A comparatively affordable, environmentally friendly, one time purchase that doesn't make you regularly line the pockets of Big Gas Executives and directly fund the fossil fuel industry.

Bicycles are far easier and cheaper to replace, repair, or modify to your liking by yourself! Pretty much anyone at any skill level can learn basic bike maintenance, they don't require nearly as much specialized knowledge and pretty much all the tools you will need can be easily and relatively affordably sourced from a hardware store, bike shop, or used.

'but they're not cool' first of all, caring about being cool automatically makes you uncool. Second, cool is a learned association and what is cool now won't be cool in five years. What was cool 5 years ago isn't cool now. We have been conditioned by movies and tv to think the only people who ride parks are losers and the butt of the joke. We can literally make bicycles cool by simply being a bunch of cool people who ride bicycles.

As car culture is the dominant mindset in North America a bicycle is, in fact, counterculture! Piss off drivers simply by existing! Although do be warned many think it is completely reasonable to attempt to murder you with their car because they had to slow down a little bit to pass you.

The first step to dismantling our current car culture and pedestrian hostile infrastructure is to opt out of using cars as much as possible. Cities are not and have not been built for people in decades. They are built for cars. You shouldn't have to be forced to clean out your wallet paying for a car, fuel, insurance, etc because a corporation hardcore lobbied your government to design the world around you to be inconvenient, miserable, and impossible to navigate without one so they can make more money at everyone else's expense.

The more people use bikes, the less money corporations make. The less damage they can do to the planet. The demand for bike and pedestrian friendly infrastructure rises. Cities become cleaner, nicer, and more liveable for everyone.

You deserve to be able to live.

#bicycles #bicycle #cars #car culture #car infrastructure #punk #punk subculture #counterculture #bicycle culture #bike #city infrastructure #walkable cities #urban planning #city planning #my thoughts

[threadatl]

This is an excellent article on a sad topic: pedestrian deaths are rising.

QUOTE:

"Nationwide, the suburbanization of poverty in the 21st century has meant that more lower-income Americans who rely on shift work or public transit have moved to communities built around the deadliest kinds of roads: those with multiple lanes and higher speed limits but few crosswalks or sidewalks. The rise in pedestrian fatalities has been most pronounced on these arterials, which can combine highway speeds with the cross traffic of more local roads."

In the suburbs of Atlanta (and other metros) and in the city, these wide arterial roads are deadly for walking. Meanwhile, the most walkable places in the city are increasingly unaffordable.

It's obvious that we need a massive shift on a huge scale when it comes to the walkability of our built environments, and in the equitability of access to pedestrian safety.

It will take many steps, big and small, in our policies and investments in order to get there. Some of those small steps will need to happen on your street, and in your neighborhood. Please support them and please speak up when others don't.

#urbanism #urban planning #city planning #urban design #walkable cities #pedestrian deaths #pedestrian safety #urbanismo #urbanisme

[queer-crip-grows]

If you are involved in climate activism and if you work in town planning and purchasing, or anything similar, I am begging you to please, *please* start thinking about disabled folk, elderly folk and parents with young kids when you are talking about walking and biking to places.

Cycles are absolutely inherently more pedestrian-friendly than cars, but they are still perfectly capable of injuring or even killing pedestrians, particularly frailer people, small people, and pets.

A lot of pedestrians, especially elderly and disabled people, have developed this instinctive terror of cycles and cyclists purely because poor planning so often shoves cycles into pedestrian spaces that aren’t actually even that ideal for pedestrians, and people who already have difficulties - elderly and disabled people, dog walkers, parents of small children - in those spaces start accumulating experiences of injury or even a succession of near-misses, which are perfectly capable of producing trauma even if physical injury is avoided.

And that only plays into the hands of polluters and governments who are in their pockets as well as increasing the marginalisation of already-marginalised people.

I can’t blame cyclists who are too afraid to ride cycles on the roads along with motor traffic. It’s terrifying and incredibly unsafe. Cycle paths, Cycle lanes, and other specific spaces for cyclists are absolutely essential, with as little need to share space with motor traffic *or* pedestrians as possible. Even in wide city boulevards, laid-out cycle paths and spaces are essential. They literally only need paint! And let electric scooters back on them in the UK too.

If you are providing any form of public rentable cycles, please, *please* accommodate elderly, frailer and disabled people too. We tend to be the ones who are in the most need of alternatives to get places, but traditional bikes are inaccessible to frailer people and most people with balance and fatigue issues. Please buy a selection of bikes, including adult-size tricycles, scooters with seats, and bikes with seats and tow options for small children. Parents exist, and are mostly desperately in need of transport as they have small humans with short legs and limited energy, and most prams and buggies are incompatible with traditional cycles.

We know so damn well how right-wing governments and corporations benefit from setting us against each other, and how adept they are at using marginalised people to distract the majority of exploited workers from the larger issues said governments are doing poorly or not tackling at all.

Disabled and elderly people, and parents of small children, are very vulnerable to climate change and the issues it causes. We are not the enemies of the climate movement; but we equally need to be *included* in it and *accommodated* by it.

If you are only looking for solutions that work for abled, healthy young adults, you are, frankly, not doing your job effectively. Listen to disabled people, older people, and parents. If you are doing large-scale planning work, invite us into the planning process *early*, not at the end when any changes will seem too burdensome and expensive to make, and, honestly, pay us for our time and expertise.

Oh, and if you make or sell bikes or electric bikes, sell more accessible options like adult trikes and ones with child seats and towing options too, please. And don’t charge enormously more for them than standard bikes. Financing options would be good too. Most disabled people can’t afford to run a car, and your bikes are often more expensive than that, if you offer them at all.

#walkable communities #walkable cities #marginalised people #climate crisis #climate solutions #city planning #inclusion #accessible communities #accessible cities #the future is accessible #accessible planning #cycling #cyclists #accessible cycling #adult trikes

[greenhorizonblog]

Rough sketches for an idea of dual purpose covered bike and walkway, inspired by victorian and art nouveau architecture and decoration style. What do you think? :)

#solarpunk #hopecore #hopepunk #peaceful revolution #greenhorizon #anti capitalism #anti fascism #sketch #ideas #solarpunk ideas #lunarpunk #tidalpunk #climate change solutions #urban design #city planning #infrastructure #sustainability #environmentalism

[atlurbanist]

The most loveable streets in Atlanta have detached houses and multifamily houses and stores mixed together in a pedestrian-oriented format.

Yet there are zoning districts that disallow this mix, excluding everything but detached homes -- they treat triplexes and small stores like toxic waste that shouldn't be allowed nearby.

It's weird to make it illegal to build the most beautiful kind of urban fabric that cities can create. We should stop this practice and let the city be a city.

#atlanta #urbanism #walkable cities #urban planning #city planning #zoning

[apas-95]

Wealthy suburbs are paid for by poor neighbourhoods.

Suburbia promises the best of both worlds - you get city levels of infrastructure, with rural levels of space. It's like glamping - you get to roleplay living on a farmstead, while also not needing to have a septic tank. In reality, though, city infrastructure is expensive, especially to maintain, and these suburbs produce functionally zero value.

In an actual rural area, there's farmland, producing value. In a city, with shops and workplaces alongside housing, there's value produced. In suburbia, there's just housing - and extremely low-density housing, at that. A mile of road, underground electrical cables, and sewer lines cost the same whether they're in a city center, or in the middle of an empty street, leading to a six-house cul-de-sac. To actually support this amount of infrastructure, serving so few people, with so little actual city revenue, property taxes would have to exceed median income - i.e., it's unsustainable.

To illustrate, here are the costs of services compared to city revenue, per acre, in Lafayette, with net positive in grey, net negative in red, as well as the average costs of different land use by area, in Eugene:

In short, these wealthier suburbs are a net drain on city economies, as they produce no value, but require exorbitant amounts of infrastructure and maintenance. In fact, these areas are functionally subsidised by the rest of the city, especially by higher-density, mixed-use neighbourhoods, which produce significantly more value for the same amount of city infrastructure. Poorer, urban neighbourhoods subsidise wealthy suburban neighbourhoods - and, despite being unsustainable, it remains literally illegal in most of the US to build anything but low-density single-family homes, due to car-centric zoning laws.

These suburbs are subsidised by the rest of the city, especially high-density mixed-use neighbourhoods, which produce significantly more value for the same amount of city infrastructure. Poorer, urban neighbourhoods subsidise wealthy suburban neighbourhoods, which are unsustainable - but it remains literally illegal in most of the US to build anything but low-density single-family homes, due to car-centric zoning laws.

Where it is legal to build anything else, including medium-density or mixed-use developments (as is the norm in the rest of the world), car-centric requirements for minimum parking, street setback, and minimum lot sizes make it infeasible, and again pigeonhole development into wide, flat areas of asphalt only traversible by car.

This is a new development, by the way - US cities didn't used to be like this, they were, actually, similar to cities in the rest of the world. It was a fairly recent development, that medium-density, mixed-use, walkable cities in the US were demolished, to build car-dependent sprawls.

You might notice that the majority of the land use here is parking lots. These parking lots, taking as much infrastructure and maintenance from the city as an actual neighbourhood with shops, homes, and workplaces, produce... nothing, except making it impossible to get anywhere except by car. When everything is spread out, with nothing but a mile of unshaded pavement between you and the nearest shop, of course you'd drive. When everyone drives, and the city's full of polluting, noisy cars, of course you wouldn't want to live there, and only visit in an enclosed, soundproofed box.

Other countries have gone down the same path of car-dependent development, and have been able to reverse course. Changing zoning to allow mixed-use is possible. City streets need to be torn up regularly anyway, and can simply be modernised when they're put back in. Amsterdam in the 70s was a nightmare of traffic and car accidents, and now it's one of the safest and most convenient places to walk, cycle, take the tram, or otherwise not have to drive. There are still suburbs, but there isn't suburbia.

All that's missing is political will - and as long as oil companies control the government, and some jackass car company owner can get your high-speed rail cancelled, then it's not gonna happen. But it can.

#cars #car dependency #walkable cities #city planning #public transport

[reportsofagrandfuture]

#city planning #permaculture #solarpunk #walkable cities #decentralization #housing crisis #sacrifices must be made

[winterthebeau]

#traffic lights #traffic control #pedestrian infrastructure #car infrastructure #europe vs. america #196 #literally 19684 #r196 #r/196 #city planning

[racefortheironthrone]

Hello, years ago you mentioned that it would be difficult to create a city grid on hilly terrain (like King's Landing). However, if one were to make a grid on rugged terrain, how would they do so?

It can be done, it’s just harder and more expensive.

Either you need to level out the terrain by leveling down the peaks and using the dirt to fill in the valleys, or you need to build a lot of streets and buildings on sharp inclines and (if necessary) build lots of stairs (like San Francisco), and/or elevated streets and viaducts (like Edinburgh…or Yharnum), with tunnels to connect areas of lower elevation separated by areas of higher elevation (like Seattle).

Or do a mix.

#asoiaf #asoiaf meta #medieval cities #city planning #urban geography #urban studies #urbanization #history #historical analysis #civil engineering