Walkability
| Thu Sep. 11, 2008 6:49 PM PDT
WALKABILITY....Responding to my post yesterday about walkability in Irvine (actually, just the Woodbridge area of Irvine, but whatever), Matt Yglesias brings up a key point: at low densities you can have a nice suburb and at high densities you can have a walkable neighborhood, but there's no happy medium where you have both.
This gives me the opportunity, just for the hell of it, to post an excerpt from Joel Garreau's Edge City, a book that's dated but still one of my all-time favorites. An edge city is basically just a suburb that also has lots of office space (like Irvine, for example, or Tyson's Corner), and its density is measured in FAR, or Floor-to-Area-Ratio. For example, 10,000 square feet of office space on 100,000 square feet of land gives you a FAR of 0.1. Developers think of FAR like this: "The fundamental unit of density, from which all calculations spring — parking, hence profitability, hence human behavior, hence civilization." Here are the basic, inviolate laws of FAR:
The level of density at which automobile congestion starts becoming noticeable in edge city: 0.25 FAR.
The level of density at which it is necessary to construct parking garages instead of parking lots because you have run out of land: 0.4 FAR.
The level of density at which traffic jams become a major political issue in edge city: 1.0 FAR.
The level of density beyond which few edge cities ever get: 1.5 FAR.
The level of density at which light rail transit starts making economic sense: 2.0 FAR.
The level of density of a typical old downtown: 5.0 FAR.
The density-gap corollary to the laws of density: Edge cities always develop to the point where they become dense enough to make people crazy with the traffic, but rarely, if ever, do they get dense enough to support the rail alternative to automobile traffic.
This comes from "The Laws," which is the appendix to Edge City and its most entertaining part. Highly recommended, even though it's now nearly two decades old.
Other worthwhile responses to my walkability post are here, here, and here. I also think the "tipping point" concept is probably useful here. One of the points I didn't make clearly yesterday but should have is that I don't think walkability is one of those things where you can hope to make incremental changes in order to get incremental improvements. (Outside of dense urban cores, that is.) Woodbridge, as suburbs go, is pretty walkable: probably about 70% as good as you're likely to realistically get. But this has not produced a neighborhood that's gone from 100% car-centric to 90% car-centric. At best, it's produced a neighborhood that's gone from 100% car-centric to 99.9% car centric.
The problem, I think, is that walkability comprises a lot of things and you have to have all of them in full measure. You need high density and street level retail and scarce and expensive parking and good transit and a wide variety of easily accessible shops and restaurants. And a few other things as well. If you have four out of five it's not good enough. If you have medium density but not high density it's not good enough. If shops are 20 minutes away instead of 5 minutes away, it's not good enough. Improving any one of these things has virtually no impact until all of them are good enough. And that's why genuine walkability is really, really hard to get outside of urban cores.
Plus Americans are lazy. Here's another one of The Laws: "In either a downtown or an Edge City, if you do everything you can to make casual use of the automobile inconvenient at the same time you make walking pleasant and attractive, you maybe, just maybe, can up the distance an American will willingly walk to fifteen-hundred feet. A quarter of a mile. And this at the substantial risk of everybody saying forget it and choosing not to patronize your highly contrived environment at all." And if you don't do this? Then the maximum distance an American will willingly walk is 600 feet.
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Comments
Thanks, Kevin--I enjoy reading about this topic, and your perspective is different from the typical urbanist cheerleading (which I also like) on other lefty blogs. Land use and transportation policy is a big-time political issue at the local level, so it's good to see it occasionally pop up on the national radar screen.
It's almost a cliche to invoke Jane Jacobs at this point, but Death and Life has some great thoughts about what makes urban neighborhoods walkable. Density is one component--she too points out the "grey zone" phenomenon you allude to--but so are small blocks, wide sidewalks, well-placed parks, and a mixture of uses.
I'll bet aesthetics plays a part too. When I picture for myself what a walk to the store is like in Woodbridge, it's rather monotonous and there's not much interesting to see; it's like commuting on foot. Whereas part of what makes a place like Brooklyn Heights walkable is the feeling that you're exploring - there is always something new to look at, and odd nooks and crannies and alleyways you can peer at and wonder about. Same with a well-designed suburb that has variety in the types of houses and some woods and streams and odd lanes.
A walk which makes no claim on the imagination is a poor thing.
Well, my wife & I regularly used to walk from 14th & P in DC over to Georgetown for dinner and/or a movie, and then walk back afterward. Googlemaps tells me that the distance for those walks was 2.1 miles each way. I guess we're just un-American -- or maybe it was that we were like 23-24 years old back then :).
Oh, I meant to include the link:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&saddr=14th+%26+P+streets+NW+Washington+d...
It also helps if you have nice weather year round. I walk about 3/4 of a mile each way to and from work in Michigan, which is fine for about six months out of the year and bad to awful the other six. Maybe this will be the winter I fall on the ice and say "Screw it, I'm too old for this" and start driving.
Hey Calpundit - other good books about urban development are:
"Geography of Nowhere" James Howard Kunstler
"The Death and Life of Great American Cities", Jane Jacobs
"The New Urbanism" Peter Katz
"Cadillac Desert", Marc Reisner (not strictly an urban development book, but it should be required reading for anyone west of the Mississippi River)
Why is the Left obsessed with making other people walk? Did it ever even vaguely occur to you that it's none of your damn business?
The amount of fuel saved is
miniscule - what, half a car mile per capita per day at best?
So it's something else. Just controlling others for the sake of controlling them?
Submitted by Brian (not verified) on Thu Sep. 11, 2008 7:29 PM PDT.
Small cities with well-built older neighborhoods adjacent to a viable downtown (like 40,000 pop. Klamath Falls Oregon, where I moved from San Diego 4 years ago) are excellent compromises.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=9th+and+main,+klamath+f...
The amount of fuel saved is enormous; it's not walking five blocks rather than driving five blocks to get the same gallon of milk, it's walking five blocks rather than driving ten miles round trip to the store, or walking five blocks and taking public transportation rather than driving thirty miles round trip to work.
If that gas burned can be reduced it should be. End of story.
Lots of talk about expensive design and encouraging people who don't walk to walk but what about enforcing the laws already on the books so that those of us who do walk can cross the street without the constant intimidation of drivers who will not yield the right of way in crosswalks?
I used to live in an extremely walkable town, Westfield, N.J., an attractive community with a viable downtown. I lived across the street from the NJ Transit rail station, and all the shopping I needed was a few blocks away on the other side of the tunnel.
Unfortunately, most such towns are so upscale that the middle and lower classes can't afford to live there. A former hometown of mine, Rockville, Md., has recently upgraded its downtown with shopping, apartments and a new library, close to a Metrorail station. It's beautiful, the best thing that's happened to that city in decades...but it's far too expensive for non-professionals to call home.
One final thing, Kevin: It's Tysons Corner, Va. No apostrophe.
WALKABILITY....Responding to my post yesterday about walkability in Irvine (actually, just the Woodbridge area of Irvine, but whatever), Matt Yglesias brings up a key point: at low densities you can have a nice suburb and at high densities you can have a walkable neighborhood, but there's no happy medium where you have both.
Perhaps I don't know what a suburb is.
Try living in Berkeley or Oakland. Lots of single family residences of differing sizes, mixed in with duplex, triplexes, and the occasional apartment complex.
And yet, very walkable, and lots of restaurants, shopping including boutiques and hardware stores and the occasional small store smack in the middle of a residential neighborhood.
It can be done, but won't be done in most "planned neighborhoods."
Or shorter and more mathematical me: your silly Irvine existence does not a proof make.
In addition to the factors you mentioned, one of the keys to successful cities like London, Paris and even New York is the existence of a critical mass of reasonably clean and fairly priced taxis. Plentiful and reasonably priced taxis are highly complimentary to mass transit because those people who don't want to or can't walk the last half mile, mile or two miles can still use mass transit for the bulk of their journey and then take a taxi.
Also, abundant taxis and mass transit makes walking within city centres easier, too. In a city like London or Paris, you can start off walking and just hop a bus or jump on the underground or flag down a cab if you get tired or change your mind. A decision to walk somewhere in the suburbs is pretty much irrevocable. And the distances between things is, as you say, often a mile or more---which isn't really walkable if you've only got an hour for lunch or you're doing your grocery shopping.
It is difficult and expensive to take a taxi almost anywhere in Southern California. My mom lives about two miles from the club where she likes to play bridge. She would love to be able to take a taxi but it would cost maybe ten dollars each way and many of the taxis in her city are not very clean, either.
I think Berkeley is only semi-walkable. There are lots of clusters of things but, unless you are willing to limit yourself to what's around you or rely on the only so-so bus service, a car is still very useful (unless you are an all-weather bike person--which I'm not--but Berkeley is a very bike-able place).
But most of Berkeley started out as a town, not a suburb, and was built before we became a car dependent society. But outside of a major "European plan" city like Paris, its about as walkable as it gets.
But I think Jerry puts his finger on a key point, which is lots of clusters of shopping, food, small stores. The question is how you'd turn Irvine into Berkeley, let alone Marlybone or West Dulwich .
Admittedly Mitch, one of the places in Berkeley I lived was absolutely ideal. It was 1/4 mile to the Gourmet Ghetto, 1/2 mile to school, 3/8th mile to the Monterey Market, and best of all, it was a 1/4 mile DOWNHILL walk TO BART to get to the airport or the city, as well as a 1/4 mile DOWNHILL walk FROM BART coming back. Downhill in both directions!
But I do think mixed zoning of some amount is very important, and one of the things that modern planned neighborhoods has destroyed.
Submitted by Jassalasca Jape (not verified) on Thu Sep. 11, 2008 8:36 PM PDT.
a: Why is the Left obsessed with making other people walk? Did it ever even vaguely occur to you that it's none of your damn business?
As I wrote under Kevin's earlier post on this topic, drive-to-live is the way it works in almost every community on your national landscape. That's what you would expect to happen with absurdly low fuel prices (and believe me, I could do with the price of gas in the US, even today). So hey, no one is denying you the freedom to run out and buy into the McMansion market. Some real bargains out there these days, I hear.
Submitted by Leila Abu-Saba (not verified) on Thu Sep. 11, 2008 9:41 PM PDT.
I live in East Oakland, in a 90 year old former suburb, close to the "avenue" and shopping. I do walk to shopping as much as possible. However there are many disincentives. 1) street crime is going up. My friend 1/4 a mile away is holding an evening class at her house next week; I realized I'd better take the car, much as I hate to, because there have been muggings around here at night and I can't risk it (health issues have made me slower and more vulnerable). I still walk during the day though.
2) The really dense neighborhoods are largely too expensive, even for our family with income much, much higher than the median. Rockridge and Grand Ave./Lakeshore are terrific - we can't afford to buy a family home there. So we live where things are less dense; and we drive more.
Still, we feel fortunate that we can walk as much as we do here. Plus there are numerous express buses to San Francisco running all day, so we don't *have* to drive into the city.
Only the most fortunate neighborhoods of Berkeley and Oakland are truly dense and walkable for all needs...
I used to live in Irvine, and I agree with your assessment. I love to walk and when I lived in Irvine used to run marathons but rarely walked except for exercise when I lived there. There were three reasons why I mainly drove: 1. the things I wanted to do were for the most part at the outer time limits for a walk (say 20 minutes), 2. there was nothing along the walks to break up the monotony, and 3. I was usually the only person walking.
I now live in New York, and have no trouble carrying out 30 minute or more walks. This is because in New York there is plenty along any walk to break up the monotony, and even at 4am there are usually other people out there walking. I don't feel quite so odd walking in New York.
I would also agree with you about how lazy Americans can be. I will frequently tell people something is a short walk away, and when I tell them that means say 6 blocks, they act like I'm asking them to perform an Ironman triathlon.
Submitted by Syd (not verified) on Thu Sep. 11, 2008 11:00 PM PDT.
The taxis thing is a myth, in London at least. I have lived in or around London almost all my life. Almost all my friends live there. I know people from aged 20-70. I know people who earn (equivalent) $30K and people who earn 250K. And none of them use taxis. Ever.
One major problem of the new style subdivision, of which most of Orange County and all of Irvine are exemplars, is that there are no corner stores. In older neighborhoods in LA, there is a little corner store every 4 blocks, and the lots of people walk there. But in the cul-de-sac neighborhoods of Irvine, you have to walk out of the complex and then probably a few long blocks of nothing but asphalt, concrete and wall before you get to the nearest strip mall.
Small parks and corner stores go a long way to getting people onto local sidewalks.
Submitted by reason (not verified) on Thu Sep. 11, 2008 11:58 PM PDT.
Kevin have you thought about the fact that at the very edge of a settlement, it is possible to have larger blocks without an impact on walkability. That it may make sense to have varying density within a settlement and to encourage people to move according their stage of life?
> And this at the substantial
> risk of everybody saying
> forget it and choosing not to
> patronize your highly
> contrived environment at all."
The way human beings have lived in cities for 10,000 years: "contrived".
The way Americans have lived in cities since 1970 (generally; 1940 in Los Angeles) with huge supplies of rapidly depleting hydrocarbon fuel available at very low prices [1]: that is a "natural" way of life I guess.
Cranky
[1] Prices which never have included externalities.
If you live in DC or NYC, any money saved by walking or biking is lost on the costs of private schools. Second, as your family grows, public transportation loses its costs savings. For a single person, the subway is fine. For a family, each additional child is an additional cost.
Dense cities means fewer children as shown by Manhatten, SF, or Northwest DC.
Bicycles, dammit, bicycles. A cheap old 3-speed works for modest distances and modest hills, and that bridges the walkability gap.
As to amount of fuel saved, as of last night, 900 commuting miles (+ 100 recreational miles) this summer alone. A gallon here, a gallon here, it adds up.
Submitted by KathyF (not verified) on Fri Sep. 12, 2008 6:25 AM PDT.
I have to say, that is the ugliest neighborhood sign I have ever seen. Maybe you could start a petition to raise homeowner association fees in order to purchase a nicer looking sign.
I would direct you to this Transportation Research Board study comparing travel behavior in a walkable, mixed-use new urban neighborhood in North Carolina, to a reference conventional suburban neighborhood:
2003-13FinalReport.pdf
The bottom line results: "The results show that households in Southern Village, the TND, make about the same amount of total trips, but significantly fewer automobile trips, fewer external trips and they travel fewer miles, when compared to households in the conventional neighborhoods."
There are number of other studies documenting the impact of development patterns on walking and other travel behavior. Many are summarized in the new Urban Land Institute book "Growing Cooler." Research has moved on since Garreau wrote his book, and we should move on too, given the climate crisis, fossil fuel depletion, the bankrupt highway fund, and so on...
_Edge Cities_ is a good book, and worth reading as a pop-anthropology investigation and explanation of the exurban phenomenon. However, after you read it you should also read _Crabgrass Frontier_ which puts research and documentation into the topic and demonstrates quite convincingly that none of this happened by accident: from 1920 on real estate developers, semi-rural politicians, and the US Government worked together to put in place laws, regulations, and policies that drove the creations of places such as Gerrard and Drum describe. They were generated quite deliberately for profit, to change the political landscape, and to exclude people with the wrong skin color. And have succeeded at all those goals.
Cranky
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