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Liberalizing Cities From The Ground Up
Because there are no market signals that could identify the best and highest use of street space, it is the role of urban planners to allocate the use of street space between different users and to design boundaries between them where needed.
Cities have always invited us to be constantly on the move. We move around to get to work, go shopping, meet friends, attend a concert, visit an art exhibition, and take advantage of all the many activities that a metropolis offers.
Mathieu Helie at Emergent Urbanism posted a link to a interesting game created at the University of Minnesota. Mathieu explains it better than I can: The game begins in the Stalinian Central Bureau of Traffic Control, where a wrinkly old man pulls you out of your job at the mail room to come save the traffic control system. You are brought to a space command-like control room and put to work setting traffic lights to stop and go. Meanwhile frustrated drivers stuck in the gridlock you create blare their car horns to get your attention, and if their “frustration level” rises too high you fail out of the level. As the road network gets as complicated as four intersections on a square grid, the traffic becomes completely overwhelming and failure is inevitable, but the old man reassures you that they too have failed anyway. OK, you’ve played the game? If not, don’t go further until you have. Now that you’ve played the game and failed to control traffic, compare that top-down system with this amazing video a friend sent to me from Cambodia. You’ve gotta see this: Man, I love this video! I must have watched it a couple dozen times. I keep expecting a crash, in what to me (only being familiar with top-down planned traffic systems) looks like complete chaos. Yet pedestrians, bikes, motorcycles, scooters, rickshaws, and cars all make it to their destinations safely, and probably quicker than in the system in the game above. It must be similar to how capitalism must seem chaotic to people who have always lived in planned economies. Don’t mistake me as an advocate of a world without traffic signals. I am quite certain that some sort of traffic signaling would likely emerge from a free-market street system. But, my bigger […]
NY Times – Carroll Gardens: The Big Front Yards That Rob the Streets Although the yards serve as leafy margins to the streets, creating ample open space between the rows of brownstones arrayed on either side, they also put those streets into the “wide” category for zoning purposes. This means developers can build structures on those streets that are taller than would otherwise be allowed. In recent months, some local residents, with one eye on all the construction, have been objecting to this rule. Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn NIMBYs will do anything to stop development in their neighborhood. The buildings are set back so far from the street with gardens, yet they don’t want to allow taller buildings in their neighborhood, claiming the streets cant handle it. In my opinion, either allow taller buildings or end the setback requirements. Otherwise, your NIMBY selfishness is just too much.
