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February 1, 2008

Car free 'natural cultural districts' in the U.S.

While there are 41 entries on the list of car free places (presented in the previous entry) in the U.S., the number may be misleading. For instance, not many of us will ever hear of, say, golf-cart based Bald Head Island, North Carolina, population 173, much less ever visit it or know anyone who does.

However, many of us do live in or visit natural cultural districts, so here are the car free iterations of those you'd probably want to check out if you're in the area:

California
Santa Monica - Third Street Promenade, 1/2 mile
Riverside - Several blocks of pedestrian mall.
Colorado
Aspen - Pedestrian malls: Three downtown blocks of E. Hyman Ave., S. Mill St., and E. Cooper Ave. (pictured)
Boulder - Pearl Street Mall - Several blocks at the city center.
Fort Collins - Four streets in downtown.
Florida - Miami - Lincoln Road Mall, 7 blocks in South Beach.
Iowa - Iowa City - Pedestrian mall, several blocks downtown near the University of Iowa
Louisiana - New Orleans - Several blocks between the French Quarter and the river
New York - Ithaca - Ithaca Commons pedestrian mall, two blocks
Oregon - Portland - RiverPlace, 1/2 mile downtown waterfront pedestrian promenade
Texas - San Antonio - River Walk, famous restaurant/shop-lined waterway
Vermont - Burlington - Church Street Marketplace, four blocks
Virginia - Charlottesville - Main Street pedestrian mall, several blocks
Wisconsin - Madison State Street, six blocks, though buses, police cars and taxis are allowed.

The 'K' Street Mall in Sacramento; 16th Street Mall, Denver; Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis; Downtown Crossing, Boston and Fremont Street, Las Vegas are more corporate scale, chain-driven pedestrian malls.

Image source: Paul_Henry_

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January 31, 2008

Expect blog entries to appear first thing in the morning

These entries have been published daily for almost four years, yet not at the same time each day. From now on I'll make sure I'm simply 'one entry ahead' (no quality compromised) and set them to publish so they're ready and waiting for you each morning like the local newspaper/news site.

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'The definitive list of car free places

...is on Wikipedia's list of car free places.

Now the first thing to keep in mind is that a true list would literally consist of thousands of entries. So to present a more meaningful register, the following two criteria are applied:
- They are unusual for their country or region (which explains why there are so many entries from the U.S. and only two from Africa)
- They make up a sizeable fraction of a city, town, or island, though this seems to be relaxed a bit when it comes to the U.S. which mainly counts streets vs other countries which measure by districts. However, this certainly provides evidence contrary to the popular belief that car-free streets don't work in the U.S.

Below is the list by country followed by the number of car free places. The Wikipedia list provides the actual cities, location and brief description.

North America
United States - 41
Canada - 12
Mexico - 2
Costa Rica - 1
Puerto Rico - 2

Europe
Austria - 4
Belgium - 3
Denmark - 2
Finland - 1
France - 23
Germany - 33 (12 of which are on islands/resorts)
Greece - 6
Hungary - 1
Italy - 12
Netherlands - 6
Portugal - 8
Spain - 12
Sweden - 5
Switzerland - 25
UK and Channel Islands - 10
Czech Republic - 2
Croatia - 2
Lituania - 2
Bulgaria - 2
Russia, Lativia, Estonia, Turkey, Montenegro - 1 each

South America
Argentina - 9
Brazil - 3
Chile, Colombia - 1 each

Africa
Kenya, Morocco - 1 each

Middle East
Israel - 3
Lebanon - 1

Asia
China - 6
Japan - 1

Australia
Western Australia, Canberra, Sydney (pictured, Pitt Street) - 1 each

Image source: gabriel c.

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January 30, 2008

This isn't your father's light rail

...which is why in Europe they call them trams, apart from 'light rail' which is associated with those clunky, boxy trains you see in the U.S. The tram in the video above debuted in November 2007 in Nice, France.

The Strasbourg, France line pioneered the sleek look in 2006 and has been an overwhelming success ever since, not to mention a favorite photo subject for tourists - now how often does that happen? Notice in the video above how its futuristic silhouette contrasts with the historic fabric around it, in effect enhancing the buildings around it. Other countries, like Dublin, Ireland, have followed with modern versions of their own.

Trams are expensive and justified at 10,000 people/hour, but for higher densities subways are the newly hot trend and ultimate urban status symbol, while for lower densities you'll start to see the rise of BRT, which are essentially rubber-tired trams with electronically-guided lines replacing steel tracks, the same quiet ride and the freedom to go 'off the lines' at any time.

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January 29, 2008

'Cool spots' - Identifying low carbon neighborhoods

A picture is worth a thousand words, which is why the folks at the GIS savvy planning firm Criterion created a tool to not just analyze where to best invest in low-carbon development, but to illustrate it.

The concept is referred to as Cool Spots, and is described as "places where land use, transportation and energy data converge to create the best places for low-carbon development."

The process, as described in more detail here:

1. Analyze the region's energy usage, from CO2 building emissions to transportation, using existing GIS information.
2. Map the walkable areas around transit nodes and commercial corridors, as well as major destinations, as displayed in the image to the left. Notice that it also defines areas that should be conserved.
3. Utilize this data to suggest development sites that improve transportation choice and energy infrastructure efficiencies (top image).
4. Attract new low-carbon (ie cool town) development to those sites.

Read a full review or download the program.

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January 28, 2008

Highest density of creative class members

The most straightforward measure of the creative class in any city is by density; the number of creative class per square mile. You can download the
Creative Class Group's rankings with each of their creative class densities here (it only consists of four top ten lists). Below are the top three in each of the population range followed by their creative class members per square mile, with some unexpected cities outside of the usual suspects listed below.

Over one million
1. Los Angeles, CA - 281
2. New York, NY - 269
3. Washington, DC - 226
10. Hartford, CT - 119

500K-Million
1. Bridgeport, CT - 162 (picture - the upcoming Arcade, a 19th century building renovation targeting artists, design companies and restaurants. Surely we'll profile this once it opens in the summer.)
2. New Haven, CT - 92
3. Akron, OH - 89
6. El Paso, TX - 58
7 Allentown, PA - 57

At this point, it would probably benefit cities to provide the entire list since many are not exactly household names (again, see their actual creative class densities here)...

250K- 500K
1. Trenton, NJ - 358! (someone from Trenton needs to comment on this...)
2. Ann Arbor, MI - 93
3. Boulder, CO - 74
4. Flint, MI
5. Durham, NC
6. Huntsville, AL
7. Rockford, IL
8. Lancaster, PA
9. Lexington, KY
10. Reading, PA

Under 250K
1. Carson City, NV - 50
2. Santa Cruz, CA - 42
3. Elkhart, IN - 42
4. Warner Robins, GA
5. Bremerton, WA
6. Oshkosh, WI
7. Gainesville, GA
8. Muncie, IN
9. Gainesville, FL
10. Lima, OH

Would readers comment (positive or negative) on any of the cities listed above, outside of LA, NY and DC?

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