Urban Planning – Things Are Good

Providing Safe Cycle Infrastructure Helps Developed Economies

The benefits of providing good bicycle infrastructure just keep getting proven time and, and time again. Bicycles are good for people’s health, the local economies, and now many other benefits. Yet, for some reason the rates of a bicycle ownership does not correlate to places with good bicycling infrastructure, so what gives? Researchers looked into why the rates of ownership of bicycles does not match their use and noticed some neat trends that will inevitably lead to more research.

We also noticed that countries with extremely high income level and bicycle ownership (e.g., the Netherlands and Denmark) tend to increase bicycle use, likely due to some special country characteristics, such as a cycling culture, high environmental awareness, well-developed cycling infrastructure, and flat terrains. It is also shown that, among countries with a similar level of bicycle ownership, population density positively affects bicycle use on a daily trip because lower population density often makes driving a necessity (e.g., type 4 countries). Countries with high traffic death rates (e.g., Thailand, Brazil, and Russia) tend to have relatively low bicycle use because cycling can be perceived as dangerous. This finding echoes earlier research that bicycle infrastructure expansion (e.g., separate bicycle lanes) could increase the bicycle modal share36,45. For example, the provisional redistribution of street space during the COVID-19 crisis has induced large, rapid increase in cycling36.

You Want to Live in a Dense Neighbourhood

View of downtown Toronto from a drone shot above U of T

Living densely is a good thing, more specifically being surrounded by density is a good thing. Where we live can have a huge impact on our collective well being and the planetary ecosystem. Low density housing like suburbs are really bad for one’s mental health and for your communities health. When it comes to greenhouse gas emissions it’s clear that we can drastically reduce by just increasing the density of our neighbourhoods, a simple solution with wide ranging and positive consequences.

Having homes close to one another is not only good for emissions from your house, it’s good a reducing other emission sources too. Dense neighbourhoods means you don’t need to drive to get a coffee, you can walk. The network impacts of density are quiet apparent when you live in a good place.

The results show that attached homes and MURBs are 45–62 % less GHG intensive per capita than detached homes. Considering results at the neighborhood level, GHG emissions per capita decrease with higher density. We also find negative associations between GHG emissions per capita and household characteristics including household size, tenancy, and household income. The findings of this study highlight the need to integrate built forms, mobility, and transport infrastructure when assessing the potential greenhouse gas emissions of housing and neighborhoods. Besides aiming for density, the provision of walkable neighborhoods, low-emission modes of transport, and high-density housing forms (e.g., multi-unit residential buildings) can lead to low-GHG neighborhoods.

Women Changing Cities

A new book has come out to celebrate Women Changing Cities for the better. Cities around the world are dealing with climate change, inequality, and an assortment of local issues and often we forget that these cities can do more than react – they can lead. This book takes a look at 19 women who are leading our urban fabrics into the future to ensure a better locally life and, in some cases, shaping the globe.

The book spans 11 geographies, profiling 19 women in leadership: mayors, civil servants, entrepreneurs and advocates who, through their work, are fundamentally reimagining how cities can and should function. A brief preview of some of their stories are below. What unites these women across wildly different cultural and political contexts are five recurring themes: a commitment to listening and empathy; an intersectional, long-term vision; care as a social value; the power of coalition-building; and the courage to prioritize having an impact over holding on to power and pushing through the opposition.

Real Time Street Level Vehicle Exhaust Emission Monitoring

small car

A team of researchers have used the NYC traffic congestion charge as a place to test out some of their hypothesis. Spoiler: the city got better and air quality improved. The research team were able to figure out how to monitor pollutants on individual streets instead of neighbourhood or city-wide levels. They used cameras and phone data to track traffic (removing personally identifiable information). Their method has increased monitoring accuracy and showed that previous pollutant monitoring solutions could vary widely by up to almost 50%

It also helps with better modelling by figuring out which transit options will reduce pollutants the most.

For one, they modeled what would happen to emissions if a certain percentage of travel demand shifted from private vehicles to buses. In another scenario, they looked at what would happen if morning and evening rush hour times were spread out a bit longer, leaving fewer vehicles on the road at once. They also modeled the effects of replacing fine-grained emissions inputs with citywide averages — finding that the rougher emissions estimates could vary widely, from ?49 percent to 25 percent of the more fine-tuned results. That underscores how seemingly small simplifications can introduce large errors into emission estimates.
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To study that, the researchers looked at what happened to vehicle traffic at intervals of two, four, six, and eight weeks after the program began. Overall, congestion pricing lowered traffic volume by about 10 percent — but there was a corresponding drop in emissions of 16-22 percent.

Your City Could Improve Thanks to World War Oil

The American/Israel bombing of Iran and the subsequent closing of the Strait of Hormuz has sent shockwaves around the world, particularly to places that consume fossil fuels. Indeed, the energy disruption is so severe that a global recession is inevitable and that countries the world over are rethinking their commitment to burning fossil fuels.

Not Just Bikes takes a look at the current, and growing, oil shortage through the lens of how cities improve when the costs of oil increases. He looks at the last major oil crisis in the 1970s and how different parts of the world reacted. Spoiler: modern Amsterdam exists in part thanks to the high cost of oil. Governments change policies and laws to reduce reliance on oil and promote good urban design that puts people as the priority rather than cars.

There are things you can do right now to reduce your oil consumption to save money and the planet, and maybe even reduce the American desire to invade countries for oil. You can ride a bike, get solar panels, use an electric stove, and so much more!

Of course, if governments allocated subsidies to renewables and away from fossil fuels then we wouldn’t be in this position at all. People don’t go to war over sunshine.