Urban – Page 20 – Things Are Good

Portland Continues Support For Sustainable Transportation

Portland, Oregon is already known for its amazing support of bicycle riders and pedestrians. Now they have taken their commitment to making their city even better by building the largest bicycle parking in North America. Similar parking for bikes is available in other places like in Amsterdam and Tokyo so seeing this come to North America is a good sign for cyclists.

As reported on the Bike Portland blog, a 657-apartment project planned for Portland's Inner East neighborhood will have a whopping 1,200 bike parking spaces, an acknowledgment of the city's cyclo-centric culture.

One of the architects of the project, which is being developed in a part of town where "mid-century planning principles called for surface parking lots in lieu of dense, walkable communities," explained:

"The demographic that we expect to show up here is going to be young urban professionals and it's going to be, we think, young families as well," said Kyle Andersen of Portland-based GBD Architects. "They all have bikes. When I think about my own neighborhood, the families I see riding there, if you move those people into a building they're still going to have a bike. I think you have to be ready for that demographic to be there, otherwise you're restricting yourself."

The Amazing Impact Of Painting A Roof White

During summer heat air conditioners are used extensively and this can increased energy consumption can be crippling. Black outs occur in the summer thanks to people cooling their homes and workplaces – but these power issues can be avoided. By simply painting roofs white it can help cool buildings and lower energy bills. Painting multiple roofs white can a really positive effect on a large area.

They found that urban expansion alone could increase summer temperatures by up to 6Â°F in some areas in addition to greenhouse gas-induced warming by 2100. The Mid-Atlantic and Midwest seeing the biggest overall summer temperature increases.

In all areas, white roofs could completely offset the combined increase in temperatures, and if deployed across the entire megapolitan area, could actually reduce summer temperatures compared to the 1990-2010 average.

The benefits of cool roofs were particularly prominent for the urban areas stretching from Washington, D.C. to New York, Chicago and Detroit, and Californiaâ€™s Central Valley.

Cooler summertime temperatures could reduce demand for air conditioning, which could both save money and reduce the chances of electricity grid blackouts.

A Scientific Approach to Better Urban Design

Urban design is not an easy activity because of the multitude of variables that impact the overall urban experience. There are buildings, traffic (foot and vehicular), landmarks, natural occurrences like rivers, and abstracted economic forces. Space Syntax is a company has set out to make better urban design by using science to calculate the probability of positive spaces being built.

Stonor says his ultimate goal is for the science to catch on with other design firms and consultancies. In a way, he wants to put himself out of business. He says he wants architects and planners to learn to use space syntax themselves, and not rely so much on his consultancy.

Academically, space syntax has caught on in many other schools and countries. However, the Bartlett at University College of London â€“ where Hillier and Hanson developed the science â€“ is still its primary research center. The academic and business sides work closely, a relationship that Stonor says is vital. The academics feed him new ideas, and his company field-tests their research. In addition, every tool and most of the studies produced by both the business and academic sides of Space Syntax are open access and available online.

Cities Are The Key For Adjusting To Changing Climate

Readers of this site have seen lots of evidence that in the 21st century the best place one can live for a small carbon footprint is in urban areas. Things like increased infrastructure costs and higher costs of living associated with automobile use in rural & suburban places are obvious reasons why denser areas are better.

Now we can add even more reasons to live an urban life thanks to research from the IPCC and WWF.

The latest assessment by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicates a global carbon budget, or the estimated amount of carbon available to burn if the world is to limit runaway climate change. We also know that, if action is not taken soon, all the allowable emissions would be locked in by energy infrastructure existing within five years from now. Time is short.

The good news is that we know where to take action to prevent such lock-in and build a resilient energy future. Most of today’s emissions come from cities, and within that, the vast majority from three sources: the energy used to create electricity, to heat and cool buildings, and for transportation. From the Earth Hour City Challenge, a year-long programme launched by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) to identify and promote cities that are leading climate action, it is clear that cities, and their mayors worldwide, are already demonstrating innovative solutions to reduce dependence on fossil fuels in each of these sectors.

Walking or Biking Through Neighbourhoods Makes You Like Them More

Walking or biking through neighbourhoods will increase the likelihood that you think positively of that space. A bunch of research has concluded that people have an increase tendency to positively judge an environment when exposed to it using more personal means of transportation. Whereas people who opted to drive a vehicle through neighbourhoods tended to have negative feelings.

The moral of this? If you want to feel like you’re in a positive community all you need to do is not drive through it.

Walkers and drivers had very different reactions. Walkers from the affluent neighborhood had positive things to say about the low-income neighborhood, while drivers held negative views. In general, the affluent neighborhood reacted the most strongly (both positively and negatively) to the low-income neighborhood, while those in the low-income neighborhood rated both areas similarly.

The differences partially confirmed the researchersâ€™ hypothesis, explains Birgitta Gatersleben, an environmental psychology professor and lead author of the study. Generally, humans are pretty good at judging threats or a situationâ€™s trustworthiness in just a few seconds. This is called â€œthin slicing,â€ referring to the thin slices of reality we can consume and digest quickly. It comes in handy in the wild, say, if youâ€™re trying to decide whether to approach a pack of lions, or, more realistically, a very angry Apple Care customer.