For the next couple of weeks, I’ll be in Australia. Doing this, among other things:
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If you’re a PT reader in Melbourne, it would be great to meet you there.
I suspect there are many of you who could actually give this talk instead of me. But here’s an offer: Provide some Comments below on the topic above and I’ll include the best in my presentation.
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I’ll also try to be somewhat Geller-like and include observations and images on the blog while away.
Going to the source of all things good, shorpy, what is so striking is how genteel cities, even massively industrialized cities, were prior to the automobile. Highlights the changes wrought by the automobile beyond the obvious reconstruction of cities to automobile standards and reconfiguration of city life to automobility:
– Take up so much room everywhere, roads, parking, driveways, turning radii, vehicle height just drives the space required for everything. And to this you have to add a thick layer of buffer and waste where proximity to traffic and parking creates dead zones.
– The omnipresence of objects at dangerous speeds is oppressive. We have accepted as natural that at all time outside everyone of expected to maintain constant vigilance lest they be maimed or killed. Difficult to by happy-go-lucky in that city and impossible if you are eight years old.
– The spreading out of everything to fit all the cars thins the resources that can be put in so the public realm looks shabby.
– Make things expensive by requiring infrastructure for cars, mandated parking etc.
Now that the some of the unlivable aspects of the shorpy era cities have been corrected, pollution, absolute poverty, machine politics, goal needs to be dealing with the car while preserving the good aspects of automobility – speed, point to point travel, cargo carriage etc. Automatic cars is some of this, grade separated transportation is also part of this, but much more needed.
Another thing that I find striking about the modern city is the hostility to the idea of the city as a work of art. Part of livability is that places are beautiful, pleasing, inspiring etc. But today something like Sagrada Familia is anathema, Karlsruhe verboten, but why. After WWI I can understand the association of ancien regime design with the ancien regime, and thus the desire to move away from it. But now I get the feeling that beauty is considered frivolous and childish, something with which serious people cannot be seen to consort. Of course architects still decorate, but such activity is usually muted and often covered in code words. So I would suggest that livability also requires that we accept the idea that we can build places that are visually pleasing now and that such places are not just places you visit after a long plane ride.
Another thing that I find striking about the modern city is the hostility to the idea of the city as a work of art
is it the “modern city” or the city with a calvinist cultural substract vs city with a catholic substract?
You mention apropos the sagrad familia…
In Paris, the 2014 Hidalgo mayoral platform was outright calling for beautifcation works in the city: making Paris beautiful was integral part of the electoral campaign.
The Paris’ mayor, Hidalgo calls for the beautification of many parisian squares:
Parisan squares are not being pedestrianized for the sake of pedestrianism, but because it makes the squares more beautiful (concept of square-scape” , or “place paysage” in french).
I have also noticed that this concept, beautification, is one people at PPS have hard hard time to grasp with…
…in the meantimes, in Vancouver, “improvement” of the public space (like recently on PGR), mainly translates to have freeway style concrete barrier pretty everywhere in the city…
Melbourne has a bike helmet law, unlike Sydney. Find out, please how this impacted the city’s bike rental program. I heard it failed, but maybe there is more to this story, Gord !