A link to the latest piece by Robert Steuteville in “Better Cities & Towns” – for two reasons: good analysis, and it uses work from UBC’s Larry Frank:
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‘Good bones’ are the key to good urbanism
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When people who study cities and towns say that a place “has good bones,” they mean that it has a connected network of small blocks and “lean” (not overly wide) streets. …
We stopped building communities with good bones by the end of the 1920s. Little was constructed during the Great Depression and World War II. After that, we built again—like gangbusters—but using a new model. Streets became bigger, farther apart, and less connected. This model was borrowed from the engineering of sewer systems. The design of thoroughfares is “a scientific process or an engineering matter, just as the design of a sewer and drainage system,” argued Harland Bartholomew, a pre-eminent 20th Century planner. This method was assumed to improve health, safety, and welfare.
Before the 1920s:
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After the 1940s:
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By the 1980s, streets in the US were being laid out in a pattern sometimes described as “loops and lollipops.” Suburbs became so disconnected that houses backing up to one another in the sprawling landscape outside of Orlando, Florida, could be seven miles apart by road. That kind of system—let’s not call it a network—is common today.
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Now we have two systems—one with good bones, completed about 100 years ago. The other, without good bones, comprises most of our metro areas.
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… but there’s a problem: the supply of 100-year-old street grids is finite. If we use only the historic infrastructure of places that are already walkable, vast sections of the nation will be stuck in the automobile-only era; in those areas, the only way to get from point A to point B is to drive, or get someone else to drive you. Meanwhile, the growing desire of a wide variety of people to live in places with “good bones” is driving up the rents and purchase prices in some of those places. This trend will gather steam if we don’t build a larger number of new walkable, mixed-use communities. …
What about the suburbs?
Good bones are in shorter supply in the suburbs, but they do exist in historic villages and towns that were overrun by sprawl in the last half of the 20th Century. Many of these communities are now reviving. Less obvious opportunities await in the postwar suburbs, those built from the mid-‘40s to the mid-‘60s. Many of those have decent bones. Residential streets from this era tend to be curvy, but they generally connect and are not too wide.
Business streets from the ‘50s are usually in sad shape—a fading hodge-podge of tacky signs and light fixtures, parking lots, and buildings near the end of their life cycle. These streets need major renovation. They can be redesigned and redeveloped, building on the decent bones of the surrounding streets and delivering a strong return on investment. The postwar suburbs have vast potential.
Later suburbs are much harder to repair. Where development is taking place on a broad scale, however, communities can lay out a plan for a mixed-use neighborhood. This is not technically difficult, and it can create substantial value. The modern transportation and land-use system is set up to do the opposite of a grid, so this effort will not be easy—but it will pay off well over time.
Communities can step forward by asking these questions:
• Where do good bones exist, and why? What do they need to make conditions more livable? Do they require traffic calming? Do they need placemaking?
• Where is the potential for creating good bones? How can we make these bones where they’re lacking, and do so in the most efficient way, with the best return on investment?
Seeking answers to these questions will put communities on a path towards livability, walkability, sustainability, and higher appeal.
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By and large North American cities grew with the car in mind, whereas European inner cities grew before cars, ie with pedestrians in mind. Both have their pro’s and con’s. By and large European apartments are smaller and residential buildings are not high-rises, whereas “sustainable” cities or denser developments in Northamerica are highrises. One reason for that is that elevators didn’t exist until about 1870s and big European cities like London, Paris, Vienna, Stickholm or Berlin had very sizeable populations in the 1800’s.
As a European immigrant I can see benefits and drawbacks of either, and many Europeans growing up in a 60 sqm (660 sq ft) 2 bedroom apartment would love to live in a car oriented lush, spacious golf course community like the one you depict. Perhaps that is still the appeal of many US cities, despite sprawl, namely its spaciousness. One day your driverless fuel efficient vehicle, e-car or h-car ( hydrogen based ) will drive you around or you bike or walk among the lushness as opposed to in crammed cities among dense six story wall-to-wall apartment buildings like you see in London, Munich, Berlin, Vienna, Paris by the thousands …
One is not necessarily better than the other, and city planners ought to provide a mix of housing choices as in a city of millions many housing choices should exist, today, in the 1800’s or the 2200’s !
Do “bones” in your post have a same meaning with linkages, sir?
If there are any differences, what are them?
Thank you.
The example of measuring how far one has to travel to visit the property across your rear fence line in good-bones and bad-bones communities is oh, so, graphic. I think it suggests that its inhabitants are acknowledging that the cars they are dependent on has a terrible impact on their street’s quality of life, and thus want the street pattern to ensure that no cars will be on their street unless they live there and can fathom the very confusing road system — you lose track of N-E-W-S compass points; there are no landmarks to note and remember, and intersections are not unique (a crescent intersects in two places with the street it serves). But the bad-bones road pattern ensures they _driving_ is the only mode of movement that will be used (walking and bike trips are also made just long).
I once did a different calculation when my family and I last lived “out there.” Leave your driveway and turn right. Follow the road right-way-way, keeping right, until you approach your driveway from the opposite direction. Measure the loop’s distance in both a typical good-bones and bad-bones neighbourhood (The distance for the latter is greater than that shown in the above travel-to-my-backyard-neighbor exercise). In a good-bones neighborhood, it is about 1600 feet; in the other extreme it runs many miles.