My good friend Jens von Bergman shares not only our German heritage, our ssick accent and the building we live in, but also our love for math and mis-priced road use.
Jens co-owns a firm called MountainMath Software that is specializing in data, analytics, modeling and visualization. One such data analysis and visualization result is the amount of space dedicated to various forms of use, i.e. roads, industrial areas, single family houses, parks, multi-family etc. is shown here which shows that single family houses use up about 40% and roads and associated right-of-ways use up about 1/3 of the area in Vancouver. As such it is no wonder that our house prices are so high as the city, outside of downtown, is not that dense ! If you change the city to Surrey, for example, you will see roads to be about 22% only and similar single houses.
Click around to see your city !
Check out one of their linked products, the census mapper here. This is so cool with so many interesting sub-maps I’ll add another blog post soon.
A high % of land area dedicated to roads not necessarily related to lower density.
In fact, older, denser cities tend to have more fine-grained road networks. See this analysis for some examples of other dense cities with high % of land area devoted to roads:
Boston – 44%
NYC – 28%
Chicago: 42%
Paris – 25%
Toronto – 34%
http://oldurbanist.blogspot.ca/2011/06/density-on-ground-cities-and-building.html
The surrey example would seem to be more evidence of how low density and sprawl-ey it is, more than a reflection of an apparently efficient un-road-ey land use.
Maybe aggregate FSR vs population would be the best number – the square meters per person for housing, vs roads, vs yard/green space … it would be a bit of a napkin sketch calc, but any above/below average anomalies should largely wash out … basically, how much space do we, on average, ‘waste’ per person in our cities, vs how much of it is used ‘well’ (I will let each add whatever they like into waste and well … but having numbers either way would be interesting.)
Vancouver is more of a destination then Surrey, more people from outside the region use Vancouver roads than Surrey Roads and thus the need for more road space. But of course if those roads were not free that demand would be reduced.
Great topic!
Intersections per square mile is a measure used in LEED ND (for Neighbourhood Development). It reflects connectivity, choice of direction, and walkability. A low score, as in Surrey or Irvine, Ca., is a good indicator of the opposite. In comparison to great walking districts, like downtown Portland and the French Quarter in New Orleans, even Vancouver’s grid is relatively low by this measure.
Further, the great mapping work done by Prof. Larry Frank of UBC’s SCARP shows our Metro’s walkability, where grid areas rank highest and also tends to correlate well with exercise and therefore inversely to obesity and public health.
Having done planning work in Surrey Centre, the first objective has been to increase connectivity with a finer grain or network of streets, greenways and other links. Their low street percentage (in comparison to Vancouver’s) is a problem to overcome, not a standard to be admired and replicated.
Excellent links and info.
When people like me talk about the political cowardice to up-zone the areas with detached homes and large lots to provide a much wider selection of housing and building types, we can now illustrate the extent of their avoidance behaviour and willful neglect.
So this gives Vancouver an advantage when it becomes possible to put solar panels on your roads. This article describes what’s happening in that area of research:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/energy/2016/03/160310-will-we-soon-be-riding-on-solar-roads/
Although for now you have to put me in with the skeptics as to whether that’s going to be a feasible thing to do.
It’s been debunked several times. It’s just not possible because of the laws of physics. But if some guys can make a bunch of money on Kickstarter by claiming that it’s possible I guess we know what their real motive is.
Here’s one debunking video. There are more out there.
https://youtu.be/obS6TUVSZds
It can’t be a good thing when a 32-tonne loaded cement truck is driven on this surface….
http://dqbasmyouzti2.cloudfront.net/assets/content/cache/made/content/images/articles/Solar_Roadway_panels_only_1_580_435.jpg
Best stick to roofs for now.