The premise of my work

The premise of the work I am to do as an urban planner is that there is a formula for transforming a particular urban district or limited combination of districts into a much better place by introducing comprehensive fast transit, removing private automobile use,  and modularizing goods delivery. I have concluded that in virtually any place in North America there must be a configuration of the district(s) that is vastly superior to the existing configuration of the roads and their usages. There must also be a short sequence of implementation phases to transform the current state of the district(s) to the improved state. The variety of intermediate steps are limited, but I think one major possibility is to halve the width of the road dedicated to cars and reallocate that space for transit, pedestrians, and cyclists (hereafter car-free usage). A second intermediate step is to remove goods delivery by trucks in favor of above-ground metro freight (on the streetcar tracks) or below grown metro freight service. This would limit vehicle use on the roads to service-based vehicles, such as utilities, emergency vehicles, and special deliveries that could not be done with modularized shipping (e.g. a crane). During these intermediate phases the streetscape can be optimized in form and function for car-free usage.

In order to prove my ultimate car-free configuration superior to the current state of the district(s), I must justify the transition with traditional economic modeling. This is unfortunate, because the full-cost accounting (i.e. social and environmental costs) and qualitative benefits will more than justify any project. But the reality of our society forces me to consider traditional consumption-based economics. Fortunately, I believe that economic superiority will be able to underwrite car-free configurations. Carbon taxes will be among the greatest assistants.

One helpful shortcut that I now realize is that I'm not concerned with changing where roads are nor the buildings that stand alongside them. Developers and business people will likely optimize buildings for car-free streets. Multistory houses may or may not have their first floor converted to storefronts. One story buildings may be rebuilt to supply upper floor housing. It really helps to realize that I am not interested in such things. I care about street and rail networks above all else. When you get these right you tend to get correspondingly good practices in building.

In a future post I would like to demonstrate the intermediate phases of street redevelopment to transform to a car-free district. Right now I'm working on the "district" around my university, Tufts. By tracing the major streets on top of Google Earth snapshots in Google Sketchup, I was able to realize what really matters, and what doesn't. The primary streets of the district matter, the residential neighborhoods and the university facilities can be left alone. Seeing the primary roads outlined in Sketchup made me realize what is the essential skeleton of a district. The next step is to identify the inputs and outputs of the district, meaning the roads and rails that connect to other places, and explore what is conveyed over these boundaries. I don't mean to sound overly modular, but converting a district to a better form is so complicated that you have to simplify it somehow. Identifying the key right-of-way seems to be the best way to do it.

Another reason I'm so interested in the phases of development is that I want to be able to offer design steps to people who want to redo their own district, and thus propel the car-free cities movement. Using Joel Crawford's Carfree Design Guide, one can see what the best design practices are. I really need his help in laying out the redesign steps.