Escape of the Rescape!

Well it's been a long time coming, one-and-a-third years to be exact, but my thesis software Rescape is finally finding its way online as a beta release. It works much better on the Macintosh at the moment, since I haven't had much of a testing environment for Windows, but you can try it on either system.

http://code.google.com/p/rescape/downloads/list

For Macintosh: I nice neat installer is available. Just download the OS X version at the top of the list, and run the installer. You'll need to install Google Sketchup 8 first if you don't yet have it installed.

For Windows: Click on the top-most file marked Windows and read the instructions. You'll need to install Google Sketchup 8 as well as RubyInstaller 1.8.7, which contains software libraries that Rescape needs (they come preinstalled on the Macintosh). Windows is really unstable right now (i.e. basically not working, but I'll be improving it this week.)

I'll keep pushing new builds so make sure to follow the link above and choose the latest version.

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What is Rescape? It's a plugin to Google Sketchup that promotes pedestrian and transit-oriented redesign of public space, namely streets. It supplies tools for downloading street data onto a satellite image and then drawing 3D components on the street surfaces. People already do extensive urban design in Sketchup, but there are a lack of tools to help one quickly sketch out ideas. Rescape lets you throw down bike paths, streetcar tracks, and other surfaces on real streets to take the place of the standard asphalt and sidewalk configuration that is car-oriented. Here's a look at the Rescape interface:

Sketchup downloads the satellite images of your choice. Rescape fetches data from OpenStreetMap to actually draw the ways (streets, paths, railroads, etc.) on the satellite images, thus giving you a canvas to work on. You can edit the ways a bit to make corrections or expand public space, and then you can start laying out components on the streets. The Tool Shed on the right gives you a nice interface to select layout tools. Then it's simply a matter of clicking a couple points along the streets to create the 3D path. Above I created the flat grey surface, the streetcar track, and the cycle track (green) with a few clicks. The paths by default follow the street, but you can hold down a modifier key to make them ignore the street, as I did through the center of the rotary. The streetcars and houses are Sketchup components that you can lay along any way or other surface (such as the streetcar track.) You can pick one of thousands of components to lay out from the Sketchup 3D Warehouse online (e.g. the streetcar) or make your own (e.g. the house.) After you choose your path you specify how the spacing of the instances.

There's nothing impressive about the drawing above, except that it was done without using a single Sketchup drawing tool. In the future it should be possible to sketch detailed neighborhood redesigns before needing to edit any of the components created by Rescape "by hand". The nice thing about Rescape is that when you exceed its capabilities you simply resort to using the Sketchup editing tools. For instance, I could add an incline to the grey surface or customize the houses to make them each slightly unique using basic Sketchup tools.

Rescape also comes with a guide that shows you how to use the software, and even adds elements to a tutorial model programatically. You can see the guide on the top-right of the image.

There are still a lot of problems with the software to be solved, and then hopefully features to add. But it's at least reached the point of being a fun piece of software to play with, and hopefully soon it will be stable and performant enough to be useful.

Project Freudenstadt, does it have legs?

Before you can answer my title question, you must learn a little bit about the project. Project Freudenstadt explores in documentary form the differences between American and European informal social culture. It asks the question, does America's urban form inhibit the casual gathering and interaction that seem to be more present in European society? Does it have something to do with European urban form, perhaps those suspiciously inviting town centers and pedestrianized streets where lots of people live and hang out? On the flip side, is there a reason that urban life in America seems incredibly isolating, where social interactions have to be arranged by exhausting mobile device back and forth? I've heard from some of my European friends that they are expected to go out with their friends every Saturday night unless they are somehow incapacitated. I've never experienced this culture at home, but perhaps Americans from other walks of life have. Furthermore, it seems I have to make quite extraordinary efforts to meet new people here--a saga which some friends have corroborated--and I wonder if it's not quite so hard overseas. I don't have any answers or any assumptions at this point. But I do feel like something is wrong in every American urban neighborhood I've lived in, and I wonder if it's just me or is there really a different world elsewhere? I doubt that urban form could be the sole contributor, but it would be interesting to see if urban form in Europe has helped foster a more casual social environment, or if something else potentially has.

What if I picked up a film crew and some qualified movie makers somewhere and wandered around this country and that continent to talk to people and see what they think, and to see what we observe? Would anyone be interested in watching a movie about that?

A curious traveler gazes across the town center of Freudenstadt.

Block the way!

Today I'm going to take a break from my usual urban planning musings to talk about something much more pressing, which is the Keystone XL Pipeline. This is the pipeline being proposed to move the tar sands oil extracted from northern Alberta, Canada all the way down to Texas. You can read much more about the technical details of the project on the interweb. In short the problem is that it enables the extraction of the dirtiest form of oil from a huge carbon sink, meaning that the destruction of the land to extract the oil, the use of huge quantities of water and natural gas to perform the extraction, and the final burning of the product in automobiles nationwide will be a devastating blow to the fight of to limit green house gas emissions. And that's only the tip of the iceberg. The tar sands excavation is already destroying huge tracts of pristine nature. A pipeline from Alberta to Texas jeopardizes thousands of communities and sensitive environments.

Chief climatologist James Hansen says of the pipeline project “if the tar sands are thrown into the mix it is essentially game over.” I participated in the culmination of two weeks of demonstrating in Washington D.C. in front of the White House. Environmental groups are all aligned on this one. 1252 people were arrested for protesting over two weeks, and thousands more rallied with them.

Our addiction to oil needs to stop today. Cold turkey. We all have a personal responsibility to reduce our oil use substantially. We're fighting oil wars and destroying the planet to get this stuff. We all need to stand up to this nonsense and lead by example. That means stop driving today, curtail your meat consumption, and limit your overall consumption of products.


The US State Department recently released its final environmental assessment of the pipeline, claiming it would cause minimum risk. Recall however that the US does not acknowledge green house gas emissions as dangerous, which makes this entire report invalid from the outset. Here's an extract from the the segment of the final environmental impact report on air:

EPA did not propose to include the crude oil transportation segment of the petroleum and natural gas industry in this rulemaking due to its small contribution to total petroleum and natural gas fugitive emissions (accounting for much less than 1 percent) and the difficulty in defining a facility. The responsibility for reporting would instead be placed on the processing plants and refineries. Consequently, the proposed pipeline Project would not trigger GHG reporting requirements.

Are you angry yet? This is the environmental protection agency. James Hansen says "game over" and the EPA just kicks the can down the road, saying the processing plants might have to report it.

The fate of the pipeline now rests with the president. If you're sick of Barack Obama being a coward--I am--and you want to finally get off your haunches and start forcing some better political decisions--I do--then get involved in this fight.

Press:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/62144.html

Organizing site:

http://www.tarsandsaction.org/invitation/

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tarsandsaction/6109204889/in/set-72157627584467674/

I'm the guy in blue to the right of the red sign.

P.S. My family's from southern Alberta and I love it like my home. There's a lot of money in oil, but it's not worth massive destruction of land and culture.

Rescape at Summer's End

Rescape is a software add-on to Google Sketchup that attempts to make it easy to do neighborhood redesigns with an emphasis on carfree or car-light streets and comprehensive transit. I started planning and working on Rescape about a year ago for my master's thesis at Tufts University's Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning.

As a software developer lacking urban design skills, I needed a tool that would help me visualize compelling improvements that are made possible when neighborhoods are built for people and cars become exceptional instead of dominant. I enjoyed the free and friendly user interface of Google Sketchup, but I found that even knowing the fundamentals of the software were not enough to do neighborhood designs efficiently. I began to create a mental list of features that would help me design faster for accuracy of layouts and visual impact. I found myself mostly interested in improving the streets, since this is the dominant form of public space and has the most potential to be reallocated to better uses. The main two tools that I desired was the ability to download accurate road data on top of satellite images and then to draw surface elements such as streetcar tracks and cycle tracks. Using an early version of Rescape, I downloaded street data from OpenStreetMap and then used Sketchup as usual to produce the following model based on the exiting intersection shown:

Note that Sketchup already supports satellite images that are geo-referenced, so programmatically placing OpenStreetMap data accurately upon them is relatively easy. Oftentimes the OpenStreetMap data is not quite what is desired, either because something like a road width is inaccurate or the user wishes to add new surfaces that do not currently exist. I therefore created several tools for editing ways, including one that widens or shrinks road edges and one that adds new ways. These tools work equally well on roads, paths, railroads, and waterways. Below we see the steps of adding a new road between two existing ones. The last image shows that the road recognizes its place in the network when we draw streetcar tracks:


It's also possible to use existing Sketchup tools to make a more sophisticated shape. This example incorporates a line drawn by the arc tool (I still need to modify the tool to allow the line to connect at two ends):
Here's the edge editing tool in action. The surface the new edges are recognized as part of the way so that surface components can be drawn as usual:

Surface components such as streetcar tracks and cycle tracks are sometimes are parallel to the road and sometimes not. The tool I have thus far developed lets you draw paths that are either aligned with the curve of the road or not, so that you can choose the appropriate solution by holding down a modifier key.

The images on the left show possible configurations for a streetcar track through a traffic circle. The image on the right shows the final product after the user is satisfied with their path and double clicks to produce the 3D component. The same tools works just as well for a variety of path types:

The various paths curve according to their configured properties. A standard rail track tolerates only moderate curves while a cycle track can be tighter. Repeating elements like railway ties and sidewalk segments are fairly easy to configure programmatically. Additionally, all the components are configured to a default color or texture. These can be changed by the user by using standard Sketchup tools, and it would certainly be possible to  allow the user to configure the properties of the components in the future so that they render with the user's chosen colors or textures.

The component pathing tool also let you make fine grain changes to your path as you draw it, responding to input from Sketchup's input field for precise offset from the edge of center of the road. One can alternatively use the keyboard arrow keys to nudge a segment of the path by a foot at a time.

In order to teach users how to use Rescape as painlessly as possible, I have begun constructing a Sketchup tutorial with an accompanying web page that shows how to use Rescape in several steps:

The tutorial should make Rescape straightforward to use, so that users can maximize their time spent on a project.

Conclusion

Obviously, Rescape is still a long way from producing models like the one I first showed. It does manage to remove the hard work of placing surface elements on the streets, and it can make them visually pleasing enough that they go well with the components download from the Sketchup 3D Warehouse. In the short term I have many features to add, such as the ability to distribute components from the 3D Warehouse along a created surface. For instance, the user should be able to download bicyclists and have Sketchup distribute copies of them along cycle tracks. There are still many limitations to working with Rescape. Roads that change levels for overpasses are not yet handled elegantly and there is no way to account for elevation changes. Some of these challenges may be surmountable using other Sketchup features and plugins. Others will be too advanced for a "sketching" tool, and will require traditional professional urban modeling software.

The long-term vision of Rescape is to give people the ability to see what their neighborhood could look like with more space for people, transit, and people-oriented amenities. My hope is that Rescape and other freely available software products will contribute to this goal.

Transit's primary purpose

The purpose of aggregating motorized travel into public transit vehicles on fixed routes should be foremost to minimize disturbance to the rest of the physical environment, especially to the places where most people live or make use of space. It follows that the convenience of point-to-point on-demand motorized transportation must be foremost avoided rather than sought, and only used as a last resort in places of low population density. There is also an energy economy and social aggregation benefit to fixed route transit, but these should be considered secondary. Priority one is minimizing the dangers and nuissance of motorized vehicles to the human and natural environment.
Public transit struggles to insert itself in places already decimated by motorized vehicles, especially where it seeks to use a new right-of-way that annexes space. In terms of utility, however, transit should be able to replace a far higher quantity of motorized vehicle right-of-way than it itself requires. Unfortunately, motorized right-of-way is never easily relinquished, whether to pedestrians or transit. Thus we arrive at the paradox that public transit must overcome: Transit's primary purpose is to reduce the quantity of space ruined my motorized vehicles up to tenfold the amount of space that the transit needs. But since such quantities of space are rarely relinquished back to the people for nonmotorized use, the transit only threatens to infringe on more space without rewarding any.

In the instances where transit lanes take from motorized vehicle roadway, transit is often opposed by motorists but not by nonmotorists or reluctant drivers. Opposition usually forces a taking of additional right-of-way to accommodate transit without reducing vehicle lanes. Though managing to take roadway for transit is a pleasant achievement, transit should instead remove much more road space than it actually needs. This is true because line carries higher passenger densities than cars and enables carfree pedestrian access to a half mile radius around stops. Unfortunately, aside from pedestrianized European city centers, the status quo is to only take from motorized vehicles what is needed by transit and no more, and the lanes may only be taken when a boulevard or highway is so overbuilt that they will not be missed. Motorized routes are typically considered irreplaceable by a combination of transit and pedestrians, even when the converted space still permits freight and emergency vehicle access. We must demonstrate that transit not only warrants the space it annexes from motorized vehicles, but that far more de-motorization around the space can be rewarded for pedestrian and non-motorized vehicle use. Such space can allow limited motorized freight deliveries and can of course accommodate emergency vehicles and personal mobility devices. 


Until we can demonstrate the large rewards of useful space that can be achieved by transit, transit will always be jaded by its capital and operating costs and annexation of space. A fine example is the fanatical protest by a minority of the population on the Silicon Valley Peninsula to expanding two train tracks to four with full-grade separation to accommodate high speed rail. Taking this additional space and possibly elevating tracks is a significant taking of space out of context. But put into context, the opportunity of improved local train service--made faster, electrified, and more frequent--allows for the removal of large swaths of roadway currently dedicated to motor vehicles. The high speed rail could replace an enormous amount of trips between the major destinations at each end of the Peninsula. Opposing the visual obstruction of an elevated track is reasonable, but opposing four tracks is not if you are willing to give back the road space for which the new tracks obviate the need. The parallel motorized routes of El Camino Real, Highway 101, and Highway 280 are all major nuisances to the people living near them. They are visually and physically disruptive and 280 additionally infringes on otherwise pristine open space. Instead of just looking at what four tracks takes away in space, we need to look at what it can reclaim in space.


I know that many people do not see the value of carfree space--of being freed from the physical barrier and dangers of motorized vehicle, nor do they see the social and health rewards of walking on carfree streets instead of driving them. We must therefore help people visualize their community after a new transit line takes space, where it rewards much more space than it claims. We must show that the half mile perimeter around a transit stop can be made-car free, beautified, and excess road space given over to better uses. We also suffer the conundrum of what to do about private vehicles that need ample space for storage in the event that we need to go somewhere unserved by transit. There are reasonable solutions to these problems, namely a combination of car-sharing available at distant transit stations and more sophisticated movement of personal freight. But the inertia of point-to-point car use cannot be overcome until transit's primary purpose if adeptly demonstrated.

In my next post I will show an example of how transit can give back tenfold the amount of space that it takes, with a real world example.

New York fundamentals

I moved to New York City about two weeks ago. Having now resided briefly in the Bronx and just started a stay in Brooklyn, all the while working in Manhattan, I can safely say that I've moved around the city quite a bit. The transit system works--at a basic big wealthy city level-of-service sort of functionality. You can travel ten plus miles quite easily on express subways or regional trains and walk to a subway within 15 minutes from just about everywhere. You can equally walk the city streets and experience a lot of activity--business, socializing, individual eccentric--experientially it's anywhere from a little rough to mildly pleasant. That is to say that walking the streets of New York is usually somewhat interesting, if not always aesthetically pleasing, and it certainly has felt safe in all the places I have been. Additionally, there are parks, civic institutions, homes, and businesses that are stunning.

I must say, though, that the sum of the parts does not achieve it's full potential. It's easy for me to blame the car and truck traffic for this. Obviously removing private automobiles, moving freight delivery underground or at least organizing it, and then increasing pedestrian and bike amenities would transform this and most other cities. Even you better organized street movement, there still would be something lacking. People love the grid system here for ease of navigation, but I think it detracts from the heuristic acquaintance with the neighborhoods. Neighborhoods here don't generally have entrances and exits--streets just transition to a new place at certain intersections. Park Slope in Brooklyn, for instance, feels like it starts when the nice shops and tree lined homes begin, but it's all the same grid. This adds to flexibility, but it doesn't feel as neighborhood-oriented as it could be.

The other beef I have is that the commercial streets in town seem to be commercial for the sake of commercialism, and give less the appearance of serving the people living in or visiting the neighborhood. The advertising, the featured junk in the windows, and the chic look of the upscale places is what defines New York, but it bastardizes the notion of a city being built for the convenient exchange of goods from the hinterlands and afar. Most everything in the city feels like it is for the entertainment of consumption, rather than the economies of density. The latter certainly exists--I lived in a food desert in Boston and now I see fresh fruit frequently because there are plenty of pedestrians to buy it. Maybe my problem is that I rarely value any of the products sold in the city beyond the food. I certainly value the services--I just enrolled in a German program and watched the Stanley Cup in a bar. My unease is that commercialism is based on the need to make millions of people and thousands of corporations the sellers of products. The needs of the residents for these products are far less than what is being sold, so the sellers and residents have made the implicit agreement that the residents will entertain themselves by buying unneeded products in order to keep the sellers viable. This model means that citizens and leader don't pay much attention to the non-commercial aspects of the city. The recent tiny improvements to the streets--new public spaces and bike lanes--demonstrate how little attention the city had paid to non-commercialized space.

Overall, I want to find another model for living in a city or a town. I want responsibility and control localized while maintaining regional organization, and I want residents to spend time toiling and cooperating to improve the places they live. I want products to be sold with less redundancy and to have a identified origin and clearer purpose. These desires don't match most people's lifestyle, and perhaps not even my own. That's why it's so hard to imagine a place that functions such that we do less buying and selling and more things that strengthen the place.

shifting asphalt grit

I haven't had much homeostasis between events lately, what with a graduation weekend, a move to New York City, and starting an internship/work-on-my-thesis at OpenPlans, a neat non-profit in downtown Manhattan. I'm lately plowing through boring details of my software, such as making roads that are incorrectly tagged in Open Street Map render correctly. Though the data is usually accurate enough for my purposes, there are occasional problems that trip up my software:

Everything is inside out here because the boulevard lines in the bottom left (Mass. Ave in Somerville) didn't render correctly. The problem is that whoever or whatever entered data for the boulevard correctly identified that this portion is two one-way streets (separated by a divider) but they accidentally specified the full boulevard width for both ways. This causes the two to overlap and mess up the continuity of the road shapes. I can handle overlapping errors to some extent by detecting some of the offending lines and ignoring them. You can see that my software managed to detect and ignore the extra lines on the left side of the boulevard (again look bottom left) but it left a couple dangling lines further to the right. Those extra lines messed up the polygon of roads. Unfortunately the Open Street Map data doesn't even acknowledge a relationship between the two directions of the boulevard, except that they have the same name. To detect that the boulevard had two lanes and that they were overlapping I'd have to do some fancy tests. The better solution is probably to isolate bad roads like this and render them separately from the other roads. This will be challenging as well.

Open Street Map is designed to make it easy to correct errors in the database, but I don't want my users to have to worry about those details. They should be able to download the data and get a decent rendering of the roads, paths, water ways, and rail. It doesn't have to be perfect, but the above rendering is a non-starter.