/upg/ - Urban Planning General

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I hope to be a transportation planner when I graduate. Just a little nervous I'll need to attend grad school to do so. Right now majoring in Geography and Urban Studies.

Picture is a proposed plan for an early rail system for the Twin Cities area.

I don't even want to name my city, it's embarrassing:

This past month's controversy was a proposal to reduce two quiet old boulevards that bisect a large college campus from 4 lanes down to 2. Traffic studies show there's not enough total traffic to need 4 lanes, and reducing them could improve sidewalks, improve the bus stops, AND make room for a bike lane - and this is a mostly residential neighborhood too other than the section that runs through the college.

Sounds great right?
NO. WE CANNOT HAVE NICE THINGS. EVERYONE MUST DRIVE CARS EVERYWHERE FOR ALL TRIPS.

>"residents won't be able to conveniently drive downtown [two miles] south because the streets will be clogged by cars waiting for pedestrians and buses"
So I asked the guy who said this to me, so you'd be unwilling to drive .75 miles out of the way to get on the highway two blocks over that goes downtown? Or ride your bike on the nice new bike lanes that lead downtown? Or ride the bus that will be more convenient then ever and allow you to skip any parking hassle?
>"NO. And it's ridiculous that the city should spend any money to worry about those college students who can't manage to use the existing crosswalks without looking both ways to make sure there are no cars coming, make the college pay for under/overpasses instead"

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>>953550
Twin Cities bro!

New bike trail being built this year.

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Why haven't you embraced the surface parking lot as the paragon of sensible urban planning.

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>>953554
Looks nice, I've never really biked around that area before.

Wish I had a date for this image but it's an early proposal for the present day Green Line.

>>953557
I'm a cager and even I am offended by that horribly inefficient, wasteful use of space.

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>>953559
Any space dedicated to the single passenger automobile isn't wasted space.

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>>953558
Midtown Greenway in South Minneapolis back when it was a railroad.

>>953562
>we turned a perfectly serviceable railway into a bike trail!
'Smart' cities.

>>953565
Fuck off trainfag.

>>953565
I don't think there were anymore freight clients on the corridor and it was just languishing. There is thought to add streetcar line along with the bike lanes.

I really wish they had run the Southwest / Green Line extension though Uptown and along the Greenway.

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>>953562

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>>953568
No.

>>953568
>bikefags prioritize private transportation over public transit
>literally mini-cagers

>>953576
Being an anti-cager or a cager has fuck-nothing to do with private transport versus public transport, you absolute fucktard. Trains and death cages have infinitely more in common than bicycles and death cages. Literally the only difference between trains and death cages is that trains use rails. Get fucked.

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>>953559
Don't forget that we are not stuck in traffic, we are the traffic. Cars need to go NOW

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>>953581
>vehicles that can accommodate hundreds of passengers have more in common with private automobiles than private vehicles that can only accommodate one or two passengers
Bikefags are literally the cancer killing cities.

>>953581
Nope. Trains:
>less prone to human mistake
>efficient use of space
>no need to use man power
>no need for parking
>fixed routes
Bikes:
>very prone to human mistake
>require considerable parking space
>doesn't work for fat people
>muh freedom
To be honest using both is the best that transport has to offer, but bikes are much more like cars.

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Why do old european villages look so pleasing? Can we bring human scale into transportation or is there no future outside grids?

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>>953582
>posts picture with cars in it
You're making more of a point for low-rise high-density development than for killing cars.
Speaking of real estate development, can we talk about how stupid the fixation on high-rise development in many city is? >>953557 illustrates perfectly how skyscrapers can wreck cities when demand isn't strong enough to warrant anything beyond low-rise real-estate.
>pic related of another blunder that killed a downtown.

>>953587
They're not so pleasing when you have to figure out how to navigate their maze like medieval streets.

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>>953588
It adds carachter to a village. It's not like you couldn't just ask for directions. And to your first point:

God fucking yes. In brazil I saw a ~20 story in a street full of 1 story wooden houses. I guess that's why height is regulated in most of the developed world. Unfortunately, for the land owners it is much more profitable to have high rises everywhere.

>>953565
that doesn't look like a serviceable railway to me
that looks like track that nobody's paid any attention to in 20 years

>>953594
>tracks and ballast are still visible
Crash Spill Xplode has mainlines that are in worse condition than that line.

>>953588
>muh maze
>so hard

Are new worlders genetically degenerated to only be able to operate in orthogonal cities?

>>953632
Nope. Just culturally.

>>953589
All those ugly little cages ruining an otherwise very pretty image.

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>tfw suburbia

>>953595
one set of tracks disappears under the dirt for like 40 feet

>>953674
Christ that looks like hell on earth, but not as bad as this >>953698

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I don't have a city in my birthplace. I have a sprawling mess of suburbs of two cities that aren't even in our state.

There's nothing in Jersey I would call a city properly. In the south you have Cherry Hill, which is where a mall and a bunch of housing developments are and everyone works in Philly, there's Atlantic City which is a fucking dying slum. In the north there's hoboken, a shithole where everyone with a decent job commutes to NYC. There's Trenton, which doesn't exist. And there's Newark, a crime filled slum people pass through commuting to...NYC! There's the philly suburbs. There's the NYC suburbs. And there's the economically dead in-between regions. There are nothing like city centers, just a complex of this development and that development with some stripmalls in between, and they're all just places you drive through to commute 2 hours to Philly or NYC. This entire state should be nuked.

Notice something about this map? Mid and south jersey have nothing. Fucking nothing. The south of jersey is economically dead. I wonder why? There's not even a connection from the south rail to the north rail. The concept was never to get around jersey...notice? They all lead to either nyc or philly. No in between connections. Because that's all jersey is. A commuter's slum of housing developments. An entire state of this bullshit.

>>953584
>>require considerable parking space

This is false.

I think of bikes as an in-between to get from where the rail line is to where specifically you are going, or your house to the rail line, and only as direct transport if it's nice weather and you're reasonably close. Bikes are small, you can pick them up and carry them. You can get on a rail with a bike. You can function like a pedestrian if you walk the bike. You can function like a car. It's a morphable mode with infinite flexibility. Parking? Just lock it to a bike post. Have you ever seen a car-style parking lot of just bikes? No.

Rail>bike-only, but you can have both simultaneously so that's a moot point.

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>>953705
>Have you ever seen a car-style parking lot of just bikes?

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My "city" of 50,000. Quite car centric to be honest, but this far north in the arctic circle in an oil rich country it's pretty much bound to be.

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>>953705
You say that because you probably live in a car-centric city. It uses much kess soace than cars, but it's still considerable.

>>953721
*less space

>>953551

>embarrassing

Spoken like a true socialist cuck; embarrassed of things he didn't to, takes undue responsibility as part of the collective.

>still doesn't take responsibility for himself
>feed me
>house me

>>953729
Embaressed that he is associated with and under the marcy of retards probably

>>953721
>parking space for vehicles weighing around 15kg
>only ground level

Talk about inefficiency...

>>953698
>I go by this exact area every day on transit
yes, it's as bad as it sounds. kill me

>>953699
>a bit of dirt and some tall grass
>literally unusable

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>>953705
>You can get on a rail with a bike.
Bikes on transit eat loads of valuable space. There's a reason transit agencies don't allow bikefags during rush hour.

>>953762
NJT allows folders though

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How can we kill suburbs?

>>953780
Stop pouring federal funding into their inefficient infrastructure. Stop letting city governments prioritize the interests of commuters over their own taxpayers. Put tolls on the highways.

Stop feeding them and they'll die.

>>953780
Cities could stop funding infrastructure expansion on their outskirts and rezone their inner-suburbs to incentivize their redevelopment into something more dense.

>>953787
>Stop letting city governments prioritize the interests of commuters over their own taxpayers
Some cities have to think about commuters since they're also their tax payers though. One of the most blatant examples of this problem I can think of is Toronto. They spent years debating whether a grade-separated rapid transit system or a grade-separated transit system should replace the Scarborough RT line (that's effectively what the whole subway vs. LRT debate boiled down to) because of the ridiculous "suburbs vs. city" sentiment that exists within the municipal sphere.

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>>953780
A carefully planned rezoning process followed by placing all of the refugees in high rise public housing complexes.

>>953835
I didn't think about that, I wonder what will actually happen about that. Fort McMurray was basically just a town of suburban, car centric design. With seperated single-lot houses everywhere. Everything connected by multi-lane arterial roads feeding a 6 lane highway connecting the oil work site and the cut out planned square of big box stores like Walmart and Costco full with oversized parking lots and the whole pack.

>>953856
Cities built around resource extraction industries have never really been great examples of urban development and I doubt that will change after the fire.

>>953780

>organized trees in a line
>organized buildings
>organized streets

I want to masturbate to this image.

>how kill

Make gas prices go up. Increase population, which increases traffic, which makes commutes longer and more stressful. IE it's inevitable.

I meet tons of people who want to move to the city. I meet zero people who want to live in a suburb. They're already dying.

>>953787
>Stop letting city governments prioritize the interests of commuters over their own taxpayers.

This. Tired of everything being car-centric with, if any, a bone thrown to bikes and pedestrians as an afterthought. Now that the US car companies are dead, they won't be able to lobby against public transport anymore, and ISIS *cough* I mean OPEC is killing US oil companies, so that ends that end of the lobbying duo. Ironically ISIS and 2008 may have saved us.

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>>953871
How I feel as a cyclist in my city.

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>>953902
It happens.

Albany here. sucks unless you have a car. everything is sprawl. also people are trying to ban bikes in the city streets

Personally I love the Soviet style of urban planning.

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>>953871
That's not actually all that uncommon.

>>953970
>railroad track merges with car lane
>train is probably not passenger
>bikes and people unaffected
Got dem priorities straight.

>>953939
Radial arteries, people pushed out to the concentric rings and the 101st km cities, everyone forced to commute to the geographic center. Absolute hell for managing congestion.

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>>953902

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Which design is better?

>>954152
>no Tokyo

Your daily reminder that urban planning is evil and results to boondoggles and follies like urban rail transport.

http://ti.org/antiplanner/

>>954185
as opposed to highways, which always finish on time and under budget, and never get congested to uselessness five months after completion

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>>953557
>that pic

>>954185

Thank you, anon, for introducing me to these cranks

>>954219
Note, it is a "think tank". Enough said.

>>953702
Hoboken is actually America's most pedestrian-friendly city, and quite nice from the pictures and descriptions I've seen.

Of course, the chief complaint among residents is that there's not enough parking. It seems Americans don't desire or deserve good cities.

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>>954194
>>953559
Can't you see how urban renewal can transform a city for the better?

>>954305
>demolishing abandoned industrial plants
>urban renewal
There's plenty of bad moves we can blame on the planning of the sixties and seventies but industrial decline in the Rust Belt isn't one of them.

>>954364
"Urban Renewal" happened all over the country, not just the rust belt, and not just in industrial neighborhoods.

>>953632

>tfw go to an orthogonal city and HAVE to use the street signs because everything looks the same and is squared off so you can literally get lost without street signs

>go to regular city and you never get lost because you are a human and not a goldfish

>>953576
..listen, buddy, I don't know who you are or what kind of cycling you do. Me, I'm a road cyclist on a local team. I train 6 days a week, and in a normal week the 7th day is in the gym doing core strengthening. Yesterday I did 30 minutes continuous at Threshold, a new PR for me. Looking at doing a TT this year, for the first time since I got hurt a few years back, and I think I can win one, or at least place in the top 5. Not bragging, just establishing who I am and what I'm about. Long rides at Threshold are no picnic.

There are two kinds of cyclists: Competitors, and everyone else. I don't care what kind of bike we're talking about, or what terrain you ride on, or how many days or how many miles a week, everyone falls into one of those two categories. The riders who are not competitors? They'll back off if it's starting to get uncomfortable. Why? Because they have *no reason* to push themselves that hard. In terms of training zones, if they push past Endurance and into Tempo or beyond, they won't stay there for more than a very short amount of time before backing off, because it's *uncomfortable* for them, and they don't feel the need to go that fast.

Competitors? They aren't pushing themselves to the point of it being abject suffering for no good reason, they know that on the other side of that suffering, there are *gains*. They know that as the mesocycles go by, they'll be able to go a little faster and a little longer because of that suffering, and they know that from those gains, comes getting that much closer to winning races, or that town-line sprint, or being first to the top of that big climb on the weekly fast group ride, or whatever it is that, for them, translates into 'competition'. Usually it's about some race or another, but it can even mean being the first to the top of that one big climb on the weekly group ride, or just beating your own PR on a set course you ride alone every week. There's a challenge, and they feel the need to meet it.

What about mid sized cities? I'm in Tallahassee

>200k population
>Downtown is only state office buildings, lobbyist and law firm offices, and the resturaunts they all have lunch at
>Area around FSU is mid to high density with lots of apartments, townhouses with single family home neighborhoods as you go further out
>A high percentage of students who live off campus (which is most of them) commute to class by bus, walking, or biking

This isn't necessarily eco-minded transitfags and bike hobbiests doing this. Like myself and most other Americans, most students own a car and only commute by bike or bus simply because it's too damn inconvenient to try to find parking thats going to be a long walk from your class anyway. There's not enough spaces for everyone and it's a huge hassle trying to find a spot while navigating around all the pedestrian traffic and small streets. But we'll drive our cars to the grocery store, the beach, the springs, and out to eat because of the convinient parking.

Another thing to consider is the scale of American cities are very large because of how low density they are. My friends house is 9 miles away from me and we both live in the city limits. I bike there sometimes for fun but sometimes I just don't feel like it or it's night time or raining. There isn't enough population density to justify having a bus route go near where he lives, nobody would use it and it would bleed money.

>Kansas City
God help us, we got a novelty trolley, no one will ever take public transport seriously around here

>>954152
they all have no functional difference

>>954437
>my point
>your head
My pont was that those buildings didn't get demolished because of urban renewal but rather as a result of the industrial collapse in the US.

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>>954591


>300k population
>Downtown is a mix of late imperial and renaissance buildings, maybe a commie office thrown in here and there
>most fully closed to traffic, arterial street only open for public transport

>that glorious european feel

>>953557
This shit is HILARIOUS.

>>953871
>Make gas prices go up. Increase population, which increases traffic, which makes commutes longer and more stressful. IE it's inevitable.

I live in Rome. It's exactly this situation. But you know what, you missed a point: when everyone wants to live in the city, prices to live in it are jacked up to the point you can't AFFORD to. So you just have to live in the suburbs. With all the problems you've stated.

>>954744
Goddamn that looks comfy.

>>954776
Add in a less restrictive zoning code, then, and you get Tokyo instead. Dense and pedestrian-oriented but relatively affordable. Prices only increase when supply isn't allowed to meet demand.

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Does anyone here go to school for urban planning? I'm considering it but not really sure what kind of program to take or what the job prospects are like. I'm a bit older so I worry how long the education may take.

>>953780
We go Hong Kong

Tall buildings on skinny plots allows for maximum pedestrian penetration

Buildings also have shops on lower floors

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>>955510
pic

>>955335
sweet jesus is that one of the circles of hell?

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>>953540
/toronto/ checking in

I'm excited that theres actually some progress being made here now that we don't have a literal crack addict for a mayor anymore. Looks like things are getting better with new bike plan, revised zoning codes, LRT and TTC happenings

Also, do you think that Steve Munro posts on /n/? He seems he has that level of autism about streetcars that people here share

>>955554
>4 (FOUR) LINES

>>954152
paris. It may looks like a gigantic mess but it really isn't. Big avenues are made to either cross the entire city or to lonk every big monument which makes it easy to travel around while not being in a grid, just as the small districts always get access to such avenues. it disfigurated the city core a bit but the result is clear enough to understand it unless you're retarded enough.

>>954744
fuggg that looks amazing

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Look up Boston's north end. Prob one of my most favorite urban neighborhoods in America.

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>>955551

>>955601
>6
that's in hungary right?

>>953594

ITT where newbs can't differentiate between "rails" and "invaluable grade separated right of way built in a time before development that will never have the chance to be built again"

a rail ROW unused now is too valuable an asset to convert even if there's no plan to use it in 50 years

>>955771
There are LITERALLY no customers to use the railway there. The entire area is being converted from industrial to 6 story apartment buildings. There was no reason to have a train on those tracks except for storage which would be a waste.

>>955771
The ROW is still there, and it's being used now. If, decades down the road, things develop in such a way that there's demand for a lateral railway, it can be converted back into rail, but for right now, it's getting plenty of use as a bike path.

>>955825
this never happens

>>955772

you didn't address my comment at all except by conceding my point that it's a good idea to hold onto irreplaceable rail ROWs even if unused because hey those industrial areas might develop and create demand

>>955860
>>955825

once the hippies take something it ain't never going back

the story won't be "old rail ROW was temporary bike path to be converted to rail again"

it will be "EVIL train company/city trying to TAKE AWAY our PARK and BIKE PATH NATURE AREA and TURN IT INTO A LOUD NOISY TRAIN!!!! this path is for the PEOPLE (who happen to own bikes) and the BEES not for STUPID LOUD UGLY BLEAK TRAINZ!!!"

Who deserves to drive a car? Working parents?

>>955860
>>955877
Wait, you're talking about freight service? What purpose would a freight railway there serve? It was abandoned because it wasn't profitable, it's not magically going to become profitable again. Nobody's going to build a factory that needs direct freight service in the middle of Minneapolis. The yard that served the line is long gone.

Light rail is a different story: there's plenty of ROW to keep the trail and add light rail, and I believe this is planned.

>>954744
so sweet.

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>>955559
I'd always heard this. Old Paris was supposed to be a medieval maze until Napoleon said "fuck this" and commissioned an urban planner, gave him carte blanche, and then destroyed everything that didn't fit the plan and had all the infra re-built in the plushest way possible.

How accurate is that story?

Amazing what can get done when you're a dictator.

>>955940

no, passenger. industrial areas are becoming residential. part of the plan is a little different than what i guessed, i'm looking through the lens of NYC where something like the high line will NEVER become passenger rail again, which is a shame because NYC will never see a ROW in our lifetimes (lol 2nd avenue subway)

a southerly extension of say, the 7 train using the ROW of the high line would be invaluable but it will never happen

>>955957

Well, close.

The guy Haussman who designed the big straight boulevards that cut across had recently visited DC. Part of L'Enfant's DC plan was the idea that you could see all of the major monuments from each other, hence diagonal streets cutting across a grid. Easy to do when it's a planned city from the getgo.

Haussman went back to Paris and wanted to do this exact thing, pitched it to the Napoleons, and we don't know if he added this part or if they imagined it themselves, but it would work GREAT for mobilizing armies and marching them down the streets to suppress uprisings. Because good luck getting troops through the maze fast.

Then they told the public that the reason was to get better "air flow" in the city, and there would be no more tuberculosis, etc.

Then they forced a bunch of people out of their properties, bulldozed their houses, and paved the way Robert Moses style.

>>955877
There will never be any industrial activity on or near that line ever again due to zoning changes. The city's comprehensive plan is changing the are from industrial to residential. The eastern section of the trail still has tracks but has been unusable for the past decade due to the bridge over the Mississippi River being damage and there being 0 (zero) customers on the line.
People are perfectly find with putting streetcar tracks along there. http://midtowngreenway.org/projects-and-programs/transit-advocacy/

>the story won't be "old rail ROW was temporary bike path to be converted to rail again"
>it will be "EVIL train company/city trying to TAKE AWAY our PARK and BIKE PATH NATURE AREA and TURN IT INTO A LOUD NOISY TRAIN!!!! this path is for the PEOPLE (who happen to own bikes) and the BEES not for STUPID LOUD UGLY BLEAK TRAINZ!!!"
Already happening. There considering placing the Rush Line through Swede Hollow and neighbors are making a big fuss. They don't even have a mode selected and people are freaking out.

Have you heard our mess with the Green Line extension? It's not hippies but rich mansion owners that are freaking out about placing freight rail, light rail and a bike path in a choke point. They might need to construct a tunnel which would be ridiculous as it would be more expensive than the 3C route through a dense urban neighborhood (Uptown), would likely use the Greenway for the right of way, and which was turned down to cost. If we can't build a tunnel through the U on Washington Avenue or through Downtown Minneapolis building a tunnel for some rich residents in a park seems ridiculous. I'll admit the Washington Avenue Transit Mall is working marvelous except for all the stoplights.

>>953584
>>require considerable parking space
kek

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Recife, Brazil reporting in.

We are doomed.

>>953588

GM won't be in that building much longer now that they're moving to Boston from Detroitpocalypse

>>956039

jesus that sounds horrible. i wish they could do transit more like the late 19th century and early 20th century.

when the jamaica elevated line was extended through cypress hills to jamaica in brooklyn, some people complained that they didn't want a noisy train and the CEO of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Co. issued a statement like "if you don't like it, don't ride it." then they built it.

many years down the road some businesses out there complained that they noise was hurting their property values and got a motion to demolish part of the elevated line, and succeeded.

half of them went out of business and the place became a dump because it's insane how MASS transit brings big MASSES of people...

but yeah that really sucks. if it sounds like the residential is popping up hard, lightrail in that ROW would be invaluable to helping the real estate boom and the 2 would support each other like they literally always do in every chapter of history "more houses out there? let's build transit!" "a transit line going out there? let's build houses and businesses!"

but nope your NIMBYs can't put their cocks away :(

>>956039
>>956291

i don't think this was the same article but similar about the kings county elevated co who made the fulton street el: "if you want a say in how we build this, then buy some stock."

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9901E7DA1538E033A25750C0A9679C94659FD7CF

btw the "great road bridge" they're talking about is the Brooklyn Bridge (not called that at the time).

they ended up succeeding, until the 40s you could take a train from east new york down fulton street in brooklyn and cross the brooklyn bridge, change trains at the park row station to the manhattan elevated lines only once, and cross the harlem river into the bronx.

>>956296

oh, and without a single grade crossing that could endanger pedestrians (THIS is why ROWs should be reserved for rail exclusively and why they beat out surface light rail, the incidents of people getting hit by the train are narrowed down to 1 or 2 workmen every 5 years, or the occasional freak accident.)

>>954168
Tokyo is an absolute mess as far as roads go, but the rail services counteract that

>>954152
Toronto looks like someone was playing SC4 and tried not to grid (too much).

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>>955335

>>956722
>>956723
>>956725
>>956726
>>956727
Pretty asinine, if it wasn't for car culture you wouldn't even be alive and if you were born you would have died of some horrible disease as an infant. You should be thankful that automobiles brought us into the modern age but instead all you do is post anti-car (really anti-freedom) memes.

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>>956735
Above average bait.

>>956725
What a stupid image, by 1900 there were already plenty of cars on the road, unless you're from some poor eurofag nation. This image doesn't apply to development in the United States at all.

>>956749
>Copenhagenize.eu
Gee I wonder which one of your statements applies.

>>956749
There were 8000 cars registered in the US in 1900. Cars were not common, nor were they a design consideration for towns.

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More Mississauga.

>>958752
Nice towers in the park, punk.

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>>953702
NJ is one of my favorite states, I love the people, the little towns and ways they have development to be set up in the city centers versus building new strip malls. And your drivers keep right and pass left.

DC is probably my favorite city, it's very leafy, has a grid system that was built by an autist, and a population that is mostly rich white people ;_;

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>>958752
Honestly the intensification plan for downtown Mississauga is pretty interesting and could serve as a model for other suburban parts of North America. They've managed to take an area that started off as a suburban mall with some office towers and massive parking lots (pic related) and slowly but surely have developed those massive parking lots into high density residential and commercial developments. The LRT line and bus hubs are probably only going to accelerate the development of the area.
Obviously it's not perfect but considering the starting point there's been an incredible amount of progress.

>>956725
why are the roads and train line squiggly?

>>959436
it's a shit poster but it's to show that they take slightly longer/are less prioritized than the ones with straight lines

>>953780
Kill all the socialists. They're the central planning control freaks who can't hold a real job so they work for government and proceed to fuck over everyone else. Burn them to death.

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>>953667
>Twingo
>ugly
Twingo a cute!
CUTE!

>>958991
>NJ is one of my favorite states
said no one ever.

This is bait.

>>959954
>socialists
this is actually monarchist city planning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy4QjmKzF1c

i feel like this video is relevant

>>959954
Wait, you're saying the suburbs were built by socialists, or Karlsruhe was? Either is idiotic.

>>956193

The density's there. Much of that space is for beach tourists right? Tourists don't interact with the city the same way residents do, so some of the urban planning conventional wisdom doesn't apply.

>>956248

you're thinking of General Electric, GM isn't going anywhere

>>956725

1800 and 1900 should have squiggly lines for the pedestrians having to walk around all the horse shit

>>956726

much better in hi-res

http://i.imgur.com/h1D5Qo3.jpg

I feel like North American architecture had a renaissance from 1890-1940 and that the post war mentality destroyed that in favour of extremely spread out population centres and commutes on clogged freeways.

trams and trains make for much nice communities

>>955335
This looks like one of my many failed city designs from Sim City

>>959954
Ironicalyy, only in socialism could you have the community decide what kind of city they want. In capitalism this is largely controlled by profit motive and "efficiency" , the type of efficiency that gives rise to mediocre suburbs.

Before you can say it, the USSR was capitalist.

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>>953540

Seattle has gotten way better since light rail extension opened. Pic related is an excellent example of our growing pains.

>>956689
Never thought I'd see another one here. Do you like bikes?

>>962315
Mediocre suburbs being "capitalist" is because of bad regulations, though. Unfettered capitalism looks like Kowloon. It's hard to say what non-slum capitalist stuff looks like, because the people at the top are always assholes.

>>965836
I don't think there is such a thing. I would say that what defines a slum is a lack of functional infrastructure, and functional infrastructure pretty much always requires strong central planning and government money.

(There are, of course, lots of suburbs with totally dysfunctional infrastructure)

>>953540
I have no idea about city planning except for SimCity and Cities Skylines but I'm wondering how do cities fail at traffic?

What I'm asking is that the densities of zones are enforced as far as I know, how do cities fail to deliver transportation? And I'm not only talking about historic city centers, for which answer is probably old plans, but new cities fail too. How come? What usually goes wrong?

>>953568
i hope you get hit by a train next time you ride your bike

>>955335
It's a crank degree

>>966166
>What usually goes wrong?
It's an emergent (mathematically chaotic) problem, so you can only "model" the outcomes, not exactly outright predict them.

Kinda like weather...

>>966191
But you do have approximately how many people will need to commute to a location as long as the zones remain the same. And I'm pretty sure a traffic department somewhere has all the number of commuters from different density zones. Why is it so hard to calculate the approximate amount of traffic with say 20% error?

>>966191
Addition to my post >>966208

Also the city traffic issues are usually chronic, in your analogy, climate remains the same so people adopt natural gas instead of electricity and stuff in colder regions. It still doesn't explain why municipalities can't do the road thing correctly.

>>966208
You'd have to model the entire metro area (since traffic can potentially come from anywhere) and then predict the next 30 year of growth. Not happening, especially because induced demand can throw all of your estimates way off, potentially -before- the road you're designing even gets finished.

Even if you could model it successfully, it wouldn't matter. Traffic is the inevitable result of American-style cities. You can't make the roads big enough to accommodate all of the cars; it's just a really space-inefficient method of transportation.

Also the suburban collector-arterial road style makes for bad traffic too. It makes traffic easier to model, since it limits the number of paths between two areas, but it concentrates traffic onto a few roads, which will clog up guaranteed. Then they spend a lot of money widening the road and adding signal phases and multiple turn lanes to make a giant mess of cars, when urban, well-connected roads would've handled it much more gracefully.

>>966266
This is something I can't get my head around. Say that you are designing a freeway, with at most I guess 100 exits. I don't see why you cannot model this. Number of cars which will join from each intersection is just a linear function of the type of zone next to it and the size of the zone. I model circuits which have non-linear parameters and have millions of elements. And honestly circuits operate similarly in cases. So I want to believe that they actually know what they are doing.

I completely agree that traffic is the result of the lifestyle of people who live in the city but I don't think it's acceptable to say that it wouldn't be space efficient to let these people move around easily. They can at least make freeways that don't have 5 mph average, if this is the result maybe there is no point to make freeways, maybe you should disturb the traffic through larger avenues which have 7.5 mph average with all the crossings and lights included.

I still don't understand how they fail so miserably so consistently. I mean give me data on which cars enter the highway from which point and leave the highway at which point for a year or two and I can tell you the missing link in the road system. Why don't they do it? Is it lack of funding, space or what is it that prevents modern cities from having an acceptable way of transportation during rush hour?

>>966352
What you're not getting is that traffic engineers do this analysis. There's a book called the Trip Generation Manual, which is a big book of how much traffic to expect for any given land use. The numbers are typically higher than reality. The problem is that land use is constantly changing. A subdivision has very different numbers from a farm, and a bread factory has very different numbers from a car factory. They might build a mall in one place, which kills the mall 2 miles away, and now the traffic is going to a completely different place. A school district starts going downhill, and now wealthy residents depart for a newer town. Working class residents display different traffic patterns from wealthy ones. Could you do your complex circuit analysis if the value of your components was constantly changing in unpredictable ways? I doubt it.

And that's assuming that it's possible to accommodate demand, and frequently it isn't. You can't build 16-lane highways everywhere, and you can't dump 8 lanes of traffic onto downtown streets without causing a giant snarl. Big boulevards can be faster, but not by much. They're just much less obnoxious for the area it runs through.

And if you manage to get enough capacity to handle the traffic, then someone will build a new town at the edge of the metro area and eat up all that capacity.

>>966375
>Could you do your complex circuit analysis if the value of your components was constantly changing in unpredictable ways? I doubt it.
Unrelated but that actually summarizes what I'm doing right now.

Yeah, I get what you mean, and I agree.

>>966352
>I don't see why you cannot model this.
You can, but it's more like a fluid dynamics problem, and those are furiously difficult.
Also, if junctions are too close together then their traffic flows interact and that causes more congestion.

>>966171
Why do you say that? The urban planning jobs I do see look pretty neat with decent pay and steady prospects but it's difficult to see how often they open up. That or GIS looks fun but again it's difficult to see where jobs are open.

>>966434
They are not difficult, just tedious, and computers are good at calculating tedious things that includes finite element methods. Also I can think of easier ways to model traffic as circuits with discrete elements, instead of using a finite element method. Because after all you don't really care about the traffic between intersections, because there's nothing you can do about it, they have no choice. It is possible to model their behavior as fluid but there's no point discrete model would be accurate enough. It's kinda like electromagnetic simulation vs circuit simulation, yes you do need em sim for high frequency circuits but there's no need if you are only interested at voltage at nodes.

So I see that fluid dynamics is a closer model, but I don't see why anyone would like to use it.

>>955335

one decent fire is all it takes

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Actual town is Northampton Pennsylvania. Really fucking small. The city that's associated with my town is Allentown Pennsylvania. 3rd biggest city in PA and we still don't have a rail service.

http://seattletransitblog.com/2016/06/08/seattle-is-the-tortoise-portland-the-hare/

>tfw neighbourhood train station where I live was supposed to be converted from a surface commuter rail line into an underground light rail with a all day head way of 10 minutes
>project got axed and moved to another part of the city
>would have made me never more than 25 minutes exactly from downtown (5m walk+10 max wait+ 10 min train ride)
>Now i have to ride a shitty bus for 15-20 minutes to reach a metro station

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>>966578
aforementioned downtown in 2020

>>966569
It's not dumb to build light rail along freight right-of-way, especially if they were former passenger/interurban corridors that originally ran to suburban towns. It's also not unreasonable that a mid-sized city in the 80s-90s built surface rail in the downtown, and utilized ways to improve LRV throughput as ridership grows incrementally, like Houston's transit mall. Eventually there will be propositions to bury the downtown trunk in a tunnel, like German cities are doing with Stadtbahn, and the ridership levels will rise enough to make this investment justified. Seattle was geography-constrained like San Francisco from the beginning, didn't have a plethora of usuable freight RoW or effective highway networks at that, and densely urbanized right into the 80s such that a tunnel was the only reasonable option much like Muni's Market St subway. I'm just saying ridership probably wouldn't be as spectacular if you placed the DSTT in a typical Sunbelt light rail city today.

Cities are hell, fuck 'em

>>960238
This, there was so much horse shit certain scientists predicted a breakdown in urban civilization by 1950 because they couldn't shovel it away soon enough.
Then the internal combustion engine was invented.

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>>953557
We're working on it. It now even features 3 light rail lines passing through it plus some dedicated bicycle lanes.

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>>968854
We've also begun construction of a BRT in the uptown area.

>>968858
It still a giant road with towers-in-parks alongside.

>>968854
>This is how you keep land prices low for developers while the city size catches up with it over half a century

>>955678
copenhagen suburb

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>>968858
I hope those BRT-buses are electric.

>>969120
No I don't think they are. The local metro authority wanted it to be a light rail, but the powerful anti-rail lobby didn't want one, so they ended up compromising with dedicated bus lanes. One day it will likely be a light rail, but not for a long time.

>>966578
Can you not take the commuter train, pal?

>>958752
>towers in the park
>not towers on a podium
>not towers directly next to the street
plebian choice

>tfw your city is constantly hailed as one of the best in the world but outside the nice looking centre it's full of low density single family homes or low density 60s apartment buildings and it's infested with NIMBYs and some of the most severe rent control in the world

at least our bike infrastructure is the best in the world

>>972063
Amsterdam or Copenhagen?

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>>958757
>>972027
Here's more.

This is located along Burhmanthorpe Road. It's out of frame on the bottom left corner in >>958752.

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>>972149
Also this along Hurontario Street.

>>972150
>>972149
fug I'm gonna have to go by these every day

why is this city so ugly

>>972130
Probably an Australian city like Melbourne or Sydney.

>>972176
No reasonable australian would ever claim any of our cities remotely near "best bike infrastructure in the world"

t. australian

http://www.startribune.com/like-your-car-then-you-ll-like-the-development-happening-around-southdale/384286841/

A local tribute to the automobile. Are the comments in your local papers about urban developments like transit hopelessly depressing?

>>953698
>those 30 story condos right next to single family homes

being a north American is suffering

>>953698
I got a job here recently at a business park. Its either an hour long commute from Toronto or live in this nightmare. Its brutal

>>955335
this picture triggers me so much when people post it as examples of urban planning

>>955561
I visited boston recently, and the urban core is fantastic. Walking along the freedom trail was great and they have a surprisingly competent transit system

If I had to move anywhere in the states, it would be there or new york

>>973749
because what I really want in a community is, it's gotta look cool from an airplane

>>958991
>NJ is one of my favorite states
>I love the people
>the little towns

Nigger what the fuck even. No one likes NJ, not even the people who live there. That's why they all pretend to be from philly or nyc. There are no "little towns," there's chains of strip malls and housing developments clumped into loose zones, and once in a while some marsh or pine barren.

> And your drivers keep right and pass left.

More bullshit. Both lanes are jam full of traffic at all hours, and the people who pass do so at 90 mph and weave in and out. Have you EVER driven in jersey?

If I could describe jersey in one phrase, it would be, "A 100 mile traffic jam."

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Orestad in Copenhagen, Denmark.

>>973814
more towers-in-parks, fucks sake

Is their an urban plan to remove urban youths?

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>>973752
>I visited boston recently
>they have a surprisingly competent transit system

>>973907
>"urban youths"

1776 was a mistake

>>960074
Good Shit
This is where I got my first introduction to the concept of city planning.
>http://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20131204.php#.V3QSjvkrKM8

>>973842
But at least there's a metro running through it. It's elevated in that part.

>>972238
>reasonable australian
Your putting those words together amuses me.

>>974153
Oh I didn't notice that, looked like a highway at first glance, that's better. Although the development could still be much more dense

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>>973814
cute how this and all other buildings in the same block are lower to the side nearer to the low rise area

>urban planning general
what
the
fuck

I've tried numerous times in the past to make these threads, and every time they were deleted because it isn't "/n/"

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I have to do a senior paper (20 pages) to get my degree. I want to do it on something /n/ or urban planning related. Any ideas or suggestions? I'm from the Twin Cities if any bros have some local ideas.

>>974729
Where is that?

>>974757
Might be Chicago

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>>956516

>implying Tokyo's rail isn't completely fucked sideways

>>974919
been there its actually really fucking good, it has gates were people stand in line nothing like in the US where people croad the doors and there are no small gates covering the tracks

>>974927


Taipei's Rail >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Tokyo

Taipei's rail is literally the best thing I have ever seen.

>Contactless cards since 2008 for all convenience stores, rail lines, basically every chain store ever
>Automatic doors that open with the trains
>Civilized queuing (Right side goes in, left side goes out)
>Elevated monorail throughout the whole city, goes everywhere, pretty quiet, great views
>Connects to high-speed rail and bus systems that go across the entire island
>No need for a car at all, u-bike and gogoro for other modes of transportation.
>All signs are in english as well as chinese
>Announcements in english, taiwanese and chinese
>MRT even includes a gondola line to the zoo over mountains

>pics related
http://i.imgur.com/bCPmBme.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Taipei_Metro_Jiantan_Station.jpg
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jaylotw/27442618772/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

>rural stations are open air, give great views of the mountains
https://www.flickr.com/photos/t102141144/15261379729/

>>966352
The only thing is that you're thinking that politicians are trying to solve the traffic problems and failing.

They are not.
When you open a highway, you know exactly how many cars will be able to use it and at what point it will clog.
This is how they do their headlines like "XYZ highway will improve 5000 people's lives"

The thing is that they already know it will clog from the beginning.
They simply don't care. Its better to build a highway because you "care" about your voters than do something less popular that will solve the problem.

>>974763
>>974757
Navy Pier several decades ago.

>>966482
I'm a Human Geography student and planning to do a joint GIS master by four Dutch universities. The career prospects seem to be pretty good.

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Dense but short

>>953587
Because they were built by believers.

>>953550
You should play "Cities in Motion" (first game with all expansion packs), "Cities in Motion 2" and then "Cities:Skylines". Taking time to roam around those traffic simulations and looking how the traffic flows through differently planned intersection, then making changes and seeing how it affects the traffic, really helps to learn a lot. The first game of Cities in Motion may look a bit outdated, but due to it's limited possibilities you will face more challenges since you can't simply draw a new lane anywhere you feel like, then you have to use what you have to solve congestions. Traffic planning isn't exactly part of the gameplay itself in CiM, but you can open a downloaded city in the map editor, then make changes and see how it works out.

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>>955335
opinions?

>>971793
No, i cant, unless I'm going during commuting hours. It comes like 1-2 times in between 9AM and 4PM, fucking bullshit

>>974934
you just describbed tokyo's transit, just replace chinese with japanese, all your pic look like somewhere in tokyo

>>974919
you should use a map that doesnt cover 1000 km square

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>>975842
Increase walkability with through-streets and alleys - vehicle access not required so width can be approximately 2 meters. Pathways should extend into surrounding parkland to increase usage and for further expansion. Reduce pedestrian traffic along areas with heavy vehicular traffic, but consider building bridges or tunnels to ease access between the two semicircles.

Circles are not very efficient and are difficult to reclaim for higher density growth, so a grid (or mostly rectilinear layout) would be a better investment.

>>975851
yes yes yes :)

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>>955335
Terrible design. The person with the worst accessibility to the park happens to live right next to it.

>>975848

with one difference:
http://web.metro.taipei/img/E/metrotaipeimap.jpg vs
http://www.tokyometro.jp/en/subwaymap/pdf/routemap_en.pdf

of course not to say Tokyo's transit isn't an engineering marvel, it's just so bloated that it can take hours for travel across areas in Tokyo (or so I've heard, never really used it).

Also, Taipei (2 million daily ridership) vs Tokyo (almost 7 million daily ridership), so I understand why Tokyo's transit is the way that it is, also Tokyo is probably denser and larger than Taipei anyways.

The average speed of Taipei's railway is 34 km/h, but I can't really find any statistics on Tokyo's railway except for a webpage with every single statistic split into different excel 97 files...

Nice info dump by Taipei's mrt: google "taipei mrt 2014 annual report"

So, what makes the best benchmark for efficency? Average speed isn't necessarily the best since some cities are denser than others, same with total track length or number of stations/lines and ridership can just be a reflection on the city population...

What makes a metro better than another one?

(sorry 4chan won't let me post urls)

>>975893

huh I guess that worked, here's the taipei mrt report in case anyone is interested in numbers:
http://english.metro.taipei/public/Attachment/583115232012.pdf

>>966166
Transit expansion requires a lot of planning and are big projects. People suck at big projects.

>>953698
Ugh fuck Mississauga. I don't know how I grew up in that shithole without picking up a meth habit.

>>956518
Toronto was basically created by giving parcels of land to wealthy people, those wealthy people then kind of laid roads haphazardly along their properties. That's why it's just a bunch of large blocks with discontinuous streets inside each block.

>>972149
Mmmm. yes. What Mississauga needs, more empty fields of grass no one goes on.

Along the sides of roads, the medians of roads, in front of buildings, surrounding parking lots, little islands in the parking lots.

Fuck Mississauga.

>>975893
Its really hard to compare one city to another with stats alone, as you said, almost 7 million daily ridership , but that was only for Tokyo Metro, thats only one of many compagnie, and only have subway, JR has a much higher daily ridership in the greater tokyo area but no subway. I read there is 40 million daily ridership in the greater tokyo area.

You can usualy get from one place to another with 1 transfer, for exemple, you can get from tokyo skytree which is kind of in the suburb in the east to shinjuku which is kind to the west of the center of tokyo in 35 min, 2 line, 14 stations.

>>975851
Ne'er-do-wells will congregate in those alleys and intimidate people, causing complaints. Then the alleys will be bricked up.

Anyone in transport planning? What's it like as a career?

>>976077
I'm also curious. I wonder how hard it is to get into the field from a liberal arts angle rather than a civil engineering degree.

>>976077
The other day I did one of those online 'what career should you consider' bs quizes that you had to do in highschool, and it had "Transport Planner" as top option.

I was kinda baffled about how it decided that, but it's true I have been taking interest in my city's transport recently..

>>976431
That's the standard way as far as I know.

>>976552
liberal arts is standard or STEM is standard?

I bought two textbooks by Vukan Vuchic and there is some good math in them.

>>976599
now you know why American transport planning is awful

>>976627
because they use maths? I don't follow.

tbf I've take a geography course called "Numerical and Spatial Analysis" which was pretty maths intendive. I think a lot of GIS courses can be maths intensive.

>>976633
because STEM=autistic

>>974718
we have a long-running one every 4-6 months, it seems, in all the years I've been coming here. didn't know they were sometimes pruned for not being /n/, that sucks.

>>977298
I've made two of these including this one, the last one was about 5 months ago I think, and neither were deleted

What do you guys think about developments like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVeANzazDNg

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very car-centric city with ridiculous levels of urban sprawl. it seems like people are starting to realize this, and are taking steps to change it though.

>>978071
It's USC, so it's still in the ghetto.

>>979508
worth noting though, it's hard to make a city walkable when it regularly gets down to -30C in the winter

>>979514
I finally got my driver's license when I was 20 because I didn't want to wait at the bus stop in that kind of weather.

Can someone explain to me how some central cities are able to swallow up their suburbs while others are relatively small compared to their metros?

For example Jacksonville somehow managed to swallow up most of the county and the city is the 8th biggest but the metro is the 41st. Were there just no suburbs to stop them from growing?
Compare that to Minneapolis which is the 46th biggest city but the 18th biggest metro.
Did cities like Houston just not have any suburbs to stop them from gobbling up land? Are state laws the reason some regions have big cities like that?
Not expecting answers to everything; more of just a pondering thought I've never seen explained to me.

>>980407
Every city/metro region has a unique story: some regions are fragmented because many small cities grew concurrently (Los Angeles), or because they had a tradition of municipal independence (Denver), while others are more unified because of geographic necessity (Boston), and then there are the rare outliers that have been successful in the political play to annex their suburbs (Jacksonville).

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best city

>>979514
>hard to make a city walkable when it regularly gets down to -30C in the winter
Montreal doesn't have a problem with walkability. Just don't be fucking wimps.

Any of you guys stay up to date with developments in your area?

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R8 my city

>>980927
>asphalt wastes of space
>one- or two-story homes spread out non-compactly
>looks like no bike paths
America/10

>>980939
Why the fuck would a medium sized town in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere in Montana have tall buildings or otherwise be dense?

>>980943
That's 6 miles from denver. You might want to tone down the knowitall faggotry

>>973918
whats wrong with boston? granted I only rode it during rush hour once and it was brutal

>>975912
also lots of disconnected villages amalgamating over hundreds of years

>>976077
I interned in transport policy. I got to work on provincial cycling policy. Lots of researching best practices, securing funding, stakeholder engagement. Very different from planning on a city level but I still found it extremely rewarding

>>979514
its hard to be walkable when your city is full of pussies

t. montreal

>>980927
>city

>>966503
are you fucking serious? is there any SEPTA presence at all there?

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Here's my take on a town/city I would personally live in.

>>981711
NOPE! Only Lanta buses. No terminal for them at all. All the stops are sign posts with a number. And the closest rail link is in Lansdale PA.

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>>955957
>Old Paris was supposed to be a medieval maze until Napoleon said "fuck this" and commissioned an urban planner, gave him carte blanche, and then destroyed everything that didn't fit the plan and had all the infra re-built in the plushest way possible.
>>956003
>Haussman went back to Paris and wanted to do this exact thing, pitched it to the Napoleons, and we don't know if he added this part or if they imagined it themselves, but it would work GREAT for mobilizing armies and marching them down the streets to suppress uprisings. Because good luck getting troops through the maze fast.

It was Emperor Napoleon III (1848-1870), the guy who also invaded Mexico and lost to Bismark's Prussia.

>>980897
As much as I can. There's a local blog and forum that covers local news (streets.mn) and then I get a daily email at work with local government news (I work for a regional government.)

Great thread

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>We're living in the timeline where our ubran planners sat on their asses for 40 years
we need to go back

>>982150
We also managed to make some pretty shitty decisions as well
>Eglinton West Subway gutted from Pearson to Mt.Dennis then cancelled altogether
>Sheppard Subway gutted to the current 5 stop stub, still managed to survive because Lastman was a madman
>Let the province black mail us into the SRT instead of the originally proposed LRT from Kennedy to Malvern (that was already under construction I might add)
>said SRT shit fest killed the Etobicoke LRT from Kipling to Pearson, Etobicoke has never recovered transit wise
>Extended the YUS to Downsview under the pretext the Sheppard Line would make it there
>Extended the YUS to Vaughan because muh vote grab
>Extending the BD to STC because muh suburbs, muh votes
>Downtown Councillors shit on the DRL in the 80s while Suburban Councillors are all for it
>Suburban Councillors shit on the DRL now while Downtown Councillors are all for it
>Let Rob Ford poison the transit well by pitting Suburbs against Downtowners and LRT vs Subway

We can atleast be thankful the Eglinton Crosstown and Finch West LRT's are being built since the City pretty much has zero authority over the plans anymore.

>>982150
>tfw no one wants to bother extending line 2 north from STC even though McCowan Rd up to Hwy 7 or 16th Ave is eternally congested

>>982246
And it probably won't ever make it north of STC since the report that went to executive council states that the Subway should not go beyond STC since any stations north of STC would draw development away from the Town Center, specifically McCowan and Sheppard. As well GO RER/SmartTrack having stations at Agincourt and on Finch will complicate matters. The report does instead insist that the station at STC be on an east/west alignment for extension into eastern Scarborough. The final alignment will be developed by an outside third party firm so will see what happens. My money is on the McCowan alignment being dropped in favor of Brimley due to cost.

>>982181
>extending YUS to vaughan
as a filthy suburbanite I wholeheartedly support this
finch subway extension when?
But what they should really do is add a couple of stations along highway 7 from Richmond Hill Centre to Vaughan Centre and make the YUS a loop

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>>960053
>>973813
you must be a PA driver, compared to other east coast states, the njtp has probably one of the best sections on 95. You have car lanes separated from truck lanes, and even on peak hours, it's usually in good shape until you hit woodbridge.
>tfw no one likes NJ

>>979508
muh ford f-150 bought with tar sands monies

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>>982150
>tfw because of separatism we got cucked out of this

Kuala Lumpur

Apparently the previous prime minister(Badawi) and the one before him(Mahathir) was akin to Tim Cook is to Steve Jobs.

When Mahathir had commissioned to build a motorway from northern to southern Malaysia, it speeds up traffic, improves logistics as well as enabling better mobility for Malaysian, and the motorway had contributed an estimated up to 500 billion dollars since its operation 20 years ago.

When his successor took the helm, what he did was instead of improving other modes of transport, he commisioned wholesale motorway construction, even in places where it is unnecessary, increasing sprawl, thus increasing the demand for private cars and bikes. Not only that, he even cancelled the train electrification and double tracking project as well as other related public transit projects (LRT, Metros, etc),

At the end of his term, while Malaysia has one of the best road in asia, he held back public transport development for 5 years, something we're still paying for until today

>>979508
Highway roads connect straight into local neighborhood roads. No main street travel corridors. This is why your traffic is shit.

>>982361
shiiieeeeeettttt

>>980943
Because it's a small city.

>>980897
I do what I can, but the area is hell-bent on building more warehouses because a regional economist keeps telling local leaders "that's what the market is giving you".

>>953550
get gud at systems theory

>>982317
The Finch Extension won't happen until the DRL makes it to Sheppard, regardless of what York Region thinks.

>>982361
In all honestly, a system that compact simply doesn't seem like it would pay for itself.

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http://www.petaluma360.com/news/5799658-181/petaluma-streets-pegged-for-diet

I don't doubt that road diets could be a good thing, but I would prefer that the roads and existing bike paths be repaved.

>>982424
What field mostly does this? Trying to find classes at my uni for it. Looks STEMish. Worth taking for a liberal arts background?

>>983661
C.S. (applied mathematics)

This will only become increasingly important as cars and other modes of transportation become automatized

>>956003
>Haussman went back to Paris and wanted to do this exact thing, pitched it to the Napoleons, and we don't know if he added this part or if they imagined it themselves, but it would work GREAT for mobilizing armies and marching them down the streets to suppress uprisings. Because good luck getting troops through the maze fast.

it was also about suppressing revolts in paris
whenever there was a revolt they would barricade off the small winding streets but with the giant and straight avenues it was much harder

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>>982402
>>983511
This was because of the progressiveness and optimism that gripped the Canadian political and social landscape during the 60s, things were going great and if Montreal's growth trends had stayed the same or accelerated, our metropolitan region would be pushing 8-9 million people instead of the 3.8 million it now has. We have 4 metro lines currently, and this map has 8. It's not nonsensical to think that our metro network would be 2x to 3x times as large if our population was 2x as large and our economy was neck and neck with Toronto's.

However, because of the domestic terrorism, oppressive language laws, 2 referendum scares and subsequent anglo-flight to the GTA it killed the Montreal economy and this never materialized. It honestly depresses me to think of what Montreal once was and what the francophones did to remove the anglos from power. Its literally a first world Zimbabwe, remove the efficient "oppressive" power structure in a frenzy of nationalism (quiet revolution) and anglos get poorer, francophones get richer but everyone on a whole is poorer.

Pic related, Montreal at its peak.

>>984282
>Montreal at its peak
>doesn't have 1000 de la Gauchetiere
pick one

>>984282
Even with the boom in the GTA the City and the Province still managed to fuck it up here in Toronto. Shit just got worse after

Amalgamation. GTHA province when?
>tfw it almost happened in the 50's.

>>984467

>Hypothetical GTHA Province/Territory

The rest of Ontario would probably be eager for GTHA to leave at first due to "HURR DURR fuck Toronto and GTHA", then they finally realize that GTHA basically contributed way more into Ontario's coffers that they could ever possibly do. GTHA would probably tell the rest of Ontario to pound sand once they regretted the decision

>>982150
>wanting subways built out to every suburban corner of the city

you're part of the problem

>>953550
learn as much about GIS and data management as you can. I'm trying to break into planning and these are the top things people are looking for.

>>984830
The urban area has to expand somehow. It's better to give the suburbs some incentive to densify than to wait around for it to happen of its own accord.

>>984852
>Thinking the burbs will willingly densify

You have to force it upon them. We know that once the Subway is exteneded to the Scarborough Town Centre, Scarborough will fight tooth and nail to prevent densification. Look at Kennedy, for nearly 30 years its been the terminus point for 2 lines (soon to be 3), at least 10 bus routes and a GO Train station and yet that entire area is nothing but single family homes and strip malls. The burbs (save for North York) have always wanted that "Big City Transit" without the "Big City Development".

>>984862
So force it on them. Something's got to give. There's no greenfield for the city to expand into, so it's either make the city super-dense, or expand medium density into the suburbs. Or just let the city get more and more expensive.

>>954152

Obvious answer is San Fransisc. It's a grid with character, uniqueness.

anyone /city building games/ here ?

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>>985216
right here, famalam
though I'm shit at them, this right here is probably the biggest one I ever built though I've since tragically lost this save file

>>985292
>polluted bay
You could have avoided that mate. Very nice set up otherwise. How's traffic though?

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>>985410
I don't see how people don't have poop lakes and rivers without using mods. I think traffic in this city was mostly fine but sometimes got congested over the bridges near the bay, which i why i had to build like four of them.

I'm playing on this save now. Traffic across this bridge is usually congested as fuck because of farms across the river. Hate the way farms work in this game

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>>985410
Also, here's a better view of the road infrastructure
>muh spaghetti

>>982567
>to Sheppard
>not to just Danforth/Pape
aheheheheheh

>>984871
maybe the suburbs should actually pay for their own infrastructure and services. Old city of toronto is effectively subsidizing single lot houses with pricey utilities, services, and transportation infrastructure.

Amalgamation was a mistake

who /strongtowns/ here? Its urban planning concepts are pretty accessible for people outside of the urban planning and engineering fields

>>>strongtowns.org

>>986019
Even before Amalgamation Metro was controlled by the suburbs. I don't really know how we could get around that. Add to the fact that Metro wasn't aloud to create/implement municipal taxes (a problem that still exists) and things become pretty stupid.

>>986020
more like /urban kchose/ amirite

>>986019
My point is that the city (the urban area) needs to expand, or else prices are going to keep going up. That means the first-ring suburbs are going to need to densify from a suburban form to an urban one. Among other things, that requires good transit.

>>986112
>My point is that the city (the urban area) needs to expand, or else prices are going to keep going up.
Prices going up is the thing that will drive the expansion. The landowners in the ring around the urban area will be VERY keen on the expansion since they'll make a lot of money out of the change.

>>985216
I've never really graduated from playing Sim City 2000.
I've impulsed bought Cities in Motion, Cities Skylines and Sim CIty 4 but haven't installed any yet.

>>985465
>>985292
What game is that?

>>954185
this, nice """""designs"""" come about through natural efficiency

>>986622
That'd be cities skylines

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pls r8 my city

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>>986942
what it looks like from the river

>>985465
>>986622
>>986751
Looks really pretty. Is that the best game around?

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Here is what NOT to do when urban planning, build Sacramento. I live in a gain the sea having state, namely California. Do I EVER get to see the damage thing? No! Look at a map of California, no road from Sacramento goes just FUCKING WEST! Also traffic jams!

https://youtu.be/sf-TASjeywo

>>988803
Do you EVER review your typing before you post? No! Look at the autocorrected abortion that is your post. none of the grammar makes ANY FUCKING SENSE! Also lazy!

>>955554
>streetcars
>not swan boats

>>953589
what city is this?

>>955335
I do. But I can not answer your question. It depends a bit what you want to do. I have heard people with good education say that can't find a job, but lots of people from my programme which is very theoretical and human oriented have related jobs in very different fields. So I assume studying a theoretical bachelor followed by a more focused masters is key?