Urban Smart Growth in Cities THE WALKABILITY THEORY
Urban Smart Growth – The Walkability Introduction
Problem
Analysis
Results
What’s Smart Growth
Principles
How other cities did it
Why we need it
How to do it
Cairo as an example
Urban Smart Growth Growth is smart when it gives us great communities, with more choices and personal freedom, good return on public investment, greater opportunity across the community, a thriving natural environment, and a legacy we can be proud to leave our children and grandchildren.
Smart Growth WHAT IS IT ? WHY WE NEED IT ? WHO DID IT ?
What’s Urban Smart Growth ? An approach within the planning, environmental, and development community trying to change the development occurs in our cities to give sustainable communities, with more choices and personal freedom, good return on public investment and thriving natural environment.
1- development = more compact, interconnected, mixed use patterns.
Enhance of Quality life Preserve Open Spaces , Natural Resources
2- more vibrant communities, healthier land and has proven to be more sustainable. 3- reduce the number of miles that people travel by vehicle every day 4- use less energy overall than more sprawling communities.
The effort is launched by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1996
Promote Economic Development
Smart Growth Create a Range of House Opportunities
Create a Livable Communities Promote Alternative Transportation
Why We Need it ? The problems we face now
Increasing need for more parking spaces
Places where you only Work
Places where you only live
Wider streets are not safe
Places where you only Shop
Your landscape turns into a mess
Why We Need it ? The problems we face now
People become more lazy and unhealthy
We face traffic jams everyday
Why we need smart growth ?
create more choices for residents, workers, visitors, children
create new neighborhoods and maintain existing ones that are attractive, convenient, safe, and healthy
residents to drive Less distances between jobs and homes
Communities around the country are looking for ways to get the most out of new development and to maximize their investments.
Principles of Smart Growth 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Mix Land Uses: Take Advantage of Compact Building Design: Create a Range of Housing Opportunities and Choices. Create Walkable Neighborhoods: The Walkability Theory Provide a Variety of Transportation Choices Foster Distinctive, Attractive Communities with a Strong Sense of Place Preserve Open Space, Farmland, Natural Beauty and Critical Environmental Areas 7. Strengthen and Direct Development Towards Existing Communities 8. Make Development Decisions Predictable, Fair and Cost Effective. 9. Encourage Community and Stakeholder Collaboration in Development Decisions.
Principles of Smart Growth Walkability For a place to be walkable, most of the necessities for daily living should be within a 10-min. walking radius (1,000–1,200 yards; about 1,000 m). Designs should be “pedestrian friendly.”
Connectivity The space should be stitched with an interconnected street grid, with a hierarchy of roads from boulevards to streets to alleys/walkways.
Mixed-Use and Diversity Within the neighborhood, there should be a mix of shops, offices, apartments, and
houses.
Mixed Housing The mix of housing in a neighborhood should include a range of sizes and prices to encourage a diverse mix of people living in and using the neighborhood.
Quality Architecture and Urban Design The physical space should generate a sense of place and a feeling of beauty.
Traditional Neighborhood Structure The space should be designed so there is a recognizable center and edges, with public space at the center and a range of densities within a 10-min walk. The highest
Mix Land Uses 1.
Achieves better places to live. By putting residential, commercial and recreational uses in close proximity to one another, alternatives to driving, such as walking or biking, become viable.
2.
provide a more diverse and sizable population and commercial base for supporting viable public transit.
3.
Enhance the vitality and perceived security of an area by increasing the number and activity of people on the street.
4.
It attracts pedestrians and helps revitalize community life by making streets, public spaces and pedestrian-oriented retail become places where people meet.
Mix Land Uses 5.
Contribute economic benefits. For example, siting commercial areas close to residential areas can raise property values, helping increase local tax receipts. Meanwhile, businesses recognize the benefits associated with locations that attract more people, increasing economic activity.
In today’s service economy, communities find that by mixing land uses, they make neighborhoods attractive to workers who are considering quality-of-life-criteria as well as salary to determine where they will settle. Smart growth provides a means and a basis for communities to alter existing planning structures that don’t allow mixed land uses.
Mix Land Uses Office
Schools
Retail
Recreation
Dining
Schools
Entertainment Worship Housing
Parking
Create a Range of Housing Opportunities and Choices.
Not everyone has the same housing wants or needs. Some singles prefer to rent small apartments, young couples need starter homes, families need room to grow, some empty nesters look to downsize close to services and elders may need a caring community. The citizens of our communities should be able to live close to their families and friends even as their life-stages and needs change. Community workers should be able find homes they can afford within the community.
Our neighborhoods should offer a range of options: single-family houses of various sizes, duplexes, garden cottages, and condominiums, affordable homes for low or fixed-income families, “granny flats� and accommodations for dependent elders.
Create Walkable Neighborhoods: The Walkability Theory THE TEN STEPS OF WAIKABILITY The Useful Walk Step l: Put Cars in Their place
Step 2: Mix the Uses Step 3: Get the Parking Right Step 4: Let Transit Work The Safe Walk Step 5: Protect the Pedestrian
Step 6: Welcome Bikes The Comfortable Walk Step 7: Shape the Spaces Step 8: Plant Trees
The Interesting Walk Step 9: Make Friendly and Unique Faces Step 10: Pick Your Winners 253
Create Walkable Neighborhoods Foster Distinctive, Attractive Communities with a Strong Sense of Place
A Reason to Walk Balance of Use
6. Preserve Open Space, Farmland, Natural Beauty and Critical Environmental Areas
A Safe Walk Reality & Perception
A Comfortable Walk Space & Orientation
An Interesting Walk Signs of Humanity
Create Walkable Neighborhoods Walkability Policies and Regulations Adopt Complete Streets or comparable standards Develop and implement a pedestrian master plan Design and execute Safe Routes to School programs
Adopt pedestrian friendly standards for sidewalk design Develop a traffic management (traffic calming) plan to
enhance pedestrian safety
Provide a Variety of Transportation Choices
The key to efficient transportation is to have multiple routes and types of transportation. In many places, we rely on highways and busy arterial streets to get from one place to another because there are few alternate routes. Then, when there’s traffic or an accident, we’re stuck. But when our streets are connected in a complete network, we can choose from many different routes to get from point A to point B. Streets should be designed not only to move cars but also to be safe and inviting for pedestrians, cyclists, and transit users. Such design means appropriate speeds, widths, and sidewalks, as well as buildings, trees, and even benches. Often, com-munities already have the basic infrastructure for people to get around without a car; they just need to make a few improvements so that it’s easier and more comfortable.
Foster Distinctive, Attractive Communities with a Strong Sense of Place
Walkability, beauty, sociability, and access to activi-ties are critical ingredients in designing for people. When these elements are brought together through careful, smart design, our communities become timeless places for people who want safety, convenience, and choices in how they get around and where they go.
Preserve Open Space, Farmland, Natural Beauty and Critical Environmental Areas
Newly established communities can also build on the past to create a lasting legacy. In Southlake, Texas, a growing suburb between Dallas and Fort Worth, the town square revives the old-time courthouse square pattern, the first time in a century that a Texas town has been built in this historic manner.
Strengthen and Direct Development Towards Existing Communities
Take Advantage of Compact Building Design individual buildings make more efficient use of land and resources. encouraging buildings to grow vertically rather than horizontally, incorporating structured rather than surface parking, communities can reduce the footprint of new construction, and preserve more greenspace.
This not only uses land efficiently, but it also protects more open land to absorb and filter rain water, reduce flooding and storm water drainage needs, and lower the amount of pollution washing into our streams, rivers and lakes. wider transportation choices, provides cost savings for localities. reduce air pollution and congestion recognize that minimum levels of density are required to make public transit networks viable. In addition, local governments find that, on a per-unit basis, it is cheaper to provide and maintain services like water, sewer, electricity, phone service and other utilities in more-compact neighborhoods than in dispersed communities. Research has shown that well-designed, compact New Urbanist communities that include a variety of house sizes and types command a higher market value on a per-square-foot basis than do those in adjacent conventional suburban developments. Increasing numbers of developments are successfully integrating compact design into community building efforts. This is happening despite current zoning practices that discourage compact design – such as those that require minimum lot sizes, or prohibit multi-family or attached housing – and other barriers, such as negative perceptions of “higher density” development.
How to create a walkable city A REASON TO WALK
A SAFE WALK
Mixed use building
Transportation Narrow streets
How to Create a walkable street
Transportation
The Curious Case of the City of Cairo ! WHAT ’S THE PROBLEM ? WHAT TO DO ? WHAT WE NEED ?
Cairo’s Main problem with Transit Greater Cairo is a dense, sprawling metropolis known for its daunting traffic jams. A lack of sufficient rapid transit options leads to jams full of microbuses and private cars on the many wide roads that crisscross the metropolitan area. To solve this problem, authorities in Cairo and Giza have begun to look to bus rapid transit (BRT) as a cost-effective means of expanding the rapid transit network in a short time frame.
Current Bus system It is especially important that the city’s public transport system avoid increasing the number of transfers that customers are required to make. Any intervention that adds a transfer in such a short trip is likely to increase overall travel time, even if a new mode of transport offers somewhat higher commercial speeds. Thus, a BRT service plan for the Faisal-Oraby and New Cairo corridors should improve speed and reliability while Existing bus (purple) and minibus (blue) routes in Greater minimising the need for transfers. A hybrid BRT system with a dedicated fleet of buses that Cairo. operate in the network of dedicated lanes and as well as service extensions can help meet these objectives. BRT routes must operate as “direct services” that travel a distance outside the dedicated BRT corridors to reach important destinations. In doing so, the system can offer one-seat journeys for as many customers as possible CTA bus routes that ply on Faisal Street
How to create BRT
Bus Rapid Transit station design requires including basic aspects like platforms, transition areas and integration infrastructure to access stations. The station design and size can vary based on demand. In general, BRT station design is largely a function of user requirements: • Comfort: Seats, leaning bars, and space for passenger movement • Safety: Adequate lighting, visible interiors • Accessibility: Minimal level differences and ramped access from street level • Aesthetics: Attractive to passengers, giving a sense of ownership • Provision of customer information: Both static and real-time
Sources http://smartgrowth.org/ www.tcchamber.org/newdesigns.php. www.thecottondistrict.net. www.ntba.net/towns_haile.html. www.portlandonline.com/planning Bus rapid transit for Greater Cairo: Prefeasibility assessment Institute for Transportation and Development Policy May 2015 What Makes a Great City 2016 Alexander Garvin
Thanks for Listening