Targeting Public Transit Riders

My deepest sympathies to the people of London, especially to loved ones of those killed in today's horrific attacks, and those who were injured.

Tragically, attacking a major world city's public transit network at rush hour guarantees a high casualty rate, because terrorists can be assured that buses, trolleys and trains will be densely packed with people. (It's the same reason that trams in Sarajevo were such a popular target of Serb snipers besieging the Bosnian capital).

Now, residents of cities throughout the Western world will naturally be more nervous about taking public transportation - as many Israelis have been for years because so many of their buses have been the target of suicide bombers. Attempts to search and screen passengers getting on city buses - the response to airline hijackings and the 9/11 attacks - appear largely impossible without bringing the system to a crawl.

Londoners have been used to the threat of terrorism for decades because of militant Irish separatist activities, but today's attacks sadly bring the danger to a new and more lethal level. London must grapple with the issue of keeping citizen trust in the safety of its public transportation network at a time when the city has been trying to get people out of their private cars by charging them to drive autos in key center districts. It will not be an easy task.

Another Problem With Using Eminent Domain For Grandoise Urban Renewal

I share the widespread outrage over a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing governments to take people's properties because they think some more upscale development would make better use of the land. But John Tierney points out another problem with the ruling: It enables (and perhaps even encourages) governments to embark on what are often bad projects - destroying existing neighborhoods to create a grand new planned environment.

Unfortunately, in many cases, the dramatic scale of such buildings and projects doom them to end up as soul-less hulks, replacing what could have been vibrant rejuvenated neighborhoods had existing buildings and streetscapes been improved instead of razed. Boston's Scollay Square experience is a case in point, replaced by the sweeping City Hall Plaza - where there's now pretty much universal agreement that changes are needed in the awful design in order to get people to actually utilize it.

Detroit's Renaissance Center is another example of a grand plan gone awry - it might have looked great on paper, but because the center is not human-scaled and not integrated with the nearby neighborhood, and fell far short of its promise.

Change For The Better: New York Responds To A Hate Crime

Two decades ago, a group of black men sought help in Howard Beach, N.Y. when their car broke down. Some white men responded by chasing the men into the path of an oncoming car; one was killed. The incident touched off heated racial unrest in New York.

Last week, a white man attacked a black man in the same neighborhood, fracturing his skull. Response to the incident is much different, according to the New York Times, with Rev. Al Sharpton praising city officials for their response instead of adding fuel to an already explosive situation.

Why? The city has changed. Then, African-Americans felt ignored or worse by the city's power structure, while "whites had been slowly losing their majority status in the city, and felt threatened as more neighborhoods hit a tipping point as minorities moved in. Crime, bolstered by the crack epidemic, was increasingly adding to the sense of insecurity about a city out of control. And a series of explosive events - crystallized by Bernhard Goetz's shooting of four black teenagers he thought were about to mug him on the subway - heightened festering tensions between the races. ... Sometime in the 1980's, New York became a majority-minority city. Those changes were reverberating politically."

Now, Queens has a black borough president. And where there was once widespread black mistrust of law enforcement, that is slowly changing. This year, a majority of the latest graduates of the Police Academy are from one minority group or another. ... In 2000, a Times poll found that only 3 percent of black voters in New York City said Mr. Giuliani cared about the needs and problems of people like them. In a Times poll completed last week, 51 percent of blacks said Mr. Bloomberg cared.

Crime is down, neighborhoods are being revitalized and the city is a calmer place. It's not a racial nirvana, but people are definitely getting along better. There's not full equality, but people have learned to share power. And when attacks happen, others in the community can work together to deal with the fallout, instead of tearing the social fabric apart.

What Should the ‘Gateway’ to Boston’s Theater District Look Like?

The Boston Redevelopment Authority has been wrestling with this question for 8 years now, according to the Boston Globe. And while one can appreciate their desire to get this important piece of property done right, 8 YEARS and they still can't even pick a design? Hello?

Now two more plans have been submitted - both, apparently, including "flashy Times Square-like electronic billboards." Hmmm. As a native New Yorker, I love the thrill and excitement of gaudy Times Square, but it works in part because of the human energy from great masses of people. However, the corner of Stuart and Tremont streets will not have anywhere near that magnitude of foot traffic. I fear flashy neon billboards will more likely make people think of Boston's theater district as a minor league of New York's - one that can't measure up - instead of creating energy and excitement. Big flashy billboards facing sparsely-populated streets are depressing.

Boston works so well because of its human scale. After 8 years, you'd think someone could come up with a design that takes advantage of this, instead of trying to do Broadway Lite.

Does housing belong in a major new building on the site? Interesting question. Good urban planning favors "mixed use" neighborhoods, but you might want housing adjacent to the main theater-district buildings and not actually in them.

Transforming a Suburban Center

"In one minute in Bethesda, I passed more [pedestrians] than I did in five hours in Columbia."

--University of Maryland professor Reid Ewing, comparing Columbia's designed-for-the-auto Town Center with Bethesda's walkable downtown

As I mentioned in an earlier post, there's a very simple way to see whether a community is walkable or not, and it doesn't require labor-intensive tasks like measuring and counting sidewalks. Just see if people are out walking. If they're not, there's a problem that needs to be addressed.

In Columbia, Md., "General Growth and the county are planning to transform the area into a bustling urban center...." the Baltimore Sun reports. "Ewing pointed out that Columbia has a number of barriers that discourage walking -- low residential density, long blocks, wide streets, poorly marked crosswalks, buildings set far back from streets and no benches along the sidewalks."

That's a good starter list for what discourages people from walking. Note that sidewalks exist in the town center, but the area is so poorly designed for walkability that no one actually wants to use them. "It's not walkable, it's very auto-oriented," Ewing explained.

A key part of the plan for Columbia is developing a 50+-acre parcel with businesses, residences, parking and open space. One planner involved in the project said the proposal will feature shorter street blocks, street-oriented buildings, well-marked crosswalks and additional sidewalks.

I'm not sure I buy the need for short blocks - avenue blocks in Manhattan are crowded with pedestrians, and they're pretty long. But I agree with the rest of the list - especially street-facing buildings, not set too far back. And with windows toward the street! Blank walls are rather off-putting for people on foot.

However, planners are also going to have to grapple with how to combine more walkability with easing traffic congestion, the article notes. But there are plenty of non-walkable places with impossible traffic - Los Angeles comes to mind. Well-designed walkable communities don't cause traffic problems because they're pedestrian-friendly. Forcing people to drive everywhere is also a problem.