Also discussed here: A Sustainable City With Cars and Low-Density Homes? It's Possible (Eric Jaffe The Atlantic, Jun. 28, 2013)
Today we review an article that addresses the biggest challenge to a carbon free society- sprawl, based on long commutes to widespread communities, fostered by the long era of cheap oil and gas. The proposed solution is to aim at small to mid-sized cities (under 100K) which restricts heavy polluting vehicles to the outer ring of the city and conserves the urban populated centre for low speed, less polluting modes of
transportation.
Key Quotes:
“car ownership is so desirable that any effort to address sustainability must embrace it, rather than defy it.”
“what's so pernicious about modern sprawl is not the cars themselves, per se, but their "high kinetic energy" — in simple terms, their size and speed.”
“find a way to dramatically lower the kinetic energy of personal travel while sustaining the advantages of personal, self-directed mobility and access to both urban and suburban living. … create two autonomous and universally accessible travel networks: one for fast-heavy vehicles, the other for low-speed, low-mass, transportation modes, including new designs of motorized vehicles.”
“People would live in small city clusters built around a town center replete with stores, offices, schools, public buildings, and parks. Traveling around town, residents would take the "light" road network. They would walk, bike, or drive tiny cars incapable of exceeded 25 mph. There would be no on-street parking at all. The general idea is to promote interaction and accessibility.”
“Conventional cars would travel the "heavy" road network out of town, mostly to commute elsewhere for work or shop at big box stores confined outside the city limits….Multi-family residential buildings would be situated closer to the center, with lower-density single-family units constructed toward the outer fringe. The towns themselves would be limited to populations of 50,000 to 100,000.”
“if the problems of urban sustainability had an easy answer, we probably would have already found it.”
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