Download or read book Strong Towns written by Charles L. Marohn, Jr. and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new way forward for sustainable quality of life in cities of all sizes Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Build American Prosperity is a book of forward-thinking ideas that breaks with modern wisdom to present a new vision of urban development in the United States. Presenting the foundational ideas of the Strong Towns movement he co-founded, Charles Marohn explains why cities of all sizes continue to struggle to meet their basic needs, and reveals the new paradigm that can solve this longstanding problem. Inside, you’ll learn why inducing growth and development has been the conventional response to urban financial struggles—and why it just doesn’t work. New development and high-risk investing don’t generate enough wealth to support itself, and cities continue to struggle. Read this book to find out how cities large and small can focus on bottom-up investments to minimize risk and maximize their ability to strengthen the community financially and improve citizens’ quality of life. Develop in-depth knowledge of the underlying logic behind the “traditional” search for never-ending urban growth Learn practical solutions for ameliorating financial struggles through low-risk investment and a grassroots focus Gain insights and tools that can stop the vicious cycle of budget shortfalls and unexpected downturns Become a part of the Strong Towns revolution by shifting the focus away from top-down growth toward rebuilding American prosperity Strong Towns acknowledges that there is a problem with the American approach to growth and shows community leaders a new way forward. The Strong Towns response is a revolution in how we assemble the places we live.
Download or read book The Car and the City written by Martin Wachs and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unique perspectives on the automobile's impact on urban life and the American city
Download or read book Fighting Traffic written by Peter D. Norton and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-01-21 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fight for the future of the city street between pedestrians, street railways, and promoters of the automobile between 1915 and 1930. Before the advent of the automobile, users of city streets were diverse and included children at play and pedestrians at large. By 1930, most streets were primarily a motor thoroughfares where children did not belong and where pedestrians were condemned as “jaywalkers.” In Fighting Traffic, Peter Norton argues that to accommodate automobiles, the American city required not only a physical change but also a social one: before the city could be reconstructed for the sake of motorists, its streets had to be socially reconstructed as places where motorists belonged. It was not an evolution, he writes, but a bloody and sometimes violent revolution. Norton describes how street users struggled to define and redefine what streets were for. He examines developments in the crucial transitional years from the 1910s to the 1930s, uncovering a broad anti-automobile campaign that reviled motorists as “road hogs” or “speed demons” and cars as “juggernauts” or “death cars.” He considers the perspectives of all users—pedestrians, police (who had to become “traffic cops”), street railways, downtown businesses, traffic engineers (who often saw cars as the problem, not the solution), and automobile promoters. He finds that pedestrians and parents campaigned in moral terms, fighting for “justice.” Cities and downtown businesses tried to regulate traffic in the name of “efficiency.” Automotive interest groups, meanwhile, legitimized their claim to the streets by invoking “freedom”—a rhetorical stance of particular power in the United States. Fighting Traffic offers a new look at both the origins of the automotive city in America and how social groups shape technological change.
Download or read book Autonorama written by Peter Norton and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2021-10-21 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving, historian Peter Norton argues that driverless cars cannot be the safe, sustainable, and inclusive "mobility solutions" that tech companies and automakers are promising us. The salesmanship behind the "driverless future" is distracting us from better ways to get around that we can implement now. Unlike autonomous vehicles, these alternatives are inexpensive, safe, sustainable, and inclusive. Norton takes the reader on an engaging ride--from the GM Futurama exhibit to "smart" highways and vehicles--to show how we are once again being sold car dependency in the guise of mobility. Autonorama is hopeful, advocating for wise, proven, humane mobility that we can invest in now, without waiting for technology that is forever just out of reach.
Download or read book Confessions of a Recovering Engineer written by Charles L. Marohn, Jr. and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover insider secrets of how America’s transportation system is designed, funded, and built – and how to make it work for your community In Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town, renowned speaker and author of Strong Towns Charles L. Marohn Jr. delivers an accessible and engaging exploration of America’s transportation system, laying bare the reasons why it no longer works as it once did, and how to modernize transportation to better serve local communities. You’ll discover real-world examples of poor design choices and how those choices have dramatic and tragic effects on the lives of the people who use them. You’ll also find case studies and examples of design improvements that have revitalized communities and improved safety. This important book shows you: The values of the transportation professions, how they are applied in the design process, and how those priorities differ from those of the public. How the standard approach to transportation ensures the maximum amount of traffic congestion possible is created each day, and how to fight that congestion on a budget. Bottom-up techniques for spending less and getting higher returns on transportation projects, all while improving quality of life for residents. Perfect for anyone interested in why transportation systems work – and fail to work – the way they do, Confessions of a Recovering Engineer is a fascinating insider’s peek behind the scenes of America’s transportation systems.
Download or read book The End of Automobile Dependence written by Peter Newman and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2015-08-11 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cities will continue to accommodate the automobile, but when cities are built around them, the quality of human and natural life declines. Current trends show great promise for future urban mobility systems that enable freedom and connection, but not dependence. We are experiencing the phenomenon of peak car use in many global cities at the same time that urban rail is thriving, central cities are revitalizing, and suburban sprawl is reversing. Walking and cycling are growing in many cities, along with ubiquitous bike sharing schemes, which have contributed to new investment and vitality in central cities including Melbourne, Seattle, Chicago, and New York. We are thus in a new era that has come much faster than global transportation experts Peter Newman and Jeffrey Kenworthy had predicted: the end of automobile dependence. In The End of Automobile Dependence, Newman and Kenworthy look at how we can accelerate a planning approach to designing urban environments that can function reliably and conveniently on alternative modes, with a refined and more civilized automobile playing a very much reduced and manageable role in urban transportation. The authors examine the rise and fall of automobile dependence using updated data on 44 global cities to better understand how to facilitate and guide cities to the most productive and sustainable outcomes. This is the final volume in a trilogy by Newman and Kenworthy on automobile dependence (Cities and Automobile Dependence in 1989 and Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence in 1999). Like all good trilogies this one shows the rise of an empire, in this case that of the automobile, the peak of its power, and the decline of that empire.
Download or read book The Urban Political Economy and Ecology of Automobility written by Alan Walks and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-07-25 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just how resilient are our urban societies to social, energy, environmental and/or financial shocks, and how does this vary among cities and nations? Can our cities be made more sustainable, and can environmental, economic and social collapse be staved off through changes in urban form and travel behaviour? How might rising indebtedness and the recent series of financial crises be related to automobile dependence and patterns of urban automobile use? To what extent does the system and economy of automobility factor in the production of urban socio-spatial inequalities, and how might these inequalities in mobility be understood and measured? What can we learn from the politics of mobility and social movements within cities? What is the role of automobility, and auto-dependence, in differentiating groups, both within cities and rural areas, and among transnational migrants moving across international borders? These are just some of the questions this book addresses. This volume provides a holistic and reflexive account of the role played by automobility in producing, reproducing, and differentiating social, economic and political life in the contemporary city, as well as the role played by the city in producing and reproducing auto-mobile inequalities. The first section, titled Driving Vulnerability, deals with issues of global importance related to economic, social, financial, and environmental sustainability and resilience, and socialization. The second section, Driving Inequality, is concerned with understanding the role played by automobility in producing urban socio-spatial inequalities, including those rooted in accessibility to work, migration status and ethnic concentration, and new measures of mobility-based inequality derived from the concept of effective speed. The third section, titled, Driving Politics, explores the politics of mobility in particular places, with an eye to demonstrating both the relevance of the politics of mobility for influencing and reinforcing actually existing neoliberalisms, and the kinds of politics that might allow for reform or restructuring of the auto-mobile city into one that is more socially, politically and environmentally just. In the conclusion to the book Walks draws on the findings of the other chapters to comment on the relationship between automobility, neoliberalism and citizenship, and to lay out strategies for dealing with the urban car system.
Download or read book Drive written by Iain Borden and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2013 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the experience of driving cars as a way of encountering landscapes and cities around the world, illustrating cultural history, urban history, art, literature and music. This book is about dynamic journeys, experiences and speeds, rooted in specific places and roads, and expanded into the realm of cinema, art and video games.
Download or read book Faster Smarter Greener written by Venkat Sumantran and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-09-29 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A call to redefine mobility so that it is connected, heterogeneous, intelligent, and personalized, as well as sustainable, adaptable, and city-friendly. The twentieth century was the century of the automobile; the twenty-first will see mobility dramatically re-envisioned. Automobiles altered cityscapes, boosted economies, and made personal mobility efficient and convenient for many. We had a century-long love affair with the car. But today, people are more attached to their smartphones than their cars. Cars are not always the quickest mode of travel in cities; and emissions from the rapidly growing number of cars threaten the planet. This book, by three experts from industry and academia, envisions a new world of mobility that is connected, heterogeneous, intelligent, and personalized (the CHIP architecture). The authors describe the changes that are coming. City administrators are shifting from designing cities for cars to designing cities for people. Nations and cities will increasingly employ targeted user fees and offer subsidies to nudge consumers toward more sustainable modes. The sharing economy is coaxing many consumers to shift from being owners of assets to being users of services. The auto industry is responding with connected cars that double as virtual travel assistants and by introducing autonomous driving. The CHIP architecture embodies an integrated, multimode mobility system that builds on ubiquitous connectivity, electrified and autonomous vehicles, and a marketplace open to innovation and entrepreneurship. Consumers will exercise choice on the basis of user experience and efficiency, aided by “intelligent advisors,” accessible through their mobile devices. An innovative mobility architecture reconfigured for this century is a social and economic necessity; this book charts a course for achieving it.
Download or read book Asphalt Nation written by Jane Holtz Kay and published by Crown. This book was released on 2012-06-20 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Asphalt Nation is a major work of urban studies that examines how the automobile has ravaged America’s cities and landscape, and how we can fight back. The automobile was once seen as a boon to American life, eradicating the pollution caused by horses and granting citizens new levels of personal freedom and mobility. But it was not long before the servant became the master—public spaces were designed to accommodate the automobile at the expense of the pedestrian, mass transportation was neglected, and the poor, unable to afford cars, saw their access to jobs and amenities worsen. Now even drivers themselves suffer, as cars choke the highways and pollution and congestion have replaced the fresh air of the open road. Today our world revolves around the car—as a nation, we spend eight billion hours a year stuck in traffic. In Asphalt Nation, Jane Holtz Kay effectively calls for a revolution to reverse our automobile-dependency. Citing successful efforts in places from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, Kay shows us that radical change is not impossible by any means. She demonstrates that there are economic, political, architectural, and personal solutions that can steer us out of the mess. Asphalt Nation is essential reading for everyone interested in the history of our relationship with the car, and in the prospect of returning to a world of human mobility.
Download or read book Carfree Cities written by J. H. Crawford and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume filled with historical and contemporary references to guiding historic precedents and ideological errors of 20th-century planning, the author sets up the carfree city as the cornerstone of sustainable development. This book outlines a structure carefully designed to maximize the quality of life for people and communities worldwide. Also available in cloth, 9057270374.
Download or read book Street Smart written by Samuel I Schwartz and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2015-08-18 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a Saturday morning in December 1973, a section of New York's West Side Highway collapsed under the weight of a truck full of asphalt. The road was closed, seemingly for good, and the 80,000 cars that traveled it each day had to find a new way to their destinations. It ought to have produced traffic chaos, but it didn't. The cars simply vanished. It was a moment of revelation: the highway had induced the demand for car travel. It was a classic case of "build it and they will come," but for the first time the opposite had been shown to be true: knock it down and they will go away. Samuel I. Schwartz was inspired by the lesson. He started to reimagine cities, most of all his beloved New York, freed from their obligation to cars. Eventually, he found, he was not alone. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, a surreptitious revolution has taken place: every year Americans are driving fewer miles. And the generation named for this new century -- the Millennials -- are driving least of all. Not because they can't afford to; they don't want to. They have better ideas for how to use their streets. An urban transformation is underway, and smart streets are at the heart of it. They will boost property prices and personal fitness, roll back years of congestion and smog, and offer a transformative experience of American urban life. From San Francisco to Salt Lake, Charleston to Houston, the American city is becoming a better and better place to be. Schwartz's Street Smart is a dazzling and affectionate history of the struggle for control of American cities, and an inspiring off-road map to a more vibrant, active, and vigorous urban future.
Download or read book Traffic written by Tom Vanderbilt and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2009-08-11 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Driving is a fact of life. We are all spending more and more time on the road, and traffic is an issue we face everyday. This book will make you think about it in a whole new light. We have always had a passion for cars and driving. Now Traffic offers us an exceptionally rich understanding of that passion. Vanderbilt explains why traffic jams form, outlines the unintended consequences of our attempts to engineer safety and even identifies the most common mistakes drivers make in parking lots. Based on exhaustive research and interviews with driving experts and traffic officials around the globe, Traffic gets under the hood of the quotidian activity of driving to uncover the surprisingly complex web of physical, psychological and technical factors that explain how traffic works.
Download or read book Why We Drive written by Andy Singer and published by Microcosm Publishing. This book was released on 2014-11-29 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, we're married to our cars. But life behind the wheel of an automobile didn't come naturally to Americans. Crooked politicians, unscrupulous businessmen, burning streetcars, and convoluted tax shenanigans are a few of the players in this gripping tale of corruption, greed, and endless miles of asphalt. In Andy Singer's accessible, scandalous tale of motordom, comics, text, and historic photographs tell the story of the rise of the U.S. highway system and the corresponding demise of rail and public transportation. He also explores how we can ditch the car and rebuild a functional transportation system that can bring wealth, happiness, and freedom.
Download or read book Smart Transport for Cities and Nations written by Christian Claudel and published by . This book was released on 2018-06-30 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Straphanger written by Taras Grescoe and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-04-24 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taras Grescoe rides the rails all over the world and makes an elegant and impassioned case for the imminent end of car culture and the coming transportation revolution "I am proud to call myself a straphanger," writes Taras Grescoe. The perception of public transportation in America is often unflattering—a squalid last resort for those with one too many drunk-driving charges, too poor to afford insurance, or too decrepit to get behind the wheel of a car. Indeed, a century of auto-centric culture and city planning has left most of the country with public transportation that is underfunded, ill maintained, and ill conceived. But as the demand for petroleum is fast outpacing the world's supply, a revolution in transportation is under way. Grescoe explores the ascendance of the straphangers—the growing number of people who rely on public transportation to go about the business of their daily lives. On a journey that takes him around the world—from New York to Moscow, Paris, Copenhagen, Tokyo, Bogotá, Phoenix, Portland, Vancouver, and Philadelphia—Grescoe profiles public transportation here and abroad, highlighting the people and ideas that may help undo the damage that car-centric planning has done to our cities and create convenient, affordable, and sustainable urban transportation—and better city living—for all.
Download or read book Humanizing Cities Through Car Free City Development and Transformation written by Doheim, Rahma M. and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2020-06-05 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The heavy dependency on private cars has shaped the design of cities. While offering fast, comfortable, and convenient commutes, cars have become the most popular method of transportation, but are also a health crisis due to the toxic emissions they release into the atmosphere as well as the high death toll from traffic accidents. For these reasons, there is a need to minimize the use of cars within cities in favor of greener and humanized urban design that would improve the quality of life and reduce the global threat of climate change. Humanizing Cities Through Car-Free City Development and Transformation is an essential publication that explores the concepts of car-free cities and city humanization as possible solutions to reduce the deteriorating effect on the environment and the community. The publication discusses the urban initiative to implement pedestrianization and humanization of cities and public spaces to promote the concept of car-free living. Featuring coverage on a wide range of topics including city humanization, smart mobility, and urban policies, this book is ideally designed for urban planners, environmentalists, government officials, policymakers, architects, transportation authorities, researchers, academicians, and students.
