Six Miles - Exploring Transportation, Walkability, and Quality of Life in Urban Planning

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, 51.5 percent of all car trips are within a 6-mile radius. Is creating walkable cities as simple as putting workplaces, schools, and other cornerstones of daily life within a walkable radius? And to what degree does transportation play a role?

There’s no denying that the transportation industry has shaped the planning of modern American cities.

Trains and trolleys meant people could go much further much faster, leading to cities becoming more physically spread out. By the early 20th century, the United States had dedicated planning agencies, for example, in cities like Chicago and Hartford, Connecticut, home to the first recognized planning agency in 1907.

With walkability and growing public transportation, what was the issue with city life? Well, earlier in the 19th century, urban populations began to supersede rural ones. One of the reasons there was even a need for more intentional city planning was the overcrowding of cities. Pollution, waste management, and race and economic inequality were pressing concerns.

Additionally, due to industrialization, factories increasingly encroached on private dwellings. There was a need to limit building heights, factory placement, and other factors to preserve property values.

Enter zoning laws.

Zoning laws delineated specific areas for factories, homes, and retail spaces. These laws helped solve property-type intermixing problems. However, it presented new issues such as longer commutes and exclusionary zoning practices.

Living, play, and work spaces grew further and further apart, and housing, schooling, and even air quality became increasingly stratified along socioeconomic and sociocultural lines.

For example, single-residence zoning hinders the density of units developed on a swath of land, and many court cases argue this decreases the availability of affordable housing. Urban sprawl refers to the effects of practices like single-use zoning and residential areas becoming increasingly low-density- a more spread-out, car-dependent landscape.

As we become more aware of the factors that led to and perpetuate America’s current landscape, the question becomes, what factors go into building a modern city? Clearly, there’s more to it than addressing walkability.

Addressing a mixture of aesthetic, social, environmental, and policy concerns seems to be a prerequisite to building modern cities.

This is a point Peter Calthrope, a San Fransisco-based architect, takes on in his Ted Talk: “7 principles for building better cities.” He asserts that virtually every aspect of our lives, from healthcare to household costs, is determined by the cities in which we live. Shaping our cities to account for growing populations is necessary to not only address inequalities but also combat climate change.

The way we shape our cities affects virtually every aspect of our daily routines, from our commute to our interactions. Looking into transportation and how to make cities more walkable uncovers layers of complexity that need unraveling to envision a more interconnected, environmentally cognizant future.

Author:

Princess Mazagwu, Contributor

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