London, meanwhile, had never really been planned at all, and even well-intentioned planning often ended up straddling the line between disaster and farce.
If you want to laugh a lot and learn about ways that London has been "developed" over the years, check out this guy's videos:
An example from my hometown of Ithaca NY: this tiny valley was never built with cars in mind, and because there is a lake to the north and steep hills in every other direction, there are only about 6 ways in and out of Ithaca. Usually this isn't a problem but certain times of day the traffic comes to a complete stop as there is no physical way to relieve the congestion. If major charges to roadways were made, it could fix some of the congestion issues, but since nearly all travel through Ithaca revolves around The Commons (literally: one-way streets move traffic counterclockwise around the popular pedestrian mall), it could have a devastating effect on local businesses.
I am convinced that no single entity is capable of creating and executing a plan that improves an urban area in any more than a limited portion without significant and unforeseen consequences.
Speaking of slums: the original plans for public housing projects in big cities like New York failed to account for the lack of maintenance or the effects of drugs being sold or used on the premises, which matters a lot because one prolific drug dealer can drastically reduce quality of life for everybody in the building, especially if they are smart or small-time enough to avoid police interference, thus allowing dealers to become de facto authorities in the projects. That is an example of a planned (but unexpected) slum.
/s Actually the solution could come from another EM company in the form of self-driving cars, as it would alleviate congestion just enough for it to stop being a problem anymore. The traffic issue really only focuses on certain chokepoints in and out of the city.
You know the deal: everybody stopped at a series of red lights. Light at the front goes green, first car moves, second car behind it has space to move, and so on. If all the cars were able to start and stop in unison based on the state of the traffic lights then the congestion problems in Ithaca would disappear overnight. We aren't big enough to need (or be able to afford) massive infrastructure projects, and as I alluded to earlier, it probably wouldn't be worth the unforeseen consequences. Not to mention the downtown retailers are still reeling from the Commons reconstruction, which put way too many of my favorite stores out of business.
But of course, you can see how the incentives run. If somebody likes their neighbourhood the way it is, and doesn't want change, then if they don't complain about new developments to councillors and planners, they gain nothing. But if they do complain, then there's a chance they can get developments stopped. (Thanks, "community-based planning".) So the cost of complaining is quite small, but the rewards can be quite large.
The broken down state of the city's neighborhoods offers a unique opportunity to redesign them. Things like creating a walking path between two small colleges and creating biking paths from old rail lines. Cox wants to enable each neighborhood to have basic services within a twenty minute walk.
http://www.freep.com/story/money/business/columnists/2016/12...
I can say that as it is, the process of development is more like consumer marketing: schedule lots of meetings and interviews that sell people on the idea of accepting development rather than giving them a stake in its success. It encourages confrontational deadlock, a buildup of pressure followed by earthquakes of change, as the developers and government gradually start colluding to strongarm residents when they refuse to budge.
You'll fail using that approach. The NIMBYs don't make their decisions based on data. They make their opinions based on emotion. If you want to change their minds you need to appeal to their emotions. Run commercials in the NIMBY neighborhood that show poor, disadvantaged low income families who would get to live there if the tower went up. Make them feel ashamed for opposing towers and they'll stop opposing them.
edit: Yes, this is a bad example, but the point remains. You must hit them in the feels.
Note that this is equally true of both sides. "YIMBYs" are just as guilty of this.
Of course towers also open up a range of other issues like open space provision, sunlight, separation, street wall heights and setbacks, contributions to improving streets, parks, schools etc. To really be successful it needs an organised planninng approach for each centre
Throwing hotel, casino and residential towers on public land isn't about serving the wider community.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/barangaroo-is-more-insult-than...
Im also not saying density is always done well here, just that it is done and fundamentally thats the right thing to do
I thought the trick to getting an 82m tower built in Toronto was to propose a 182m tower...
I'm not a transit user, but I thought the YUS (North/South) subway lines were (soon to be?) past their saturation point during rush hours.
Ultimately its council that approves/disapproves development, so I think while you're right here that NIMBYs are dominant at the community consultation level, and can impact design choices here, ultimately this is a political problem caused by the fact that established land owners show up to vote and other people don't.
It's hard to speak to your 82m tower without more details, but there is a lot that goes into these design decisions. You're right that NIMBYism and politics is involved, but there are plenty of other of reasons why a tower of that scale may not be appropriate for that location. I think it's too simplistic to say that we need more residences, so let's max out the density on every opportunity we see. I'm a bit critical of this in fact, because an outcome from this approach is that rich, low density single family neighbourhoods are completely untouched by any development at all, while poorer, slightly higher density areas are constantly razed and gentrified. Inclusive zoning can mitigate some of the harms here, but ultimately this is clearly an inequitable design approach.
My one other thought is that with platforms like twitter urban planners are no longer faceless bureaucrats, so we can listen to them and try to understand what they're up to and what they're trying to accomplish in our cities. Toronto's chief planner is on twitter at https://twitter.com/jen_keesmaat
Otherwise, this topic is likely what I want to focus my career in at some point, understanding how to improve the ways cities run, given how they are more and more the drivers of not only the economy, but a lot of the culture and thinking generated in the world. (As someone who grew up in global cities such as Singapore, Paris, etc., I always felt that these cities had more in common with each other than with other cities in the countries they are in.)
I'm making my way through Jane Jacob's Life and Death of American Cities right now, and it has definitely changed a lot of my thinkings of how cities should be designed (more mixed-used, parks are not necessarily ideal, etc).
I wonder how a company could be created to tackle the issues cities are facing these days, working with local governments (or without if need be).