Professional Practice
Transportation: Urban
Traffic congestion ¨C costs felt in lost productivity, increased transportation costs, and wasted fuel. Other unaccounted for costs include pollution, poor public health, and damaged ecosystems.
When it comes to urban transportation, we can do better.
At the core of any sustainable city¡¯s success is a comprehensive public transit system with walkable neighborhood connections. Public transit results in:
- Lower greenhouse gas emissions. A two-car household can by getting rid of one car and taking public transit instead. The savings from eliminating both cars would be even higher.
- Healthier communities. Residents of neighborhoods with good access to public transit are .
- Economic opportunity. A 2014 study by the American Public Transportation Association found a ¨C the equivalent value of more than 50,000 jobs.
Public transit systems should be affordable, reliable, frequent, and accessible for all residents, regardless of address, race, age, disability, religion, national origin, or socioeconomic status. Equitable urban transit connects residents to family, friends, services and jobs, allowing everyone to fully participate in a community¡¯s economic, civic, and social life.
City streets should be multi-modal and interconnected, offer a variety of options for travelers, and discourage conventional automobile travel. Designing safe, complete, green streets with bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure; instituting ¡°road diets;¡± reducing vehicle speed limits; and eliminating parking requirements can help to encourage healthy, low-emission transportation.
Working with landscape architects, cities can even create transportation infrastructure exclusively for pedestrians and cyclists. Linear parks such as New York's Highline, Atlanta¡¯s Beltline, and Portland's Vera Katz East Bank Espalanade illustrate the power of these kinds of parks, both as people-movers and as places for recreation, relaxation, and socializing.
Transportation infrastructure presents an opportunity for ecologically-sensitive design that integrates natural systems into the urban fabric. Urban rights-of-way can become green corridors when planted with appropriate tree and flowering plant species. Using native, pollinator-friendly plants supports populations of pollinators and the birds that hunt them, . Green infrastructure should be used wherever possible to help filter and manage stormwater runoff as well as support local wildlife.
In urban environments, streetlights are a major source of , which wastes energy, interrupts circadian rhythms, disrupts migratory bird flyways, and obscures the beauty of the night sky. LED lighting, while more energy efficient that conventional lighting, if not properly designed and implemented. Streetlights and other public lighting should be designed to reduce light pollution; the SITES v2 rating system helps landscape architects achieve this goal. include using lower wattage bulbs, using fully shielded light fixtures that direct light downward, and running lights on timers or motion detectors so that they are only lit when needed.
Urban transportation systems should be resilient in the face of natural disasters and the uncertainty that comes with a warming climate. In the event of natural disaster, interconnected, grid-based street networks provide multiple points of ingress and egress, allowing for individual links to fail without paralyzing the entire system. In the same way, multi-modal public transportation systems contribute to a city¡¯s overall resilience and allow cities to more quickly recover from natural disaster.
How we move around cities is changing. New technology such as self-driving cars and ride-sharing apps offer potential benefits, but also come with immense risks if not properly managed and integrated into transportation planning. As ride-hailing services have grown in popularity, , a key indicator of car use and greenhouse gas emissions, and decreases in bus ridership. At the same time, shared mobility services, such as bike and scooter share, are part of a growing network of transportation services in cities that . Looking forward, autonomous vehicles and technology must exist as part of a well-balanced multi-modal transportation network, not as a replacement.
Organizations
at University of California at Davis
Resources
, U.S. Federal Highway Administration, August 2016
, The Dirt Blog, January 23, 2013
, National Association of City Transportation Officials, 2018
, Curbed, November 2, 2017
, World Resources Institute Ross Center for Sustainable Cities
, The Field blog, June 5, 2018
, Metro Magazine, November 28, 2017
, Global Designing Cities Initiative, National Association of City Transportation Officials, 2016
, The Dirt blog, May 29, 2018
, The Dirt blog, May 9, 2018
, Landscape Architecture Magazine, June 14, 2015
Infrastructure for All (Animation), American Society of Landscape Architects
, Citylab, October 23, 2014
, National Association of City Transportation Officials, 2016
, National Association of City Transportation Officials, 2016
, National Association of City Transportation Officials, 2014
, Transit Center, September 2016
, The Dirt Blog, January 23, 2013
, World Resources Institute, 2018
, The Dirt blog, July 8, 2014
, The Field blog, April 30, 2015
, Yale Environment360, January 6, 2014
, The Field blog, February 22, 2018
, The Dirt Blog, June 4, 2013
, Yale Environment360, January 8, 2018
Interviews
Interview with Jeff Speck, Hon. Ë¿¹ÏÊÓƵ, Co-author of The Smart Growth Manual
Interview with Joyce Lee, Director, Active Design Program, New York City
Interview with Peter Calthorpe, Author of Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change
Research
, University of Minnesota Accessibility Observatory, 2018
, University Transportation Research Center, New York University
, U.S. Federal Highway Administration, 2010
, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
, Reconnecting America and the Center for Transit-Oriented Development
Projects
Bayou Greenways: Realizing the Vision, Houston, TX
SWA Group
Atlanta BeltLine Redevelopment Plan, Atlanta, GA
EDAW, Inc.
The Copenhagen Cloudburst Formula: A Strategic Process for Planning and Designing Blue-Green Interventions, Copenhagen, the Netherlands
Ramboll
Dallas Connected Cities, Dallas, TX
Mia Lehrer + Associates
Lafitte Greenway, New Orleans, LA
Design Workshop, Inc.
Transit Revitalization Investment District (TRID) Master Plan, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Urban Corridor Planning, Houston, TX
The Planning Partnership
City Transportation Plans
, Los Angeles Department of Transportation, CA
, Portland, OR
, Seattle, WA
, Los Angeles, CA
, Washington, DC