Surban Nation: What we have Created!

These photos are dated but they still represent our built physical environment in the United States. Replace Kmart with Walmart to make the photos more modern. These photos display the side effects that our current zoning and planning has on our public realm. For example the street corner with the red car. We have all seen these city street corners. This person is leaving their subdivision and entering a road way similar to Sunnyside in Idaho Falls. Notice the large radius of the corner. Or in simple words look how rounded the corner is. The corner is so soft and so round you hardly have to slow down to make the turn. That isn't the only problem created by a soft corner. The distance a pedestrian has to travel to cross the intersection has now doubled, which increases the chances of being hit by a car.

However I loved these types of corners when I first got my drivers license. I didn't have to break at all! It was awesome!!! I would maintain 40 to 45 MPH around the corner and into the subdivision then right to my house as fast as the road would let me go. If you don't believe me ask my Dad he will show you the wear patterns I created on the front tires of the pickup truck I drove.

Then residents of the Subdivision wounder why people are driving fast in the neighborhood so the complain to the city. The city sends out a police officer who then writes a few speeding tickets to get people to slow down. It worked. Then a week later people are speeding around the corner and down the huge wide streets of the subdivision all over again... I have a solution lets just get more police to slow people down and issue more tickets.... Good Idea! Not!!!! Rather

Lets go back to the way we designed these street corners before World War II. What we did then was made the street corner sharp, requiring drivers to come to a complete stop. Also the roads in the neighborhood were under half the size they are now and people naturally slowed down and cities never had to post a speed limit. Problem solved.

The next problem with our current zoning and planning codes.
The Street scape and the public realm.

Look at the picture of the two houses. The garage makes up over 60 percent of the front facade. I wonder what people are going to say 100 years from now concerning our architecture? The intrusive garage doors make walking down the street less inviting and visually boring. In fact the only reason why someone would walk on the street its so bad is to exercise. What we are finding now is that the street scene is so ugly and depleted that people want walking paths or they would rather go to the gym and stare at a mirror.

The best picture is towards the top (the massive down town intersection). That is an example of a good portion of our new city centers... Would you walk on that sidewalk? I wouldn't? Why? Because that place is obviously a place for cars not pedestrians. This intersection was built exactly to our current planning and zoning codes.

Last problem Surface parking... Look at the picture of Kmart. This store front is pushed to the back of the property so we are first greeted by vast amounts of parking. Which only really get used the week of Christmas but I am so glad we have them all year to look at so we aren't inconvenienced by holiday crowds. Do you know what how much these parking lots cost? Do you know how much water they displace from natural storm water drainage systems (ground water/ aquifer)? Do you know how hot they get during the summer months? Do you know how much property they take up? Why do we have so much parking? Why do we put it up front on our property making sidewalks and pedestrian paths useless?

These are just a few of the problems that are caused by our current city planning and zoning techniques. I am not saying they are all bad but the way in which we have segregated land use and ruined our cities public realm is sickening. A good portion of the problems we face in our country can be directly related to urban sprawl. There will come a day when we financially as a country cannot support all of the infrastructure we are building and maintaining. We are already paying for it with borrowed money. If we used the principles of New Urbanism which are not new to the world but new to our generation we would cut infrastructure costs in half, we would use less gasoline, we wouldn't destroy all of our natural environments, we would have better schools, we would have stronger communities and extremely lower property taxes. This isn't a Republican thing or Democrat thing this is a wrong turn that municipalities have made over the arrival of the automobile. Cars are great... But we should design our cities for People first Cars second. Start a list of all the problems we face in the United States I bet most of them relate to all of the problems that have been caused by the way we have designed our cities since WWII.