Quote:
Originally Posted by IanWatson
There's too much push to bring "science" to city building*. There's very little that's scientific about it. But we live in a society where you "can't possibly be right unless you have the peer-reviewed studies to back it up" (never mind that there's no universal "right"). All that results in is an industry of trying to create a science that can't possibly exist.
|
The pendulum has swung back and forth. In the 1950's and 60's there was a lot of pseudo-scientific planning and a focus on traffic engineering. These days in a lot of cases I think we are to the point where there's not enough focus on some simple engineering type goals like getting people from A to B as quickly as possible, and a lot of municipal infrastructure development is consequently out in the weeds.
As a prime example of this, I've heard several city planners in Vancouver and Seattle downplay the importance of commute times. A while ago I was listening to one talk about the Alaska Way Viaduct demolition and he cavalierly said that traffic didn't worsen much because travel times didn't increase by 20-30 minutes or more, and he said that Seattleites were coping by commuting earlier or later, like at 6 am instead of 7 am. He talked about how clearing out the viaduct left more space for people instead of cars.
His attitude should have instead been that even a 5 minute slowdown each way when commuting is a big deal, and having to get up for work 30 minutes earlier in the day is a big deal too. Creating a nicer neighbourhood where the viaduct is now is also important but his weighting seemed very wrong. The Alaska Way Viaduct carried 91,000 vehicles per day.
Part of the disconnect is that there are many different demographics to be served by urban planning. The urbanite condo class tends to get the most attention these days, and planners consider that style of project the sexiest. A lot of the rhetoric about building places that people want to live in elides the fact that only a lucky few will get to live in those places or commute to them in a reasonable amount of time.
I'm not sure that Halifax has swung too far in this direction but some North American cities certainly have. As a result they have many great looking neighbourhoods for 5% of their population while 30% of people struggle to find a place to live and 60% suffer from bad commutes.