Passing time with Holland's Expert on Turbo Roundabouts

It's not every day you get a full-fledged explanation of the genius behind the roundabout traffic concept by the very inventor of the turbo roundabout. The turbo roundabout is a multi-lane traffic design that creates order out of complex intersections. Although the civil engineering science behind the scenes was a bit over my head, one lesson I've learned for any future planning projects in neighborhood traffic sustainability and safety is that roundabouts enhance traffic safety, efficiency, and mobility for drivers and cyclists alike.

According to statistics and simulation models shown to us, roundabouts hold sufficient capacity for the smooth flow of traffic, while preventing accidents, particularly T-bones which typically result in the worst damage. Most importantly, they slow speeds to protects cyclists, pedestrians, and drivers. After all, speed is a significant indicator of the severity of an accident.

Roundabouts can be optimized with the proper design features in order to avoid side crashes and overcapacity, including road dimensions and turning widths, redundant signage overhead and on the road itself, raised blocks, bollards, or other physical barriers to separate lanes, a raised center surface, and traffic signals about 30 meters from the entrance of the traffic circle to regulate traffic. With multiple lanes and entrances, complexity is increased, and other dividing lines and regulating measures must be put in place. Strangely enough, increasing roundabout complexity with good design can make drivers more aware and cautious about using them, and therefore, increase safety. In addition, tunnels and two-way cycling tracks on one side can be used to ensure cyclists' visibility, and thus safety, to drivers. Additional research has been done showing that when cyclists have to yield to drivers on entering and exiting roundabouts, accident frequency is reduced by about a half.

Lessons learned? Roundabouts are an essential component of sustainable and safe communities. Some unanswered questions of mine include whether roundabouts might help solve some of the more severe traffic problems in urban megapolises, particularly in the Global South, such as Jakarta, Manila, Hanoi, Sao Paolo, and Mumbai, which suffer from too many cars on the road and often have their own intuitive methods of organizing and moving traffic.

Metering is used to communicate to drivers when it is safe to enter a roundabout, while regulating the flow of traffic

Redundant and bold signage helps prevent lane switching once in the roundabout

Sustainable Community Systems in the Netherlands: First Impressions from Delft

I attended a Critical Mass communal bike ride a few years ago. The event called "Go Dutch" ended with volunteers handing out t-shirts with the slogan "Get in touch with your inner Dutch". This all makes sense after visiting Holland, especially for the second time. The Netherlands boasts one of the most advanced cycling, water transport, and rail infrastructure systems, worthy of admiration by European municipalities and world cities alike.

Upon entering the Netherlands this time around, I was surprised by the proximity between cities. In fact, these cities make up an urban agglomeration comparable to Paris and other major European metropoles. Amsterdam, the Hague, Delft, Leiden, and Rotterdam can all be reached within an hour and half train ride of each other. When I went to Delft, what stood out most for me was how human-scale the neighborhood is; biking and walking comprise the dominant forms of transport.  As a planning and urbanism student, I noticed how the small scale architecture fits well with the small scale (although expansiveness) of the road network, but I wonder how much had to be adapted to the cycling. Each municipality is connected to others through the waterways and rapid bus and cycling transportation infrastructure.

One of my primary interests in the field of planning is gender mainstreaming within urban landscapes through design. Many cities, especially North American ones, do not consider the needs of women and children, especially with regards to safety and well being. Through Holland's bike system, engaging in risky behavior like riding a bike on a busy road full of cars isn't necessary. Thus, Delft's infrastructure does not limit women and children's mobility in the city. In addition, other safety considerations are taken into account, for example, the strong surveillance of bike parking facilities and separated bike paths (differentiable by pavement surface type and color). Delft offers a sound model of feminist planning in practice. 

Below are some highlights from today's bike tour of Delft: 

An advisory path that enables cyclists, pedestrians, and vehicles to share the road, but cyclists are still given preference. This ensures that cyclists remain the dominant form of transport and  These road networks are part of a larger regional network across the northern-eastern Netherlands and Germany. 

A woonerf, the Dutch word for "living street" creates a car-free residential zone and fosters a pleasant neighborhood experience. It is quiet, surrounded by greenery, and safe for play and recreational activities for families and individuals from all age backgrounds. At the same time, it is accessible to commercial use areas and transportation hubs like the Delft Central Station. 

A well-designed covered bicycle parking facility at the Delft Central station ensures that bikes can be parked safely and conveniently. It alleviates messy bike parking and cluttering of bikes on the streets, which would otherwise inconvenience other cyclists and pedestrian. Electronic monitoring helps keep track of how many bike parking spaces are available. To save space, bikes can be 'parked' on two levels. The facility is video-monitored and well-lit to ensure "eyes on the street". 

Arranging a city to a symphony

A symphony of algorithms, that is.

Franz Ulm and Roland Pellenc, two MIT specialists in the atomic structure of cement, discovered that the texture of a city can be identical to crystalline patterns of elements in the periodic table. Such a random yet intriguing analogy reiterated something important to them: "that the laws of molecular physics can be applied to the texture of cities".

Using physics and equations to form the perfect city optimizes sustainability by building efficiently. Luis Bettencourt believes that the way to approach this method would be to seek the function of cities, not the form - what purpose does that city serve to the people? This will set the universal parameters for building that city, which works together with what Bettencourt calls "the social reactor" (a.k.a. the social dynamic in cities that produces creative and economic outcomes). Now this is the connection that we are looking for in every successful city, and this is what we need to optimize in every city along with energy efficiency and natural resource conservation. At the moment, the only way this sort of dynamic can be measured is through indicators such as city size and interactions within the population  (i.e. crime rates).

Socialisation, as it turns out, is the key to optimizing not only a city's economy, but an energy efficient city. Take this example - in a high-density city with fairly moderate public transport but high crime rate, people are more likely to avoid taking public transport and will drive individual cars. The more cars there are on the road, the higher the amount of GHG gases are emitted, which only leads to a greater carbon footprints that contributes to the upcoming apocalypse-via-global-warming. In fact, in one of his papers, "A unified theory of urban living", Bettencourt argues that the growth of both good and bad development is actually dependent on the size of the city. Mathematically, both good (e.g. opportunity)and bad (e.g. crime) development will increase by 15% should the city's size increase. Such metric data and mathematical analysis has always been used to guide an urban planner's hand, but using actual equations and universal parameters to help pursue optimal investments is a game changer in that it reduces the chances of unintended catastrophic consequences.

That being said, one wonders what the limitations of such a mathematical approach is. In my personal opinion, using mathematics to maximize municipal investment decisions and thereby spend money in the "right" way can go two ways. It will either benefit taxpayers by spending money where it is needed (assuming that municipal authorities are responsible with tax money...this might be bordering on fantasy for some urban areas), or it will ignore the necessity of what cannot be quantified in terms of dollar bills - for example, the necessity of trees and greenspace. Quantification of such amenities are also sometimes rejected because anything can dwindle in monetary value, and this can cause ramifications in appreciating the value of trees, highlighted as an issue because trees are already experiencing a game of thrones level of death as it is. Also, we need trees to survive.

Then again, this approach looks at the city as a system and goes beyond employing sustainable architecture. Using mathematics to engineer the perfect city allows us to foresee how our decisions can impact the global future with logical, rational eyes. It does not limit growth by developing the perfect city that cannot be tweaked because of its perfection; instead it focuses on keeping the city perfect throughout time - factoring in adaptations that need to constantly be made to accommodate changes in the universal parameters of city design. What interests me about this approach is whether we can use the mathematical concepts here to measure energy inputs and outputs in a natural ecosystem and whether it is therefore worth comparing a city's energy efficiency with nature's.

In the past, we have made several erroneous decisions and several great decisions when it came to urban planning. The point with this approach is to eliminate erroneous possibilities and to assist municipal authorities into making the most fiscally responsible decisions - not only in terms of money, but in terms of social, economic and political sustainability as well. No more planned shrinkages in the Bronx that only resulted in higher crime rates. No more gentrification of Jacobian streets that exclude poorer classes. Though this process may not promise us a threat-free world, it might yet compose a world sweeter to the ear.

Tabinda Shah.

Building Urban Resilience through Social Connectedness (Pt 1)

In the wake of environmental and social disturbances such as sea level rise and mass migration into cities driven by economic, social and political factors alike, many municipal governments around the world have underestimated and neglected a little known sustainability issue: social connectedness. While devising large scale efforts to build resilience through large infrastructure projects and sustainable community design, we forget about this issue that could otherwise enable greater resilience. Even Vancouver, often hailed as an urban planning utopia-- its design has been marketed and replicated worldwide as 'Vancouverism'-- has a long way to go before it achieves social connectedness in the city. Why is social connectedness important for cities? What might it look like and how can we socially engineer cities, especially at the neighborhood and building scale, to foster it?

Despite densification and transit accessibility in its central business district and surrounding downtown residential neighborhoods, Vancouver suffers from a social isolation problem. Some might not consider this a problem; historically, urban sociologists and geographers, such as George Simmel, have long critiqued urban living for its anonymity (read Hubbard's the City). In the modern era, planners and sociologists have warned that not knowing the names or being able to rely on those living across your floor or within your own building, creates vulnerability. After publishing a frightening article in the New Yorker on the big earthquake projected to hit the Pacific Northwest, the author revealed one piece of advice for communities that want to lower their risk of casualties and be prepared: get to know your neighbors.

If natural disasters occur, or even something like the refugee crisis, it is imperative for people to be able to rely on others within their vicinity. In the long term, social cohesion, even if superficial, might offer a sense of stability. This is especially the case for vulnerable populations, for instance, those living in social housing, or in buildings where young families and senior citizens live. Being able to take care of neighbors or receive favors when needed is what cities should begin to imagine under social connectedness. It is what we will require resilience. Fortunately, Vancouver has outlined goals to Cultivate Connections in its Healthiest City Strategy 2014-2025, highlighting that is prioritizes social cohesion as a priority issue.

Stay tuned for Part 2!

Halina Rachelson

Miami's Model of Increasing Participation in Public Space Enhancement

As a former Miami resident, I used to complain on a daily basis about the limited public spaces throughout the city. Most spaces either catered to consumptive opportunities, like bar patios, malls, and theaters, or to recreational purposes only, like basketball and tennis courts, or pools, but simple hang out spots that were also aesthetically pleasing or plain cool (besides our beach) were rare.

In the last five years, the city has experienced a rapid turn around and we can partially thank the Miami Foundation for that. The foundation, which offers a multitude of grant programs, has established a Public Spaces Challenge to invite programming and design ideas from local citizens on how to revitalize public space in the city and increase genuine participation in planning efforts. Following its infamous area code ("305"), the competition offers a total of $305,000 yearly and selects a number of projects, ranging from events and ongoing programs to physical installations.

The platform itself is innovative. On the design competition's web page, members of the public can pin their concepts on a map of the city to specify its location and add a small blurb (along with images and detailed descriptions) of how this idea might improve the city. Comments are allowed as well to help facilitate conversation around the idea during the selection process and encourage collaboration among diverse members of the public.

Some innovative ideas from this year's challenge:

• Containers in Community/ Brickell Exercise Box: this neighborhood scale installation takes old materials to create 'mini parks' on parking spots. It borrow ideas from urbanism concepts such as shipping container construction and parklets, but the innovative approach lies in its desire to draw Miamians outside to exercise and continue their traditional indoor gymming habits. The project is recreational in nature but solves a number of urbanism issues including public health, slow streets, and reuse of building materials from the nearby port.

• Roots Collective Black Marketplace: this project is self-proclaimed to promote small business development in Little Haiti, a predominantly black working class neighborhood in North Miami, through a monthly meeting that encourages networking through ideas sharing to bridge the equity gap and empower the local community across cultural boundaries. The concept tackles a fundamental issue related to immobility and missed economic opportunity of residents in a low-income black community. In addition, local art, dance, and music are leveraged to preserve unity despite rapid redevelopment in the surrounding area. 

Participants pin their ideas to the map. Image Source: OurMiami Miami Public Spaces Challenge 

Visit the Miami Foundation Public Spaces Challenge website here