Visions of Future Cities

Issue 15 of Car Busters briefs us on different visions of future cities. The visions of nine different movements, thinkers or artists are included. The issue also covers criticism of several problems in building utopian cities.

Only some of the actual content of the magazine is published on the web. For rest of the stuff, see the actual magazine.

Contents

Feature Articles

The Regulars

  • Studies and Reports
  • Letters
  • Cartoons
  • Car Cult Review
  • Industry Watch
  • World News
  • Action

The Ecocity: A City in Balance with Nature

Let's say we've landed about 100 years from now. By now, Ecocities are common. They are sparkling outposts in the deep green forests, oases on the desert, islands on salty waters lost in clouds of sea birds. Here we are, down on the ground approaching one now. Forget that rent-a-car, even though it is an electric. They won't let you past the dinky parking lot behind the pharmacy anyway. We're taking bikes. And you can relax because in this town you won't be hit by a car.

Despite our slow speed, we will be experiencing enormous change in short periods of time. Round a bend from our country origins, suddenly we pop into a neighbourhood centre, one of a few scattered around a major ecocity down-town. Two- and three-storey buildings on the edge quickly give way to five- and six-storey structures and bustling city life. The taller buildings step back in rows of balconies and terraces. People are leaning over the railings of both balconies and pedestrian bridges to talk to others two or three stories below. They can hear each other, too. No cars rumbling through to drown out human voices.

In the neighbourhood centre through which we are bicycling, there are varied roof lines, small towers and planting everywhere, on porches and balconies and in window boxes. Fruit, berries and flowers attract bees, butterflies and an assortment of birds. It's a multi-species Mardi Gras, with windmills cartwheeling above the rooftop trees and shimmering light reflected off solar collectors and greenhouses passing through the moving branches of trees, bushes and vines.

Leaving the neighbourhood centre, in only two or three blocks we are cycling through what's left of the old suburban belt of homes that used to go on for dozens of blocks in all direction. Now, garages have been converted to second units and houses raised a storey or two, making way for third and fourth units. Then, quite suddenly, we are in open space, on a rural road-and it only took us six or seven blocks to move through the neighbourhood from open agricultural space on one side to restored natural land on the other.

The edge of the downtown is only two or three blocks away on the far side of a bridge. That span carries us over a local creek in its shallow valley, with native vegetation on one bank and an orchard of fruit and nut trees on the other. Then we dive into a tunnel for one more former city block, now open space. Inside the passageway we are under a nature corridor that deer and, even recently, antelope have begun to use.

In just another few blocks our small road enters a kind of "gates to the city," with special buildings facing one another where the road becomes the city-centre street. We find ourselves entering one of the city centre's "keyhole plazas," open in the middle with a slot on one side like an old-style keyhole. Larger buildings surround a public space filled with people, plants, art and water works. In the distance the area's tallest mountain is silhouetted against the sky, framed by the town's most celebrated tall buildings which rise up like the cathedrals of a religion of reverence for life on Earth, carrying trees and bushes up to high crags and crests and cascading vines and flowers down into the canyons. The sky is crystal clear-no pollution. Sun and wind power the place, and there is practically no motorised transport. The police use bicycles, the paramedics push their gurneys wearing lock-and-roll skates.

We can see people walking and biking over the bridges between public areas on the fifth floor. There are pedestrians way up there on bridges between the tenth floors of buildings, crossing over streets and disappearing. Some have sets of bridges every five stories with express elevators set for stops on these floors-the idea is that nobody has to walk vertically more than two stories, getting very fast access and some modest exercise. In this downtown, artificial waterways cascade down six to eight stories into small ponds, breaking up into mists that cool the surrounding buildings. Where the sun pours in, these practical flourishes introduce interior rainbows to the city canyons.
- Richard Register, president of Ecocity Builders

PROS: Mixed use taken to extremes, with agriculture in city. A total antidote to modern monocultures, agricultural or urban. Implosion of urban form, really getting to grips with the issue of sprawl in growing cities with imagination and a sense of spectacle.

CONS: Dispersal between people and their destinations in a new plane: the vertical. Personal freight (e.g. shopping) becomes heavier; dependence on elevators reduces autonomy of movement. Safety and vertigo issues at great height; a very unnatural way of life. Featureless skyscrapers could abound.

PROPONENTS: The Ecocities Movement

DEVELOPMENTS: De-paving projects in Berkeley, opening Codornices Creek to wildlife and vegetation, international Ecocities Conferences, and numerous designs for high-density pedestrian city centres all over the world.

MORE INFO: "Ecocities" (Berkeley Hills Books-reviewed on p.27, and available from us), and www.citizen-planners.org/ecocitybuilders.

New Urbanism

New Urbanism is a set of principles for designing and developing cities and towns. These principles are collected in the Charter of the New Urbanism, a document written and signed by members of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU). The principles are general enough that there is no one ideal city for New Urbanists. New Urbanism applies at all scales and to all types of settlement, from single homes in the mountains to the densest urban regions. However, the principles do imply what sort of city or town New Urbanists would like to see.

Key among them is principle no. 12, "Many activities of daily living should occur within walking distance, allowing independence to those who do not drive, especially the elderly and the young. Interconnected networks of streets should be designed to encourage walking, reduce the number and length of automobile trips, and conserve energy." This gradual, reformist method is central to New Urbanism. It is not generally about creating car-free towns in the midst of car-dependence. Rather, it is about offering people the opportunity to reduce or eliminate their car use. We believe that this creates such an improvement in people's quality of life that most people will opt for less driving.

Other principles in the Charter describe how a city should treat cars. Principle no. 22 is, "In the contemporary metropolis, development must adequately accom-modate automobiles. It should do so in ways that respect the pedestrian and the form of public space." Principle no. 23 says, "Streets and squares should be safe, comfortable, and interesting to the pedestrian. Properly configured, they encourage walking and enable neighbours to know each other and protect their communities." In other words, New Urbanists avoid such building types as the big box store surrounded by parking, the townhouses arranged in ranks in parking lots off a highway, or the single-family home fronted by an expressionless, 10-metre-wide garage door. Streets should be, as principle no. 19 says, "Public spaces of shared use."

In order to supply the needs of motorists, New Urbanists usually design and build neighbourhoods where there are paved streets, wide enough for cars to pass one another and park. They provide car parking for all homes-primarily on the street, but also in garages. These are not just compromises to the car-dependent world. Most New Urbanists see cars as not just necessary evils, but as useful tools-if kept in their place.

The key is to keep cars in their place. New Urbanists go about this, primarily, through traffic calming and designing buildings for pedestrians rather than cars.

If there is one attitude that holds New Urbanists together, it is that the pedestrian is the most important user of a street. As a result, New Urbanist neighbourhoods tend to have wide pavements. Buildings are built to face the pavements; shops designed to allow window-shopping; townhouses have front porches (stoops) on the pavement; and single-family homes, even if set back from the street, have approachable front doors. Most newly developed New Urbanist neighbourhoods have alleys behind the buildings, providing access to parking garages. However, New Urbanists generally prefer on-street parking because it creates a physical buffer between pedestrians and moving traffic on the street.

The shorter and more interesting a pedestrian's trip is, the better a city is for walkers. This means the elimination of superblocks in favour of small blocks. These can give pedestrians shorter distances between any two points on the grid, they create more street frontage for homes or businesses, and they provide many routes through the network for any one trip, reducing vehicle congestion. At the same time, when cars have to stop at every corner, they don't build up the head of steam they get on streets where they can travel unimpeded for long distances. Streets in New Urbanist neighbourhoods also tend to be narrower than those in most post-1940 development.

New Urbanism does not, on its own, create the car-free city or planet that many of us crave. But these neighbourhoods-with their pedestrian orientation and their mix of housing and other types of building-have been shown to reduce vehicle use by 25 to 50 percent among residents, compared with conventional development. This is an important first step. New Urbanism can satisfy today's real estate market, while offering hope for tomorrow.
- Steven Bodzin, Communications Director, Congress for the New Urbanism

PROS: The movement is large, respected and comitted, making real achievements to change the urban fabric of some of America's most car-infested cities. Their critique of the auto-dependent lifestyle, drawing inspiration from writers from Jane Jacobs to Lewis Mumford, combined with a pragmatic and realistic reformist approach has yielded solid results and done a lot to dent the growth of sprawl in the US.

CONS: The pleasant, secure, modern New Urbanist developments often yield high property prices, making them small pools of car-free utopias beyond the reach of the masses and provoking accusations of gentrification (see p. 25). The New Urbanist agenda will not lead us to a truly sustainable, low-impact urban existence, and the movement does not stand on ecological principles. By accomodating the car and protecting people's "right to drive," they limit the extent to which people might reduce their car use.

PROPONENTS: The Charter of the New Urbanism was signed by 266 architects at the fourth Congress in 1996, and the movement continues to grow. 339 architects in 20 countries are currently listed as associates.

DEVELOPMENTS: Countless urban regeneration projects, mostly in the US.

MORE INFO: The full Charter of the New Urbanism is on-line at www.cnu.org.

Car-Free Cities by the Book

Car-Free Cities by the Book

Ed. note: Here we show you Crawford's vision (car-free city reference design) on multiple scales: The entire city (see background) consists of multiple round-shaped pedestrian-oriented districts (see bottom) arranged in six lobes and connected by metro transport with a station at the centre of each district.

Ihave proposed an idealised design for car-free cities, a design that can gradually be adapted to existing cities. Workable car-free cities require that we first reduce the need for mobility [despite whatever the EU may tell you - ed.]. We can accomplish this by providing access to basic necessities within a few minutes' walk (and near transit halts). Mixed-use districts, with workplaces, schools, stores, and residences located in the same area, also reduce the need for mobility and assure lively urban areas. (Heavy industry would be separated.) The remaining mobility needs can be met by trams or metros.

Efficient public transport and freight delivery demand a coherent route system. The design shown here, in the background, shows an optimised route system for a city of one million. Although we won't achieve quite this efficiency when converting existing cities, we must arrange the system so that journeys rarely require more than one transfer, transport halts lie within a five-minute walk of every doorstep, waits for service do not exceed five minutes, vehicles maintain good average speed, and the longest trips are no more than an hour. If we make provisions to bring shopping carts onto vehicles, public transport service can then be a good alternative to private cars.

Small freight can be delivered by freight bike or by slow, small, battery-powered trucks, like those in Zermatt, Switzerland. Heavy freight requires a dedicated system below street level, and capable of delivering standard sea containers to locations along its route. If heavy freight users cluster along this route, they can receive full containers at basement level. I call this system "metro-freight" and have developed it quite thoroughly in my book [see box at right]. It will be expensive to build but requires little land and can deliver large quantities of freight at low cost. At the ci-ty's edge, containers would be transferred to metro-freight in "utility areas" that also host parking garages and heavy industry.

The medieval city is dense enough to support excellent transport service and is generally a fine urban form. Streets can be just wide enough to accommodate emergency vehicles. If transport halts are at the center of districts with a radius of 400 metres, walking times are held to five minutes. Buildings of moderate height are sufficient, and we can provide plenty of green area.

How can car-free advocates most effectively proceed? Start removing cars anywhere you can, but be sure to have a grand vision of the form of the city when completely car-free, including the public transport improvements that will be required. At the 1997 Towards Car-Free Cities conference in Lyon, we developed the Lyon Protocol for gradually converting cities to the car-free model. This protocol is on line at www.carfree.com/lyon_protocol.htm.

- J.H. Crawford

PROS: Vast improvement in quality of life. Excellent social conditions in public spaces. Very low transport energy consumption and pollution. Perhaps a greater diversity within each neighbourhood, as well as greater autonomy and individuality of neighbourhoods. Possibly a healthy balance between proximity and mobility. Reduced capital and operating costs. Increased employment.

CONS: Requires extensive centralised planning. Not much attention to the non-transport aspects of the city. The attempt to simultaneously facilitate access by proximity (walking in ped. district) and vehicular mobility might result in one winning out over the other; if the localisation measures succeed, the heightened vehicular mobility becomes pointless and over-efficient. Somewhat more expensive and complex freight delivery. Huge infrastructure investments.

PROPONENTS: J.H. "Joel" Crawford and his colleagues, most notably those launching the International Institute for Carfree Development in the US.

DEVELOPMENTS: So far only theoretical, but the above-mentioned institute is intended to eventually become a "brick and mortar" operation.

MORE INFO: The book Carfree Cities and the web site www.carfree.com. Soon Crawford's book will be republished in an inexpensive, paperback edition.

Arcology: A Whole City in One Building

In Arcology, a concept developed by architect Paolo Soleri, architecture and ecology come together in the design of the city. Arcology is the implosion of the flat megalopolis, the modern city of today, into a dense, complex, urban environment which rises vertically. The automobile is eliminated from inside the city and reserved for use outside of it. Arcology advocates cities designed to maximise the interaction and accessibility associated with an urban environment while minimising the use of energy, raw materials and land, reducing waste and environmental pollution, and allowing human interaction with the surrounding natural environment.

Hyper Building, a so far only theo-retical example of Arcology, is a one square kilometre urban structure hosting all aspects of human life. The Hyper Building will be located in the Mojave Desert in close proximity to existing interstate highway 15, on a proposed high-speed Maglev rail line, midway between Los Angeles, an icon for hyper-consumption, and Las Vegas, an icon for hyper-hedonism. The Hyper Building supposedly stands in contrast to those extremes of modern society as a place for the continued evolution of human culture.

In the form of the Hyper Building, Soleri explores the difference between male-represented by a high tower-and female-two concentric, semicircular edifices, the womb. The interpenetration of the two elements produces the creative and complex spirit of the city. So that the 1,000 metre tower is not intimidating due its lack of human scale, it is divided with eight Terras, or artificial grounds. These multilevel open spaces provide parks, community and cultural spaces, and give residents "breathing space."

The Hyper Building provides 1,044 hectares of stratified, focalised uses: 45 percent of housing; 17 percent of cultural zones; 14 percent of commercial space; 14 percent of green spaces; five percent of administrative or civic use, distribution centres and convention facilities; and five percent of utilities and construction yards.

In order to support the infrastructure of the Hyper Building, several facilities are planned outside of the initial building site-the solar power generation plant, Maglev train station and industrial complex. The Hyper Building is connected to the conven-tional energy grid to satisfy much of its energy needs. However, the dependency on the grid is reduced through a combi-nation of alternative energy production means, both active and passive, and by saving energy through the efficiency of the three-dimensional system. The design of the structure puts an emphasis on the pedestrian, saving the fossil fuels which would normally power the cars of a city this size. Also food production in green-houses saves fuel by elimi-nating much trucking of food to the city.

Transport to the Hyper Building is primarily through the Maglev line. Inside the pedestrian reigns, aided and enhanced by escalators, moving pave-ments, electric conveyances and bicycles. A two-story, 25 million square metre underground parking garage is located below. It can house 64,000 private auto-mobiles [i.e., 1.56 people per car; just so you know, there are about 1.90 people per car in Los Angeles] and 30,000 commercial vehicles. Though cars are not being used on a daily basis, Soleri considers them part of our society and many residents are thus expected to maintain cars for recrea-tional and long-distance travel.

The permanent population of the Hyper Building is about 100,000 people. Three more Hyper Buildings should be developed following completion of the first one, making up "Quartet in Arcology Major." Altogether the total population of the fully developed 10 square kilometre site would be 700,000 people, thus creating a critical mass of population, an urban settlement in the desert.

To move on from sci-fi-like theory to practice, another example of an arcology, much smaller in scale, is actually being built in the high desert of Arizona, 70 miles north of metropolitan Phoenix, USA. An experimental town, Arcosanti, was conceived of in 1970 by Soleri's Cosanti Foundation. When complete, Arcosanti should house 7,000 people, demonstrating ways to improve urban conditions and lessen people's destructive impact on the earth. Its large, compact structures and solar greenhouses will occupy only 25 acres of a 4,060 acre land preserve.
- IJ

PROS: The Hyper Building is very thoroughly planned, from energy supplies to virtual reality leisure centres. Since it's deliberately so space-efficient, it spares a lot of land for agricultural or nature conserving purposes. And just imagine the views...

CONS: The concept of a Hyper Building is rather dehumanising-life there would be similar to living in a space ship. The enormity of the structure does not relate to the natural environment it is meant to conserve and bring people (and their cars) close to. Safety and democracy would be an issue.

PROPONENTS: Paolo Soleri, an American architect of Italian origin, and his Cosanti Foundation developing the Arcosanti project.

DEVELOPMENTS: The Hyper Building-none. Arcosanti-some 70 permanent residents and hundreds of volunteers working on the planned buildings; lots of seminars, workshops and festivals.

MORE INFO: www.arcosanti.org/

Illichville: An American Green City

The first thing that a person will notice looking at a picture of Illichville is the absence of cars, paved roads, parking lots and other ugly accomodations for the automobile. A compact city of 20,000 to 30,000, Illichville can be easily traversed on foot or by bicycle. The compact size of Illichville allows residents easy access to both urban and rural settings.

The city is surrounded by a green belt consisting of three rings. The inner ring would be comprised of gardens, orchards, vineyards and fields that provide the majority of Illichville's food. Beyond the agricultural belt are fields and meadows that would provide fibre for clothing. The outer ring, comprised of natural and restored wetlands, prairies and forest, would provide recreation and a refuge from the city. Altogether the green belts serve as a buffer to deter motoring tourists from parking their cars on the outskirts of town and walking in. To avoid creating parking and congestion problems in neighbouring communities, visitors to Illichville are required to travel by tram from a nearby Amtrak train station.

Another visual clue to the unique organisation of Illichville is the absence of the familiar outdoor displays of corporate emblems such as Wal-Mart and McDonalds. In order to achieve self-reliance, factory-manufactured goods will be restricted from sale in Illlichville. Food products and manufactured goods in Illichville will be provided by skilled craftspeople.

In order to restrict the importation of factory-made products, Illichville will be established as a corporation. In the US, only a corporation is exempt from the influence of other corporations. The Disney Corporation, for instance can decide whether Coke or Pepsi or neither will be sold in Disneyworld. As a corporation, Illichville would have more freedom to experiment with governing, health care, and educational institutions, providing more democracy and social justice than is permitted in traditional cities that are bound by state and federal rules.

Illichville would encourage visitors. Visitors would provide the capital to build and maintain the city in its infancy. There are three main attractions for visitors. There will be tourists, curious about the city. Collectors of fine crafts will come to buy the surplus wares of Illichville's craftspeople. Others will come for the healing aspect of a post-industrial, post-consumer way of life. Without auto-mobiles, visitors will be able to walk and bicycle everywhere. Visitors will breathe air without car fumes, drink clean water and eat fresh, organic food.

With the US facing an uncertain future with dwindling reserves of fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources, Illichville will be prepared to rely entirely on its own resources. If Illichville were connected by rail to other sustainable cities, it could survive well into the future.
- Ken and Roberta Avidor

PROS: An idyllic place to live, certainly. This city would have a green belt/static Urban Growth Boundary that actually works. The city (and therefore probably the citizens too) takes responsibility for all its needs, providing local production for local consumption. A strong relationship to the local natural environment would foster uniqueness in cities, and probably encourage creativity within their inhabitants.

CONS: The political organisation of the city as a corporation is a potentially dangerous area: would democracy really reign in a corporation? Would cars be banned by consensus? The greatest problem would be getting the city off the ground. The city might always be heavily reliant on tourists. With the limited area, prices would rise quickly with demand; this could end up as a yuppie valhalla. Could create a new kind of distant leapfrog development, over the fields and far away. And how to stop tourists wearing logos?

PROPONENTS: Roberta Avidor is a professional and fine artist, Ken Avidor is an illustrator, writer and creator of the eco-comic strip, Roadkill Bill.

DEVELOPMENTS: None: Illichville is proposed as a visualisation to "encourage people to believe that such a city can be built."

MORE INFO: "Roadkill Bill" (Car Busters Press 2001, click here for info and to order), see www.roadkillbill.com/

Our Primitive Future

I have elsewhere used a definition of primitivism as the pursuit of ways of life running counter to the develop-ment of technology, its alienating antece-dents, and the ensemble of changes wrought by both.

Assuming this were a worthy goal, what kind of society might it lead to?

If we were to supercede some of our current determining factors in where and how we live, such as our gravitating to urban centres to obtain a livable wage, it remains an open question as to what combination of privacy and socialising we'd most prefer. Modern efforts at communal living almost invariably fail, but at the same time so many people miss the sense of com-munity and closeness to friends that comes with school life, particularly college. One notion that seems appealing to me would be for myself and a handful of friends to live on an expanse of land together, each with our own home, and every house a little separate-over the ridge, or past the next hill-from one another. If I lived in a society where anomie was less pervasive, that small number of friends might be considerably larger, and the community correspon-dingly greater.

The band societies of hunter-gatherers might also offer us some clues, but we don't know all the social forces that created those particular kinds of communities either. From our current vantage, most people today would probably favour something a little looser, with more opportunity for privacy than is usually exercised in current hunter-gatherer societies.

I don't think we would see anything that could quite be called a city, but we would probably find societies of fair population density around particular regions, e.g., a warm coastal area with fertile land and fresh water. Something approximating a village might also emerge around geographic peculiarities furnishing shelter, such as the human-carved caves in Cappadocia, Turkey. However, quality shelter of some kind can almost always be improvised, and this is really less of a draw than an easy abundance of food and water in an affable climate.

I would foresee migrations of some kind, whether motiva-ted by food, weather, or simple change of scenery. So long as we're not running from scarcity, it can only add to the experience.

The need for transportation has largely arisen as the landscape has been deprived of meaning, and as social forces like work have set family and friends far apart. Our experience of the world becomes centred in particular points of presence-places to work, places to shop, places to retire-and we bounce between them, our feet insulated from the ground beneath us. We find fulfillment in destinations, and not simply in being. Maybe we can change that.
- John Filiss, primitivist essayist

...Civilisation appeared only some 9,000 years ago. Its duration is dwarfed by the thousands of human generations who enjoyed what might be called a state of natural anarchy. The general orthodoxy in the anthropoligical literature, even including textbooks, portrays life outside of civilisation as one of ample leisure time; an egalitarian, food-sharing mode of life; relative autonomy or equality of the sexes; and the absence of organised violence.

Humans used fire to cook fibrous vegetables almost two millions years ago, and navigated on the open seas at least 800,000 years ago. They had an intelligence equal to ours, and enjoyed by far the most successful, non-destructive human adaptation to the natural world that has ever existed. Whereas the textbook question used to be, "Why did it take Homo so long to adopt domestication or agriculture?" now texts ask why they did it at all...

Primitivists draw strength from their understanding that no matter how bereft our lives have become in the last ten thousand years, for most of our nearly two million years on this planet, human life appears to have been healthy and authenic.
- from "Twilight of the Machines," an unpublished article by John Zerzan

PROS: The truest freedom of any possible future. Massively improved relationship with nature. Focus on being rather than consuming and possessing.

CONS: Would require a lot fewer people in the world (current figures are 42 people/km2 land area, without discounting inhospitable terrain-could cities sprawl out to this density worldwide?). Health risks still arguably marginally greater than living in industrialised society. Biggest problem is the reduction in (the commonly perceived) quality of life in favour of low-impact life.

PROPONENTS: The primitivist/anarcho-primitivist movement is very diverse with many differing ideas about how the future might look.

DEVELOPMENTS: No developments as such, but many people are choosing to reject modern industrialised society and live close to nature in this way.

MORE INFO: Green Anarchist, (BCM 1715, London WC1N 3XX, UK and www.greenanarchist.org); www.primitivism.com/ is John Filiss's own site; the Fifth Estate newspaper (4632 Second Ave. Detroit, MI 48201); anything by John Zerzan; many others. See .

The Hi-Tech Solution

Supra-Car: Towards an Auto-Free Metropolis

Fewer cars would make a city far more livable. This can be achieved by adopting a few simple, doable measures: increase transit service, cut car use through road pricing, and create a grid of pedestrian streets in the core. But even with these measures in place, cities would still be completely overwhelmed with motor vehicles causing countless injuries and fatalities, producing unbearable levels of air and noise pollution and preempting most urban street space.

There's got to be a better way. And there is: Supra-Car! Clearly, only a grade-separated personal transportation system that replicates the mobility offered by cars and trucks can completely free urban streets of this awful menace. Given the realities of construction cost, and the preferences of people to travel above ground, this means an elevated guideway system that can be used by small automatic vehicles travelling non-stop from origin to destination.

This concept is now generally called PRT-"personal rapid transit." For a PRT system to completely replace motor vehicles, however, it must have a very fine-grained access system to the surface. Most PRT systems propose off-line elevated stations with mainline speed turnouts to allow stopping vehicles to divert from the traffic stream without slowing other vehicles. This requirement results in relatively widely-spaced stations that require elaborate boarding platforms, stairs and elevators.

Supra-Car suggests

a far better way to reach many more surface access points-have vehicles themselves serve as elevators, track-ing columns to descend to the surface. The base of each column could serve as a potential access point. Vehicles would slow or stop on the mainline before getting out of the way as they descend. This loss of capacity is more than offset by the proliferation of guideways needed to provide a successful replacement for cars and trucks.

This may seem costly-and it is. But by eliminating all cars and trucks in a metropolitan area enormous expenditures are saved. Using a common fleet of vehicles, as much as 90 percent of the cost of owning and operating personal vehicles is avoided. With automated vehicles, drivers for goods movement are eliminated. Public health costs of air pollution and injuries caused by vehicles disappear. While substituting the visual clutter of ubiquitous elevated guideways for the car-strewn landscape of urban streets and parking lots may seem like a neutral trade-off at best, the real gain is having the surface area of streets in cities become useable neighborhood open space, free of conflicts caused by aggressive motorists. With Supra-Car, an auto-free metropolis becomes possible.
- George Haikalis, Auto-Free New York

Cycling With the Wind

First I wanted a place to cycle out of the rain, with few hills. So I thought of a bikeway tied to the underbelly of the Skytrain (Vancouver's elevated subway). There is no waiting time at stations and it's direct. I had the begining of a vision for a completely new way of looking at cycling.

This vision was given a boost by the idea of having wind blown at the back of cyclists. Most of the energy we spend cycling is used to push air out of the way. The air being pushed our way would greatly increase our velocity. This could empower us to potentially carry heavier loads or go faster without any effort. The average automobile urban speed of around 13km/h is easy to beat.

So we came up with "The Windway"-an elevated, covered, light, wind assisted bicycle highway. It is on adjustable legs so it can be adapted to all terrain-float on water, go right through buildings and Malls or over bridges, automobile highways or railways. There is no noise, no pollution and most other no no's of the automobile era are absent or minimalised.

At this point the wind is a hard sell but the highway is something the Dutch are already doing between Amsterdam and Utrecht (30 km long). In Vancouver we are exploring the possibility of building one across the Burrard St. Bridge so commuter cyclists are out of the rain and off the pavement.

- Guy Wera from The Bicycle People

PROS: The Supra-Car would definitely appeal to car drivers, combining the benefits of public transport with the directness and flexibility of the private automobile. The Windway would please all weather-sensitive cyclists.

CONS: The structures would shade on streets. Although they do not take up as much space as highways, the idea and the look is much the same. These hi-tech solutions seem to be based on the assumption that we need to keep or even increase the current level of mobility. With the Windway there is a high risk of falling, which in case of a cyclist riding at some 30 km/h could mean the last ride ever.

PROPONENTS: Auto-Free NY, a move-ment aimed at exploring and achieving the upper limit of "devehicularisation" of the US largest city. The Bicycle People, a Canadian group calling for pedal powered vehicles adapted to the standard rail. Citizens for Personal Rapid Transit, a US group devoted to promotion of "PRT as an effective option for meet-ing our transportation needs." There are also lots of corporations developing various PRT schemes, e.g. Taxi 2000.

DEVELOPMENTS: Work in progress.

MORE INFO: www.taxi2000.com, www.alternatives.com/bicycle/people.html, www.cprt.org

Slow Cities

The Slow Cities initiative grew out of the Slow Food movement, which originated in Italy but officially started in Paris in November 1989 by delegates of 15 countries endorsing its manifesto. The document reads: "We are en-slaved by speed and have all suc-cumbed to the same insidious virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to eat Fast Foods... In the name of produc-tivity, Fast Life has changed our way of being and threat-ens our environ-ment and our land-scapes... To be worthy of the name, Homo sapiens should rid himself [itself] of speed before it reduces him [humanity] to a species in danger of extinction."

In 1998, Slow Food met with the mayors of four Italian cities to propose the creation of an international network of Slow Cities. The Slow Cities movement has grown to include 22 Italian cities and has attracted attention in Germany, the UK, the USA and other countries. The founding idea is the emphasis on the concept of good living seen in terms of the quality of the local environment, gastronomic resources and the use of new technologies for collective well-being.

"Scholars, town planners and socio-logists have recognised that the most human dimension to live in is that of the small agglomerates of no more than 50,000 inhabitants," says the current president Stefano Cimicchi. Therefore only smaller towns may apply. "The model for the ideal city is the late-medieval and Renaissance one, with the piazza functio-ning as a centre of social aggregation. Europe has to remember its roots and acknowledge the historical role its cities have played in the construction of its identity... Being 'slow' doesn't mean arriving late. On the contrary, it means using new technologies to make towns and cities ideal places to live in."

To achieve the status of "Slow City" a city must agree to accept the guidelines of Slow Food and work to improve con-viviality and conserve the local environ-ment. The Slow Cities movement promotes the use of techno-logy oriented at improving the quality of the envi-ronment and of the urban fabric, and in addition the safe-guarding of the production of unique foods and wine that contribute to the character of the region while using natural and environmentally-friendly techniques.

Applicant towns have to meet a number of basic criteria relating to environ-mental policy, infrastructure, the level of local produce and crafts, services and accommodation facilities. Additionally, membership in the association implies constant commitment to developing projects to improve these parameters. Among the criteria are: creation of public green spaces with benches and play areas; infrastructure that favours alter-native mobility; places to sit and rest not only in the historical centres; restorations of the original conditions of the historical centres and/or of works of cultural or historical value; and elimination of noisy alarm systems.

Through a Co-ordination Committee a series of joint initiatives is undertaken: courses of food education, projects to protect local produce and crafts, the expansion of pedestrian precincts, regu-lation of air quality, the setting up of offices for eco-compatible building, the regulation of construction techniques and the standardisation of aerial installations.

Besides finding members in other countries, the association has ambitions to become a player at the European level to make sure that the EU Constitution currently being drawn up takes into account the reality of small towns and cities.
- Alessandra Abbona & Paola Nano, Slow Food press officers

PROS: This vision actually exists in the real world! It is very practical and immediately appli-cable, with long-term goals. The Slow Food and Slow Cities movements have grown out of a solid critique of the modern, fast lifestyle.

CONS: Slow Cities have a great potential for becoming touristy, luxury retreats from the rat race. They don't necessarily keep cars out, only keep them tamed. There may be a discrepancy between what is written and the reality of life in a Slow City since it is not obvious how binding the guidelines are and how easy it is to go round them.

PROPONENTS: Slow Food movement.

DEVELOPMENTS: At the moment there are 22 Italian towns going through the process of guideline compliance and five more have recently applied. A congress is currently being planned to launch the Slow Cities on an international level.

MORE INFO: www.slowfood.com/

The Free City

It's all about freedom. People are happier when they are free, they produce more and they are more affluent. The Lone Mountain Compact states the urban corollary: absent a material threat to other individuals or the community, people should be allowed to live and work where and how they like. In short, people should have the freedom to travel where they like, whether to work, shopping, school or elsewhere. The extent to which this increases or decreases driving or public transport use is of no account.

The anti-sprawl ("smart growth") movement is based upon contrived alarm and has failed to prove a case. No problem impels its coercive cures; indeed they would make things worse. The higher densities smart growth requires means greater road traffic densities, which in turn means slower speeds, higher pollution intensity, longer work trip times and less free time. Costs of living tend to be higher. Home-ownership, so essential to social cohesion and wealth creation, is lower where smart growth's land rationing policies drive prices up and households (especially lower income) out of the market. More restrictive land markets discourage industrial and commercial innovations artificially forcing prices higher. The reality of smart growth is a lower standard of living and a lesser quality of life.

None of this is to endorse sprawl or to oppose public transport. It is rather to endorse freedom. The pro-freedom vision of the city is the product of people's desires, not planners' dictates. Human ingenuity has produced unprecedented mobility and access, while substantially reducing related pollution.

Government should preserve envi-ronmentally sensitive areas and can purchase green spaces. But a government of the people has no business herding masses into crowded districts against their wills; it is out of line when it codifies the latest, or any, urban planning fashion or architectural taste.

Public transport is important, such as in Manhattan, Paris, central London and similar urban core areas, where it is competitive with or even superior to the automobile. Public transport is also important in serving people whose income is yet insufficient to afford automobility. But it is futile to pretend that public transport can provide auto-competitive mobility or relieve traffic congestion in the vast suburbs where most people live and work, whether Phoenix, Portland, Perth or Paris.

Freedom means that those disposed to controlling the lives of others must be content with controlling their own. No one likes to be told what to do, not even urban planners. The innate human longing for freedom doomed Soviet planning and has in store a similar fate for overly prescriptive urban planning. This is as it should be where government is the servant of the people.
- Wendell Cox

PROS: This vision champions Truth, Justice and the American Dream. It adresses issues of gentrification in the city centres.

CONS: Wendell Cox doesn't propose any solutions to any of the countless problems with the urban fabric. For more information on these, see Car Busters issues 1 to 14, Transportation Alternatives, Auto-Free Times, etc.

PROPONENTS: Wendell Cox, principal of Wendell Cox Consultancy, an international public policy firm. He specialises in urban policy, transport and demographics, and has provided consulting assistance to the United States Department of Transportation.

DEVELOPMENTS: Just look around...

MORE INFO: Wendel Cox's web pages: www.demographia.com and www.publicpurpose.com. See also Responding to Wendell Cox, a critique by G.B. Arrington.