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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Carfree Cities by J.H. Crawford Carfree Cities by J.H. Crawford. Carfree Cities, International Books, 2000. Carfree Design Manual, International Books, 2009. Articles. "The Lyon Protocol Revisited," Carbusters #37 (Spring 2009) "Reclaiming cities for citizens," OpenDemocracy.net 5 September 2002. "An Interview with J.H. Crawford," Clamor Magazine September/October 2001. "Sustainable Urban Mobility: The Place of the Carfree City in Long-Term Sustainability," scheduled for publication by IHS (Rotterdam) as part of course work on sustainable development, late 2001. "The Relative Ease of Marketing Carfree Cities," presented at the "Marketing Sustainability - From Pioneers to Early Adopters and Market Breakthrough" session, of the Bremen Initiative conference, 26 June 2000. "Carfree Cities: A Blueprint for Sustainability," in World Architecture Review [China], 2000:01 (no. 70). "Cities for People: The Design of Car-Free Cities," paper presented at the Towards Car-Free Cities conference, Lyon, 1997. "Why We Need Completely Car-Free Cities," contribution to the Towards Car-Free Cities conference reader, Free the Street 1997. "Cities for People" presented at the Residential 2000 conference held in Shanghai in 1996 and believed to have been published in the proceedings. Internet. Links will open in a new browser window. An Idealized Design for Carfree Cities and Its Application in the Real World. Paper presented at the 34th International Making Cities Livable Conference, Alpbach and Salzburg, Austria, 15-19 September 2002. "Reclaiming Cities for Citizens" in the City and Country thread of OpenDemocracy.com, 9 May 2002 (sorry, no direct URL). "An Interview with J.H. Crawford," (a Web Exclusive article, not printed in the magazine) Clamor Magazine, No. 10 (September/October 2001), by Pete Menchetti. "Children and Cars," published on FatherMag.com, 2001. "The Lyon Protocol," product of a work group facilitated by J.H. Crawford at the "Towards Car-Free Cities" conference, Lyon, 1997. "Why We Need Car-Free Cities," in the on-line Zero Emissions Strategy Conference, published 17 October 1997. Carfree Cities by J.H. Crawford. Suppose for a moment that we found technical solutions to the resource, pollution, and traffic congestion problems. Would continuing motorization then be the best strategy to improve the quality of life in the world's cities? What are the social effects of wholesale motorization? Road traffic has turned our public spaces into dangerous, noisy places where people are not inclined to linger, which discourages the casual social contacts that help bind societies together. Until the advent of cars, streets always served as shared social spaces. Children playing in the streets are exposed to socialization by the broader society, but the danger from cars has all but ended this function of streets in the US and Europe. These days, one scarcely dares to mention beauty as a civic attribute, but I shall take the risk. Streets in auto-centric cities are almost invariably ugly, which further spoils their function as social spaces. Let us compare both beauty and social function in the two extreme urban forms: auto- centric Los Angeles and carfree Venice. Public Spaces-Slide 1. Many streets in Los Angeles are given over to strip malls, which are well suited to the convenience of drivers. The resulting noisy, ugly spaces do nothing to encourage social contacts. In Venice, stores are concentrated around squares, and customer traffic adds life to these squares. In Los Angeles, parking overwhelms other design criteria. Garage doors and asphalt dominate the scene. Parents dare not let children play in the street. In Venice, outdoor spaces are convivial and there is, of course, no parking. Children play in the streets and adults linger to chat. In Los Angeles, churches, like all organizations, must provide vast parking lots that offer no secondary amenity. In Venice, the entrance to a church can also serve an informal social function. In Los Angeles, shopping is done far from home at large stores dominated by huge parking lots. In Venice, shopping is done on foot. Reducing the Role of the Automobile. Many urban planners already agree on the need to reduce the impact of cars on city life and therefore to reduce their role in urban transport. The unanswered question is, "What is the ideal amount of this reduction?" Many would agree that 100% would be ideal, yet few are prepared to believe that this is either possible to achieve or acceptable to citizens. Improving Life for Three Billion People. How can we improve the lives of billions of city dwellers while minimizing the consumption of land, energy, raw materials, and money? Eliminating cars from cities can do more than almost any other conceivable approach to reduce the demands on these resources while at the same time reducing air pollution and improving public spaces. Existing cities that are not yet highly motorized can become carfree without occupying more land, whereas adopting the auto-centric model requires rebuilding these cities as vast suburbs connected by broad highways. In the USA, many large inner-city brownfield sites are ideal candidates for redevelopment as carfree districts. Heavy infrastructure is already in place, so redevelopment can begin immediately and at relatively low cost. Greatly improved public transport is essential to a carfree city, but the means are well known and the cost comparatively low. Rail systems in dense, compact cities provide excellent service and consume far less energy than cars and trucks in sprawling auto-centric cities. Freight can be containerized and delivered by dedicated rail vehicles that permit fully-automated handling. Local deliveries can be made with low-impact vehicles, including freight bicycles. Let us consider a design that makes carfree cities both feasible and attractive. The Reference Design for Carfree Cities: An Equitable and Effective Plan for Better Cities-Slide 5. This slide shows a reference design for a carfree city of 1,000,000 people. The design goal was to provide high quality of life and optimized transport using rail systems. The site is 250 square kilometers, but only about 20% is developed; the remaining land is open space. The three metro lines provide rapid service to all parts of the city in no more than 40 minutes door-to-door and never require more than one transfer. Three utility areas for freight-handling, industry, and parking can be seen at the end of each of the six lobes. At the next level of detail, we see one of the 80 districts, each providing housing for 12,000 residents and workplaces for 8,000. Districts are 760 meters in diameter and occupy 45 hectares. Transport halts and basic services are located at district centers, within a 5-minute walk of every doorstep. Containerized freight is delivered directly to businesses located along the central freight line. We zoom next to a view of a single block. Streets are about 6 meters wide, and large interior courtyards are formed, as shown in the photograph. Buildings average four stories tall. The density of construction is high but not excessive, and large green spaces are created within the urban fabric. If carfree cities are both feasible and highly sustainable, what then of the question of selling them to the public? The "Freedom of the Automobile" We come to the crux of the implementation problem: how do we persuade billions of people to forego urban car usage when cars are seen as a ticket to freedom and the ultimate status symbol? I believe that only by adopting large carfree areas in the rich nations can we reasonably expect people in the developing world to see the wisdom of this approach. Given that Westerners are well aware of the high costs of unrestrained urban automobile usage and that recent surveys show about one-third of Americans wanting car-moderated living environments with nearby shopping, I think it will be comparatively easy to develop large carfree districts in many Western cities. Private developers should be able to profit from filling this evident demand. The largest completed carfree residential project is the 600-unit development in Amsterdam, which was greatly over- subscribed. We must expose the myth that cars offer freedom and undermine their value as status symbols. The "lure of the open road" has not existed for city dwellers for many years now, despite the continuing use of this image to sell cars. Many city residents are ready for an approach to urban transport that will actually improve their lives. Summary. The automobile is neither a suitable nor a sustainable mode of urban transport. The failure of motorization to improve life in those cities that have now been testing it for fifty years is clear evidence that this approach should be abandoned. Carfree cities can greatly improve urban sustainability while also improving the quality of life. Carfree Cities by J.H. Crawford. I have proposed an idealized case for car- and truck-free cities, what I call a "reference design." It is based entirely on rail systems for heavy transport, with local transport and light freight delivery provided by walking and cycling. I will describe in some detail the elements of and rationale for this reference design, and then consider its application to both new and existing urban sites. Variations from the reference design will be required in the real world, but the design can still be guided by the reference design. The resulting compact cities would be highly sustainable, offer a quality of life second only to Venice, and can compete with auto-centric cities in the global economy. INTRODUCTION. THE CITY AND THE CAR. MODERN CARFREE CITIES. Venice can guide us in other respects as well. I believe that the medieval city, with its narrow, irregular streets, is the best urban model ever developed.