Better Buses

 Vancouver is improving their bus network. The key elements are these: more frequent services across more of the city, and particularly filling in the pattern so that there is frequent service pretty evenly spread out across major arteries all across the city (and indeed much of the Metro area). Not all of this (indeed, not even most of this) is Bus Rapid Transit, but it is bus frequent transit in a way that matters a lot to making a city's transit operate more effectively.

Acknowledging the value of this kind of work has actually been somewhat difficult for me, personally, in the past, because for me it has always formed a kind of assumed baseline in a major city's transit mix. I grew up in Seattle, visited Vancouver often, and have particularly distinct memories of visiting Toronto in the early 2000s and feeling like all these cities did this well: wherever you wanted to go in the city, you could take a fairly easy to figure out set of bus routes (or in Toronto's case, also trams in some areas) to use the general city grid to find your way around.

As the above link indicates, I wasn't actually right about that: Vancouver is only filling in that grid now, and Greater Toronto and Metro Seattle both have serious gaps in such systems as well. But it always seemed just like what a city does, to me--which has made it hard to acknowledge how important actually doing it well is.

So today I want to talk very briefly about why this is important, and what it brings to the table.

1. Clarity 

As I said above, I have distinct memories of visiting Toronto and noticing that my family could get around very effectively, even without knowing the city well, because of how clear it was to move from place to place. Yes, you could use the subway, and we did, but if the subway didn't go where you wanted or you didn't want to (or couldn't efficiently) get to it, you could just take a bus up and a bus over (or a bus over and a bus down, or whatever combination) to get where you wanted to be.

Or, as mentioned above, on some of those streets you could take streetcars/trams. I think that the trams are probably why it stuck in my mind so much more than Seattle, where I still had the same assumptions. This kind of system provides clarity for those who may not learn a system well or want to memorize or consult maps. If you know you just need to go up one street until you hit the right cross-street and then over that street to the place you want to be, your path is clear. It may not be optimal, but it doesn't have to be: it will get you there and it frees up mental space for considering other factors rather than trying to compute how to get from point to point.

2. Equity

When this system is extended as fully as Vancouver is doing it now, it also provides real improvements in equity. Yes, there are still areas where there is better or worse service: frequency matters, quality and age of vehicles matter, speed matters, the existence of other transit modes like rail matters. But when you have a baseline provision of quality, clearly intelligible transit options everywhere, it means that nowhere gets completely left behind. Yes, parts of Vancouver have SkyTrain. And it's awesome!

But buses feed SkyTrain stations, and even if SkyTrain doesn't come anywhere near you an effective bus system nevertheless means you still have mobility even if it's not identical.

I lived for a summer at the University of British Columbia, and it's not on SkyTrain but let me tell you that we still got out and around the city. And did I mention I wasn't even an adult yet? That's another key kind of equity that a good bus network provides: not only does it create equity between people who live in different areas, it provides equity between those who can drive and those who can't, whether the reason for that is age, cost, or something else.

3. Virtuous Cycles

You knew this was coming, right? I mentioned that buses feed trains. Good baseline bus systems across a whole city provide a matrix in which all kinds of good transit, density, and general urbanist outcomes can grow like crystals. 

I believe firmly that Seattle's Sound Transit Link light rail is only as effective as it is (especially since in a lot of places it really should be heavy rail) because it is embedded in a good bus system. Similarly, the TTC has gotten away with a relatively small metro in Toronto because of good bus coverage, though thank goodness they're expanding it finally.

And this is bus coverage which of course usually interacts with the subway.

A solid bus system is unexciting in the way that pasta is unexciting. We talk about sauces a lot more than noodles because the same noodles can work with a lot of sauces--but you don't want to be eating straight alfredo sauce no matter how much you like fettucine alfredo.

I love a subway but it needs to be part of a whole system--and a better bus network like Vancouver is putting in is perhaps the key element in that.

Ideals

I was recently watching the National Theatre production of The Importance of Being Earnest (on YouTube) and was reminded of one of my favorite lines: "we live, as I hope you know Mr. Worthing, in an age of ideals; the fact is constantly mentioned in the more expensive monthly magazines, and has reached the provincial pulpits." Now, Gwendolyn Fairfax is telling us that she has always wanted to marry someone named Ernest, which I think of as a somewhat silly ideal. But it got me to thinking of my ideals about cities, and what I would take from different cities if I could.

Now, it would be easy to do that by taking stereotypically acknowledged excellent bits of cities--Amsterdam's bike paths, for instance--and just imagining a city that somehow combines all of the best parts of everything. I might enjoy doing that at some point. But today, I want to think about some less-appreciated ideal elements in cities that I'd like to have in my ideal city (though since these are ideals, I know others will have observed them before--originality is only so possible).

1. Seattle's Whimsy

Perhaps it's because I know it so well, but I love the way Seattle pops out public art that feels whimsical and placebound. Some of it is probably the 1% for art requirement for major works, but a lot if it isn't, too. 

The Fremont district does a particularly good job with it, with the Fremont Troll above (viewed from Troll Avenue, naturally) and the Waiting for the Interurban statue below.

There's also a big statue of Lenin bought from a former Soviet town and a giant rocket, which I believe has similar provenance.

It's all highly noticeable at the street level, and gives a real sense of place. You couldn't be anywhere but Fremont (and Seattle) with this stuff, and my ideal city would have a similarly distinctive vibe of whimsy (though of course not a copy, since that's the point of whimsy).

2. Paris's Commitment to the Bit

This is cheating perhaps, since many of the things I'm going to mention are considered iconically excellent about Paris. But they all come from something that I'm not sure is, which is Paris's commitment to seeing things through fully--to the bit, in comedy parlance.

Some of this is the legacy of Haussmann's Parisian renovations, which were of course massively classist and problematic. But they also produced a city that has a consistent feel on the street through much of its urban core, and a distinctive look.

This isn't the only expression of this commitment though. Paris is also one of the few major cities that have a legacy metro and yet are doing large-scale expansion of their system. The Grand Paris Express is another version of this same commitment to the bit: if the city (and the region) is to have a metro, it shall have a metro. 

The same goes for other urbanist elements: the transformations of Anne Hidalgo around bikes and cars, which were carried through with a full commitment to doing the thing are a classic example as well.

My ideal city, therefore, is not just interested in being a city, but committed to following through on the principles it sees as valuable in that connection, consistently and in a thorough-going manner.

3. Vancouver's Embrace of Its Natural Setting

Vancouver is known for its natural setting, and its probably unfair to ask another city to have the same setting. But I admire its willingness to accept--no, to embrace--that setting as a part of the city. Too many cities overtame their natural surroundings, or obliterate them, making them a homogenous whole (this is most common in the US in my experience). Vancouver certainly hasn't avoided making a mark on the surrounding land, but it has certainly accepted and embraced more parts of its natural setting than some cities do.

How many cities would have the end of the downtown peninsula terminate in a big park with old growth, rather than more houses?

How many cities would have taken on the existence of the sea and rivers around it as an integral part of the transportation of the city, rather than covering them with innumerable bridges?

And while there are bridges (hello Lion's Gate!) I would also note the willingness to let the mountains behind the city remain mountains and a key part of the city's physical setting, rather than either turning one's back on them entirely or trying to level them or build beyond them.

And heck, it has beaches too--and again, they are developed but not overwhelmed.

This, too, is Vancouver: and while I don't think a city has to be in this kind of physical setting, the fact that the natural landscape is this present within and around the city is something to celebrate, whatever the natural setting might be.

What Cities Look Like

What does a city look like? OK, the obvious answer to that question is descriptivist, not prescriptivist: a city looks like whatever a city looks like. Anywhere that people have gathered in sufficient quantities and political organization that we can call it a city, that is what a city looks like, from Çatalhuyuk to the shores of the Great Salt Lake. 

So the actual question I'm asking here is: what does it matter what a city looks like? Why should we care how a city has chosen to express itself?

There are infinite answers to this as well, but I want to highlight three of them.

1. Urban Canyons: Dense, but Too Dense?

One urban form we might be quite familiar with in urbanist spaces is the canyon: the city that's made up (or at least whose core is made up) of super-high-rise office buildings and condos, creating a deep valley effect in the streets between.

This kind of effect.

Now, there are cities where this is more true, and cities that might be described this way that are less so in practice. New York is the canonical classic example, especially downtown Manhattan, and there's a reason for that: it's because you can get effects like Manhattanhenge, where the sun has to peek through the buildings (for in this case a beautiful effect). But lots of downtowns get described this way, even if they don't have the full canyon on display. 

Is this, for example, an urban canyon?

Seen from above, there's a case for Michigan Avenue in Chicago as one, isn't there? But you can see lots of lower density peeking through, and that's true even at street level. 

And this is the question that urban canyons raise: on the one hand, they seem to be the confirmation of those who decry too much density, shutting out the sun and enclosing humanity in something like a prototype version of The Caves of Steel. But on the other, they don't actually usually do that. And they allow lots of people to work and live in small areas, because one key thing about high-rise density is that it is high and dense. So are they worth it? 

It will probably surprise no one who reads anything on this blog that I think they are. 

It helps when there is something interesting to look at in the canyon, or when there are distinctive buildings within it, as the above and below London examples show.

Urban canyons are like other urban forms, in that they can be better or worse: a flat undifferentiated block fifteen stories high is one thing; a vibrant cityscape that happens to be very tall is another. 

Fortunately, in my experience, a lot of cities that get criticized for this are the latter, and not the former. So a city that looks like an urban canyon is, to me, a positive rather than a negative. 

2. The Midrise: Is It Enough?

Stepping down a size, there are many cities that are iconic for midrise height: from Paris and Montréal in the Francophone world to, for example, Amsterdam in the Netherlands). This is of course questioned by some in the same way that urban canyons are, in terms of it feeling monotonous, or imposing, or inhuman on the street level. But if I don't think that about canyons you probably can guess I don't think it about the midrise. The more interesting question is whether it can be enough: can a city really have midrise density and still fit all the people who want to live there?

The obvious answer is "not entirely, but it's better than nothing." After all, all those cities I just mentioned are experiencing huge housing crunches.

Amsterdam is lovely, but there literally isn't enough housing here.

Paris is iconic, but again: prices rise and people are pushed to the margins of the urban area.

You'll never believe what I'm about to say about Montréal...oh yeah, it also has a housing crisis, though not as bad as the other two. And since the housing crisis in its province has its own Wikipedia page, that should tell you something.

Of course, the counter to this is that not all of the city has been allowed to be this kind of height; it's iconic and typical, but not actually consistent. 

It does have major advantages: it tends to feel much less overwhelming on the street level than higher-rise development, and it often lends itself well to active streets and Jane Jacobs-style eyes on the street. 

It's also beautiful, I think. 

It's a key part of effective city-building; there's a reason that cities that lack this kind of development are referred to as having a "missing middle." The middle is a sweet spot for density without huge skyscrapers (which are both expensive and have their own other issues). It's not enough, but it's a dang sight better than our third category.

3. Single Houses: Automatically Car-Dependent?

The last we will look at is the classic American development: single family houses. 

That's most of what you see in this picture. Now, to be fair, not all single family zoning is cul-de-sacs like you see here. But a lot of it is, in the US especially, and that has a distinctive look. Even in more close-set settings, single-family homes, like the one I grew up in, have a very different street-level view than the other two we've looked at.

I like this house's urban setting. It's on a major bus route or two; it's walking distance to multiple grocery stores, a library, multiple parks, and other amenities. 

It's a good urbanist example of a single family home, is what I'm saying. And I think the answer to the question above has to be that it's not automatically car-dependent: after all, I grew up in this neighborhood with my parents both commuting by bus and bike and myself taking the bus to school and walking around after getting home. There were certainly places we went by car, but it wasn't required; and when it was, it was because of the place we were going to, not coming from, or a function of bad connectivity in the transit network.

As a larger matter, there has to be a space for single family homes in any vision of the city, because there is a clear and marked demand for such housing in the lived behavior of human beings all over the world.

But it doesn't have to be as much as it is. Seattle (or at least its county) is 70% housing like this. That's a lot, and not all of it (not even most of it) is as urbanist as this one is.

To go back to our original view (or rather, another angle from the same photoshoot from the same vantage point), Chicago is also heavily made up of this housing, and you can see it stretching out away from the urban canyon into the distance. 

A city needs all of these, but the mix is key: a city should look like all these things, but if it looks too much like the house I grew up in it's going to have a hard time getting a lot of people into it, because there just won't be space. It needs some midsize housing, and even some urban canyon-like elements, in order to accommodate the sheer number of people who make it up. 

And when we design and plan our cities, we should perhaps nudge it a bit further up this particular page whenever we can--even as we keep a space for single family homes.

Views

We know there are protected views in urban zoning: from St. Pauls in London to various natural vistas in other cities. There are also characteristic views, even if not protected, in many cities, the ordinary things that you can look out, see, and know you are there: the skyscrapers of New York (and many other international cities, but New York in an American context); the rowhouses of Baltimore; the Vegas Strip.

I want today to talk about what makes a view worth noticing as a view, and why these are urban amenities we should cultivate (much of which comes back to placemaking, as in my last post this week). 

1. The Sense of Setting

Many good views are, I would argue, good because they provide a sense of setting: a sense of where you are, where the city around you is, and how they interact.

This can be narrow, as in this London laneway. Now, obviously I am not advocating for this as a protected view! What I am suggesting is that this kind of view, this sort of narrow, twisting street with a midlevel rise, is valuable in terms of letting you know the sort of place you are in and how it operates. It's a much narrower version of the sprawling views that do the same thing:

This is a more classic view, and it certainly contains more things we might consider as views: green space, height differentials, potentially iconic buildings. But I suggest that a good urban design needs both: both characteristic looks at street level as you turn a corner and distinctive large-scale sweeping views like the above. 

Both are, in my view (pun only noticed in retrospect but retained), doing similar work. They are giving you that sense of setting: what kind of place am I in, and how does my current situation fit into it?

2. A Sense of Nature

Part of setting can be but need not be nature, as in the above photo, or the below:

The Thames here certainly gives us a sense of natural setting, even if it's a bit damp and grey.

To be fair, that's been a lot of my experience with the Thames.

But more broadly, I mean that a good view allows you to see how the city interacts with its natural elements: is it constructed around them (as with London and the Thames), or does it perhaps revel in its contrast with them, as in this view of Vancouver:

Beaches and mountains: a classic combination. 

Natural elements in a view alongside manmade ones are the key here, for me. I'm not talking about a view like this:

Lovely mountains, New Mexico, but really just natural. Which is fine! I love nature too! But I see something special in the combination; the tall Vancouverist high-rises just on the edge, or the sprawl of London along the river.

3. What's In A Landmark Anwyay?

Look, I do love an iconic landmark, and I'm not pretending they don't matter here.

St. Pauls views are protected for a reason.

Notre-Dame de Paris was reconstructed for a reason too.

But in a sense, to me, those aren't really views as much as they are landmarks alone: our eye is drawn to the landmark itself, but not to the view as a whole. Mount Rainier can dominate the Seattle skyline (in ways that are totally hard to capture on film, so pardon the lack of picture) but it's so dominant that it doesn't really let the city part breathe. The cathedrals above dominate the picture likewise (though that's somewhat a function of angle in the second, I admit). 

What I think of as a view involves the larger sweep of the thing. The St. Pauls picture is edging towards it (the Millennium Bridge also draws focus, for instance) but I'm really thinking of something like this:

I love Chicago, so I recognize literally everything in here. But no one building or sight stands out to the point of exclusion or focus. Rather, the impression as a whole of the view of Grant Park looking north takes precedence. This is a view that screams Chicago without slamming over it "The Bean" or "Wrigley Field" or any such individual icon.

And that, to me, is the best part of an urban view: it makes it crystal clear where you are and which city it is and where you are in that city--but it doesn't do it by giving you an easy out of a landmark. Or if it's a city like Paris or London that has a long history and a famed skyline, maybe it does--but it has so many that again, they fade against each other.

Also, it's at human level, not an aerial shot.

I think the more cities can cultivate this kind of view, the more I get that sense of place--and the more I want to look at the view all the time.

Placemaking: London

 I was recently going through a recovered drive of photos and thinking about just how often my family (individually and therefore collectively) has been to London, and what it is about the place that draws us there repeatedly from quite far distances (after all, none of the family I'm referring to live in the UK, though we do have more distant relatives there). 

And while I don't have a definitive reason (though perhaps the fact that London won my CityBracket challenge might provide a clue), I wanted to take this space to speculate a bit about what makes London a desirable space--to visit at least, since I have lived there only three months at a stretch and so don't feel like an expert on that topic.

1. Multicentrality

There are certainly places I go to in London repeatedly. It has absolutely no lack of iconic structures:

Above: two of them, though one is trying to hide. 

Some of them, I visit repeatedly, due to my own recurring interests.

Hello Globe!

Others, like Stamford Bridge above, are iconic less for their looks than for what happens in them: Premier League football can happen in lovely locales, but doesn't have to.

The point is that there are many different major draws in London. And that's before we get to the kind of attraction that isn't so much "iconic building" as "place that humans gravitate to for non-architectural reasons."

This way to Experiences indeed, Battersea Power Station.

There are some repeated shots in my various folders, but honestly not as many as you'd think--even between multiple visitors taking the photos--because there are so many places in London worth going to.

Much as I love cities like Seattle and Chicago--genuinely and deeply--the cities are still rather more focused on a single downtown neighborhood than a place like London. You can see it in their transit networks, for a start. The Circle Line in London is...rather larger than the Loop in Chicago. Seattle hasn't even managed that kind of encirclement. And while I'm hardly saying London is unique here (Paris for a start would like a word) I am suggesting that it is a distinctive element of London placemaking that it is indeed multiple places, rather than purely focused on a distinctive downtown.

2. Consistency of Presentation

But the flip side of there being multiple major places in London to experience is that there is a common thread to how they are presented and experienced that makes them all feel like London. That's another part of what sets something like Greater London apart from, say, Chicagoland; suburban Chicagoland does not present itself as Chicago (except for money-related branding purposes) whereas Greater London presents itself much more similarly to the central city. Not identically of course, but similarly:

The roundel is a great example. Not only does it provide a consistent brand experience across the Underground, as above, but Transport for London uses it even in areas where a US city might not even have transit, let alone transit branded and integrated with the urban fabric:

Not that Brockley is actually that far from central London--but socially and economically it is quite suburban. And yet it is visibly integrated into the sense of place that is London through the roundel (and other elements like that Way out signage). 

This is also why the doubledecker red buses matter; they're not physical infrastructure in the same way but they also give that consistent sense of place--both visually and by literally connecting disparate parts of the city.

3. Interconnectedness

That last point is vital: London is an easy place to get around, as well. It matters that the signage at Brockley is for a train station. It means that not only does it look like it's part of London, it is practically part of London too. The place feels like one place because it is. Yes, this is where it matters that I'm seeing this as a tourist, because I'm well aware that there are social and other barriers to actual integration of the city. I'm not positing it as some kind of prelapsarian paradise. I'm suggesting that if I actually want to go from place to place in London, I can. And quite easily (in the US sense--very easily). 

And as the creation of the Elizabeth Line speaks to, that's getting easier. 

Even my least favo(u)rite London transportation mode reveals the interconnectedness of the place. Not only does it provide an additional crossing of the river, but you can see things like the dock above from it. 

There are just so many ways to get around! And they are all branded! So you know where you are, where you can go, and how easily.

And that's without considering the most basic of ways of moving around: foot. The Millennium Bridge (above) is a reminder that you can also just move between parts of London on your own, without too much difficulty, if you have good shoes and a tolerance for whatever weather might be happening.

Sometimes the bridge is even a train station too (thanks Blackfriars). 

All of these things contribute to the sense that London is one big place with a lot going on. And these are all elements that can be built towards by other cities as well: cultivate multiple areas of the city that matter; don't brand them differently or radically distinctly, but treat them all as one coherent whole; and connect them with good transit, good walkability, and a general sense that you can and are meant to actually travel between them.

It's a shame that getting all three of those things at once is often so hard.

Urban Freeways

 I grew up with urban highways, and I have never really lived anywhere without them, so I'm well aware of the costs of urban highways. 

I also understand the impulse to build them.

When you're in a city and all you have is a car, or all you imagine your population will have is a car, then access to a highway feels like a necessity. You want to get places faster, don't you? You want people from elsewhere to come to you, don't you? You want to be integrated into the nationwide system, don't you?

Well, yes, you do. But that of course ignores the negative externalities of urban highways. And while from Seattle to Boston to Chicago to Rochester to the Quad Cities, I've never actually gotten away from them, I want to expand on why I wish I could.

1. Making Pleasant Spaces Unpleasant

A highway is a fine place for driving, usually. But underneath or around a highway is not a pleasant place for people.

That's usually fine in the middle of rural areas where there aren't many people to experience the unpleasantness, and those who are there generally have wide open non-freeway spaces to escape into.

It's less fine in an urban setting where the literal point is to have a lot of people.

It's even less fine when the freeway is not only urban but taking up prime urban real estate, places you should want people congregating. Places that, because of the positive aggregate effects of density, would be really pleasant if there weren't, you know, a freeway overhead.

I'm going to pick on Milwaukee here for the paradoxical reason that they've done about as well as I think you can do with an urban downtown freeway. The area around the Public Market is great. But it would be infinitely better without a literal freeway just above you.

They've used this space very inventively, and it's nicely decorated, and it's a space I want to spend time in when I'm there.

It's also impossible to pretend you aren't actually directly beneath a huge multilane freeway deck.

This is a space that is pleasant, and should be more pleasant, but the existence of the urban freeway depresses its excellence. 

2. Disconnecting Cities

The  Milwaukee Public Market is the best case in some ways because it is made less pleasant by the freeway but at least you can walk under the freeway. In many places, the freeway is an actual barrier, cut across only by a few overpasses or literally nothing.

Here in Louisville, yes, I'm taking the photo from an overpass. But look: no one is going to cross this in any direction down there. And while there are nice trees implying that you're in a rural area where you wouldn't need or want to cross, that's not actually the case. Behind those trees are city. If there were no highway, that city could connect across (but it doesn't, of course).

Even in some cases where the main freeway is elevated, like here in Toronto, the Gardiner Expressway is accompanied by a big surface road, which breaks up the continuity of pedestrian or even just street-level non-car transportation. This is what Alaska Way is (or at least was) with the viaduct and the surface street both blocking Seattle's waterfront when I was growing up.

There are more vile examples of redlining and the destruction of whole neighborhoods by urban freeways, but even when that didn't happen freeways tend to break apart a city.

Even when there is legally a sidewalk, there isn't necessarily connectivity, Boston. This is why I say Milwaukee is the best version here: it's made less pleasant, but they at least put a there there.

3. Noise

All of this is about the physical built environment. Now let's talk about there being cars going 55-75 mph at all times on a freeway. 

This guy is quiet when parked, but not when moving.

The tires, the engines, the roar of traffic; freeways are loud. And if the cars aren't moving, that has other problems: gas fumes, to start, not to mention the removal of the supposed benefit of speed.

Basically this: almost every city I like has urban freeways but I'd like them a lot better without.

Hmmm, maybe there's a reason Vancouver and London, with their lack of (downtown) freeways did so well in my CityBracket...after all, no one wants to live next to a freeway.