Urban 2
Lessons from Leiden
Permeability (of streets and neighborhoods)
The ease of moving in and out of areas, with different paths to the same place. It means not closing anyone out with infrastructure.
Legibility (of urban landscape)
How easily a city's layout can be understood and navigated. A legible city has clear paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks.
Third Places
Locations that serve social needs beyond work and home life (e.g., cafes, parks, community centers).
Mixed-Uses
Places that combine residential, retail, office, and commercial spaces in close proximity. Example: Salesforce Park.
Adaptive Reuse
The process of repurposing an existing structure for a new use. Example: converting an old railway into The High Line park.
Nature of Urban Problems
Urban Sprawl
Rapid, low-density, auto-dependent expansion at the edges of cities, consuming land faster than population growth. Example: Virginia Beach.
Folded Map Project
A project connecting residents at corresponding addresses on Chicago's North and South Sides to highlight the impacts of urban segregation and redlining.
Shrinking Cities
Cities that experience extreme population loss, often due to deindustrialization, leading to issues of vacancy.
Home GR/OWN (Milwaukee)
A program that turns vacant lots into community gardens to create vibrant communities and provide food in at-risk neighborhoods.
Walking School Bus / Bike Bus
A chaperoned group of children walking or biking to school along a set route to ensure safety and encourage sustainable living.
Housing Wage (Out of reach Study)
The hourly wage a full-time worker must earn to afford a modest rental home without spending too much income on housing costs.
Kampung Admiralty (Singapore)
Singapore's first integrated public development, combining a park, commercial/medical centers, and public housing with a publicly accessible rooftop.
A Brief History of City Planning, Part I
Spanish Laws of the Indies
Spanish colonial laws dictating settlement layout: a central plaza, gridded streets, and specific zones for different socio-economic classes.
1899 Building Height Act (Washington, DC)
A law stating no building could be taller than the width of the street plus 20 feet, enacted for fire safety and aesthetic reasons.
Dumbbell Tenements
A form of cramped urban housing shaped like a dumbbell, featuring an airshaft between buildings. They were often overcrowded fire hazards.
Hull House and Jane Addams
A settlement house founded by Jane Addams in Chicago (1889) to provide social and educational opportunities for immigrant workers.
City Beautiful Movement
A turn-of-the-century movement advocating for beautifying cities with grand boulevards, parks, and monumental public buildings to promote order and virtue.
Ebenezer Howard and Garden Cities
Howard founded the Garden City movement, aiming to combine city and country living in self-contained communities surrounded by greenbelts. Example: Radburn, NJ.
A Brief History of City Planning, Part II
The Equitable Building (1913)
A massive NYC skyscraper whose size and shadow sparked public backlash, leading to the city's first zoning resolution.
1916 Zoning Resolution (NYC)
The first comprehensive U.S. zoning law, regulating building height and shape with setback requirements to allow light and air to reach the street.
Levittown
A post-WWII suburban development using mass-production to build inexpensive, "cookie-cutter" homes, initially for white veterans only.
Restrictive Covenants (Racial Covenants)
Clauses in property deeds that prohibited the sale or rental of property to specific racial or religious groups, enforcing segregation.
Redlining and the HOLC (Home Owners' Loan Corporation)
A discriminatory practice where lenders (like the HOLC) denied services to minority neighborhoods, marking them as "high-risk" on maps with red lines.
Willis Carrier
The inventor of the modern air conditioner.
Interstate Highway Act of 1956
Authorized the construction of the Interstate Highway System. It stimulated suburban growth but also displaced communities and reinforced segregation.
Urban Renewal
A mid-20th century policy of redeveloping urban areas, often involving "slum clearance" that destroyed minority neighborhoods.
Vinegar Hill (Charlottesville)
A historically Black neighborhood in Charlottesville demolished in the 1960s under urban renewal, displacing families and destroying cultural heritage.
Jane Jacobs
Author of "The Death and Life of Great American Cities." She advocated for bottom-up planning, mixed-uses, density, and "eyes on the street."
Border Vacuums
A Jane Jacobs concept: large, single-use institutions (like highways) that create dead zones and cut off activity between neighborhoods.
Robert Moses
A powerful New York planner known for building massive public works projects, like highways and bridges, often at the expense of existing neighborhoods.
Competing Visions of Urban Form
Density (V. Overcrowding)
Density is the number of people/objects in a space (can be good). Overcrowding is the negative feeling of insufficient space (bad). They are not the same.
Barcelona's Superblocks
A 3x3 grid of blocks where through-traffic is routed around the perimeter, turning interior streets into pedestrian-priority public spaces.
Walk Score
A number (0-100) measuring an address's walkability based on the distance to amenities like stores, parks, and schools.
The High Line
An elevated public park in NYC created from a repurposed railway. An example of adaptive reuse that also spurred gentrification.
Salesforce Park (San Francisco)
A public rooftop park on a transit center, featuring gardens and a playground. An example of mixed-use development.
11th Street Bridge Park (Washington, DC)
A project to repurpose an old bridge into an elevated public park and pedestrian connection.
Transfer of Development Rights (TDR)
A program allowing landowners to sell development rights from their land to a developer, who can use them to increase density elsewhere.
Elements of Sustainable Urban Form
Portland, OR
A city known for using an Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) to limit sprawl and focus on infill development and transit.
Urban Growth Boundaries (UGBs)
A regulatory line that contains urban development to prevent sprawl and protect rural/natural areas.
Upzoning
Changing zoning codes to allow for higher-density future development (e.g., multi-family housing in single-family zones).
Infill Development
Building on unused or underutilized land within an existing city rather than on the urban fringe.
Brownfields, Greyfields, and Greenfields
Brownfields: Abandoned, potentially contaminated industrial land.
Greyfields: Underutilized or obsolete commercial sites (e.g., old malls).
Greenfields: Undeveloped land, like farmland or forest, at the city's edge.
Gentle Density
Slightly increasing the number and variety of homes in low-density neighborhoods (e.g., duplexes, townhouses). Also called "Missing Middle Housing."
Toronto
A city that uses gentle density strategies, facing opposition from groups like the "Density Creep Neighborhood Alliance."
Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs)
A smaller, secondary living unit on the same lot as a single-family home (e.g., a converted garage or "granny flat").
Charlottesville's FLUM (Future Land Use Map)
A map guiding Charlottesville's growth, allowing more development and rewriting zoning, which has received some public negativity.
Boulder, CO (Controlling growth)
A city that controls growth with an urban service boundary, height limits, a greenbelt, and a points system for housing development.
Vancouver, BC
A city known for its "Living First" policy, focusing on dense, vertical growth around transit with human-scaled, pedestrian-friendly streets.
EcoDensity
A Vancouver initiative framing higher density as a key strategy for environmental sustainability (reducing car reliance, efficient land use).
Copenhagen, Denmark
A global model of sustainable urban form: a compact, low-rise, highly walkable and bikeable city with abundant public spaces.
Sustainable Housing and Living Environments
The 100 Year Life
A concept based on a book about the decisions and implications surrounding longer life expectancy.
15-Minute City
An urban concept where residents can meet most daily needs within a 15-minute walk or bike ride from their homes.
The Not So Big House (Sarah Susanka)
A design philosophy emphasizing quality, detail, and functionality in smaller, well-designed homes over sheer size.
Quinta Monroy (Alejandro Aravena)
A social housing project in Chile that built "half-houses," providing a basic core for residents to expand over time.
Ageing in Place
The ability to live in one's own home and community safely, independently, and comfortably, regardless of age or ability.
Granny Pods
A portable, modified 'guest house' (a type of ADU) placed in a backyard, allowing caregivers close proximity to aging loved ones with monitoring features.
Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities (NORCs)
Neighborhoods with a high concentration of older adults that were not originally designed for seniors.
Beacon Hill Village
A member-led organization in Boston that provides support services for older adults, enabling them to age in place. An example of a NORC.
Form-Based Codes
Land development regulations that focus on the physical form of buildings and public spaces to create a predictable, walkable public realm.
Visual Preference Surveys (VPS)
A technique for obtaining public feedback on physical design alternatives by having participants score images.
Strategies for Tackling Affordable Housing?
Inclusionary Housing Requirements ("Inclusionary Zoning")
A policy requiring a certain percentage of new housing units in a development to be affordable for low- to moderate-income residents.
Missing Middle Housing
A range of multi-unit housing types (e.g., duplexes, triplexes) that are compatible in scale with single-family homes but are often absent from the housing supply.
NYC's "City of Yes"
(Note: This specific initiative was not detailed in the provided PDFs. It is likely a zoning reform effort to allow more housing types citywide.)
A zoning reform initiative in New York City designed to remove barriers and allow for more housing to be built, addressing the affordability crisis.
Community Land Trust
A non-profit that owns land and leases it to residents (who own the buildings), separating the land cost to ensure long-term affordability.
Manufactured Housing
Factory-built homes, often a more affordable form of homeownership.
Mass Timber (e.g. Heartwood in Seattle, PAE Building in Portland)
A sustainable building material made from engineered wood layers. It is strong, has a low carbon footprint, and allows for faster construction.
Creative Neighborhood Design
Courtyard/Communal Housing (e.g. Dutch hofjes)
Homes clustered around a shared green courtyard, promoting a sense of community.
Pocket Neighborhoods; Cottage Housing
A cluster of small, individual homes oriented around a shared common space, designed to foster a close-knit community.
Cohousing (e.g. Bakken, Trudeslund, NyLand)
Intentional communities with private homes and extensive shared spaces (common house, garden). Residents collaboratively manage the community.
Village Homes (Davis, CA)
An ecologically planned community emphasizing solar orientation, on-site stormwater management via swales, community gardens, and bike paths.
New Urbanism (e.g. Kentlands, Celebration)
A planning movement promoting walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods with a range of housing types and traditional design features (porches, narrow streets).
Sustainable Mobility: Reconsidering the Automobile
Highway Caps (or Lids)
A structure built over a sunken highway to reconnect neighborhoods and create new public or green space on top. Example: Seattle's Freeway Park.
Freeway Park (Seattle)
A park built on a lid over Interstate 5, reconnecting downtown and First Hill.
Cheonggyecheon River (Seoul)
A project that removed an elevated highway and restored the river underneath, creating a vibrant public greenway.
High Cost of Free Parking (Donald Shoup)
The idea that "free" parking has high social, economic, and environmental costs, encouraging car overuse and inefficient land use.
Ultra Small Vehicles (USVs)
Tiny, one-person electric cars (stackable). Example: Tokyo, Japan.
Bus Rapid Transit (BRT)
An enhanced bus system with dedicated lanes, priority signaling, and pre-board fare collection, combining bus flexibility with rail-like efficiency. Example: Bogotá.
Trackless Trams
A rubber-tired vehicle that mimics a light rail train, offering a lower-cost alternative to rail systems.
Tap-and-Pay systems (as in NYC)
Contactless payment systems for public transit that make using transit more convenient and efficient.
Rethinking Our Streets and Public Spaces
Complete Streets
Streets designed to enable safe access and mobility for all users—pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists, and transit riders.
Road Diet
Reallocating street space, typically by reducing vehicle lanes to add bike lanes, wider sidewalks, or turn lanes. Improves safety.
School Streets
Temporarily or permanently restricting automobile access on streets around schools to improve safety and create pedestrian space.
Congestion Pricing
Charging a fee for driving in congested areas during peak times to reduce traffic. Example: NYC.
Roundabouts
Circular intersections that improve traffic flow and reduce severe collisions compared to signalized intersections.
Tactical Urbanism
A short-term, low-cost approach to improving public spaces through temporary interventions to test long-term ideas.
Naked Streets and Intersections
Removing traffic signs, signals, and markings to force drivers to rely on eye contact and awareness, reducing speeds.
Intersection Repair
Converting a street intersection into a public square to slow traffic and create a community gathering space.
Build a Better Block
A community-led project to temporarily revitalize a single block, demonstrating potential improvements.
Guerilla Wayfinding
Unofficial signs put up by community members to point to local attractions and encourage walking.
Mental Speedbumps
A concept from David Engwicht about using psychological cues (like yard art) to naturally slow down drivers.
Parklets
A mini-park created by converting one or more parking spaces into a public place for people.
34th Avenue Open Street (New York City)
A street in NYC that was largely closed to through-traffic, creating a safe, linear public space for pedestrians and cyclists.
Culdesac (car-free neighborhood in Tempe, AZ)
A residential neighborhood built without space for private cars, prioritizing pedestrians and micromobility.
Investing in Public Transit and Promise of Micromobility
Last Mile Problem
The challenge of connecting people from a transit stop to their final destination.
Micromobility
Lightweight, small-scale transportation (e.g., e-scooters, bikes) typically used for short trips.
Miami's Underline
A project transforming the land below Miami's MetroRail into a linear park and urban trail.
Brickline Greenway (St Louis)
A planned greenway network in St. Louis connecting parks and neighborhoods.
Ciclovía (Bogotá)
An event where city streets are temporarily closed to cars and opened for cyclists, pedestrians, and recreational activities.
Vélib Bicycles, Paris
A large-scale public bike-sharing system in Paris.
Capital City Bikeshare
(Note: Likely refers to a specific bikeshare program, possibly in a capital city like D.C.)
A public bike-sharing system.
Parks and Greenspaces: Essential Green Infrastructure During a Pandemic
Parks Rx
Programs where healthcare providers "prescribe" time in parks and nature to improve patient health and well-being.
Social Infrastructure
The physical places and organizations (libraries, parks, schools) that shape how people interact and build community.
Medellin's Library Parks
Modern library complexes built in underserved neighborhoods of Medellín, Colombia, serving as social and educational hubs.
Bryant Park
A successful public park in NYC known for its intensive programming, high-quality maintenance, and moveable chairs.
Greenacre Park
A small, iconic pocket park in NYC.
Park-Like (a small park in St Louis)
(Note: Likely a specific small park, the general concept is a small, park-like public space.)
A small public park.
Street Parks (San Francisco)
Community-managed green spaces created on median strips or small, unused paved areas.
"Park in a Truck"
A Philadelphia initiative providing neighborhoods with kits of pre-fabricated park parts for fast, inexpensive park creation.
Pavement to Parks
Initiatives that convert underutilized paved street areas into public plazas or parks.
The Bentway (Toronto)
A linear public space and trail created underneath an elevated highway (the Gardiner Expressway).
Salesforce Park (San Francisco)
A public rooftop park on top of the Salesforce Transit Center.
Levi's Plaza (San Francisco)
A corporate plaza in San Francisco known for its high-quality, publicly accessible design.
Beyond Parks
Biophilia
The hypothesis that humans have an innate tendency to connect with nature and other forms of life.
Biophilic Cities
Cities that integrate nature throughout their urban fabric, fostering a deep connection between residents and the natural environment.
Fractals
Complex, repeating geometric patterns found in nature. Incorporating fractals in design can reduce stress.
Forest Bathing
The practice of immersing oneself in a forest atmosphere for relaxation and health benefits.
3-30-300 Rule
A guideline for urban forestry: everyone should see 3 trees from their home, have 30% canopy cover in their neighborhood, and live within 300 meters of a park.
Bryant Heights (Seattle, WA)
(Note: Specific details not in PDFs. Likely a development incorporating biophilic or green design principles.)
A development in Seattle exemplifying sustainable or biophilic design.
Tiny Forests (or Mini-Forests)
Dense, fast-growing native woodlands planted in urban areas to boost biodiversity and provide nature access.
Miyawaki Method (of tree planting)
A technique for creating dense, fast-growing native forests by planting many native species very close together.
Beirut RiverLESS
A project envisioning the restoration of the Beirut River, turning a concrete channel back into a green public space.
Luma (the western red cedar in Seattle)
A specific, notable tree in Seattle used to highlight the value of individual urban trees.
Perth Urban Wetland
A wetland in Perth, Australia, serving as a natural water filtration system and public amenity.
Extensive Green Roofs
Lightweight green roofs with a thin layer of soil and low-growing, hardy plants. Primarily for environmental function.
Biosolar Roofs
Green roofs that are combined with solar panels, maximizing ecological and energy benefits.
Bosco Verticale (Milan)
"Vertical Forest" - two residential towers in Milan covered with thousands of trees and plants.
Patrick Blanc and Vertical Gardens
A botanist known for creating living walls, or vertical gardens, on building facades.