4-D City: Ignoring Commuters in Green Equation

from an entry to a competition that I was thinking about that got lost in the pile. note that I don't go into all the nitty gritty, but my main idea stems from the concept of the city as place rather than the concept of the city as people.

The talk is big for urban design that fits in with the new buzzword, "green." Now, admittedly I am not much of a fan of fads, or buzzwords, but all the green talk is at least getting people to think. It is making homeowners, commuters, business owners, politicians, everyone become more aware of the benefits of a more energy efficient lifestyle.

But thinking is not enough, nor taxes from Washington to curb our use on domestic oil supply. The bottom line is not how much we drive, but why we drive so much. And it doesn't get solved by solar panels on homes or carbon taxes. Nor will it be solved by creating even more new places in the US to fill the lush, green lands between the conurbations. We could only wish the solution would be a new city dropped from the sky into the cornfields of Iowa. We can effectively brainstorm how to continue responsible growth and act on those conclusions, but looking at our cities which already exist and thrive is more important.

Population of a City Changes in Any Given Day

I am from Maryland, where I get to see the best of both DC and Baltimore traffic. As a child raised in the suburbs, driving was a pastime. I drove from the eastern shore to the Shenandoah, and even once to Cleveland. In order to truly understand how to tackle greener urbanism, we need to stop cropping our views to a clean crisp box. The harsh reality is many people who work in DC, live elsewhere. Many who work in New York, commute. What can we gain from this is important. Think about how much energy and time we spend to get to work and back. The cropped image of a city is false -- it is really a vast network of roads and smaller towns. This is a key to addressing a major part of the congestion and energy consumption of the most frequent trip of the middle class.

If the man and woman who own a home are working to earn an honest living by commuting a shared 100 miles a day, rather modest in Maryland, what does a carbon tax do? What does incentives for hybrid cars do now? Arguably, our cars are the one luxury item that isn't quite the luxury item. People simply don't have access to public transit to get to the places they need to work. It is easy to proclaim, "Just move to the city," but there isn't always room, the costs can be high, and it may not work into the lifestyle choices of those who yearn for it.

A possible solution: trains. It is funny how a concept that started in the 19th century can still be true. But old can also be good. Exceptionally when matched with new technology, more energy efficient and for the populous. Just a trip to Japan taught me the tactfulness in planning the train network and bus lines to get from each of the locations on my two week trip. No cab rides needed, only buses and trains. The United States needs to revisit the train as a mode of transit.

I feel like this should spawn a new conversation between engineers and architects. It is easy to assume this is solely an engineering problem, but the stations and methods of access are what needs to be looked at.

Why do we lie to ourselves about the planning of these over sized parking lots, equipped with plenty of spaces, nice green medians, and trees and this and that...when you can just glance over a hill to see the massive interchange. More about parking lots and their design implications in a future post...