Floating Points

Today is the day for working in accordance with the Way.  In working in accordance with the Way, we act in conformity with the Way.

It's Pharaoh Sanders birthday! The world's greatest living tenor saxophonist turns 81 today.  Few  other players can say that their style influenced John Coltrane and not the other way around, but Pharaoh has continued to explore new areas and new sounds, and at 81 is still producing fresh, relevant, and modern-sounding music.

Today's post is about urban planning. Cities can either grow or they can die - there's no other route than those two choices.  Staying exactly as they are is not an option in a capitalist society with a growing population.

Cites can either plan their growth, or they can grow haphazardly.  The Victorians knew what they were  doing when they laid out an alphanumeric street grid on the island of Manhattan in the 18th Century, and Portland, Oregon is the modern poster child for well-planned urban growth. Houston, Texas is the case study for unplanned development.  Atlanta resembles Houston in planning more than New York or Portland, but we're trying to improve.

Growth in cities can be either horizontal or vertical.  Horizontal growth is called "urban sprawl" and results in wide-spread traffic, air pollution, de-forestation, and wasteful use of water and other resources.  Vertical growth is called "density."

Many people are opposed to density, as they associate it with localized traffic problems, lack of greenspace, and perceived crime.  But without density, the solutions to those problems, like mass transit and public parks, are not feasible.  So the balancing act for urban planners is to provide mass transit and public safety commensurate with growth, and not let one get ahead of the other.  Transit ahead of density results in underfunded subways and erratic bus schedules; density ahead of transit results in gridlocked highways and people abandoning the cities, and the "growth" path changing to the "dying" path.

One of the biggest impediments, though, for pro-density urban planners is single-family housing.  Atlanta is a very suburban-style city, with lots of in-town single-family residential neighborhoods - you know, a single house on a single lot.  It's hard to achieve density without abandoning zoning and shoehorning apartment buildings and townhouses into available nooks and crannies. I live in a single-family residential neighborhood, that is to say, I have a house with a front and back yard, and I like it that way and feel like an apartment building or a townhouse shoehorned into the neighborhood would negatively change its character. Anytime zoning changes for housing density are proposed, the single-family residents understandably raise a ruckus, and I can't blame them.  I like my neighborhood the way it is, I paid good money to live in this neighborhood as it is, and I'll wager that folks in most other neighborhoods feel the same.

So another balancing act for urban planners is to preserve the historic nature of the intown single-family residential neighborhoods while also maximizing density in the areas not zoned for single families. Essentially, that means you have fewer tools in the toolkit with which to work and have to be more creative.  

Eventually, a lot of in-town single-family residences will inevitably disappear.  The nature of urban centers is to become more urban, and those wanting their own yard for their children and pets will eventually have to relocate further and further from the city center.  Impermanence is swift.  But when an urban planner tries to accelerate that change with a swift stroke of the zoning-law pen, pandemonium and pushback ensue, and horizontal expansion becomes preferred over vertical growth.

But what do I know?  I'm no urban planner.  Those are just my thoughts as I was out walking on Atlanta's well-planned Beltline path this afternoon.