Has the phrase "New Urbanism" lost meaning?

[Howl]

As an example of how transit supports a retail main street look at Yonge Street and Bloor/Danforth Streets in Toronto. These are the main streets with subways below them.

If you start at Front and Yonge you can north along Yonge Street for 10km and the entire street on both sides is retail, with the exception of a few parks, public squares and cemeteries. Then there is a 2.5km gap through a ravine/park area (and only one subway station), before the retail main street starts up again. North of Finch, where the subway currently stops the retail character gets less robust and more variable. Many of the neighbourhood on either side of Yonge are lower density areas, yet there are very few vacant shops even in these areas.

The same is true of Bloor/Danforth Streets on the east-west direction. It runs over 20km from Warden to Islington with retail on both sides, again with the exception of a few parks and ravines.

Streets with streetcars rather than subways also generally have retail main streets along their entire length, and where the streetcar lines terminate and become bus routes the character of the street usually changes quite dramatically.

[Cismontane]

As an example of how transit supports a retail main street look at Yonge Street and Bloor/Danforth Streets in Toronto. These are the main streets with subways below them. .

Yes.. transit (and, I think for Blor/Danforth cycling?) work with private vehicles to extend retail service areas beyond the quarter mile walking cachement (in other words, people go there from other areas to shop).

[Linda_D]

As an example of how transit supports a retail main street look at Yonge Street and Bloor/Danforth Streets in Toronto. These are the main streets with subways below them.

If you start at Front and Yonge you can north along Yonge Street for 10km and the entire street on both sides is retail, with the exception of a few parks, public squares and cemeteries. Then there is a 2.5km gap through a ravine/park area (and only one subway station), before the retail main street starts up again. North of Finch, where the subway currently stops the retail character gets less robust and more variable. Many of the neighbourhood on either side of Yonge are lower density areas, yet there are very few vacant shops even in these areas.

The same is true of Bloor/Danforth Streets on the east-west direction. It runs over 20km from Warden to Islington with retail on both sides, again with the exception of a few parks and ravines.

Streets with streetcars rather than subways also generally have retail main streets along their entire length, and where the streetcar lines terminate and become bus routes the character of the street usually changes quite dramatically.

Is the retail necessarily the function of subway/streetcar transit or is that form of transit the result of the nature of the neighborhoods? Much of the commercial real estate on Bloor/Danforth is older, suggesting that retail has been around a long time.

IMO, the neighborhoods served by the subway lines and the streetcars were high density areas that supported lots of retail long before the Toronto subway system was built. The streetcars go back to the WW I era IIRC, and the far reaches of the subway line, at least the part that I'm familiar with, stretches out past Swansea, which was literally a "streetcar suburb" from the 1920s before it was annexed (some of my Canadian relatives have lived in Swansea since the 1960s when they moved "out there" from neighborhoods much closer to Downtown).

[Luca]

Some very interesting posts, especially about the variable simpacting transport modality.

I have found posts by "Gotta Speakup" well argued. Pragmatic Idealist may appear a bit strident to some but I think this shoudl be contextualized by rather doctrinaire and shrill reponses by other posters accusing anyone who takes exception to an urban space 99% dominated by cars as being some sort of communist, NU, dictatorial zealot. You don't have to be Kunstler to see that the built space in the US is overweighted towards auto optimization not entirely though free-market chpocie but also by regualtions, subsidies, etc.

RE. the original question, I think the neverending debate on Cyburbia about NU shows that, for the planning and concerned-about-urban-spoace community, certainly, NU has not lost meaning at all.
What IS perhaps true is that some people attach it to anything that does nto look lik a 1970s development.
It's a bit like "sprawl". It's real, It's a useful term but it can be msiused/overused.

Let me set up a sort of straw man of my own. Knowing full well that the actual choices are limitless, if we WERE arbitrarily to limit ourselves to three choices of places to live:
a) http://www.flickr.com/photos/26057745@N00/6058972503

b) http://www.flickr.com/photos/26057745@N00/6058972751

c) http://www.flickr.com/photos/26057745@N00/6059520250

d) http://www.flickr.com/photos/26057745@N00/6058972577


and not making assumptions about factors not naturally correlated to built environment (like school quality, etc.). Would anyone seriously pick a)? how about b)? It's a serious question, not a rhetorical one. Please provide reasons.

[Cismontane]

Is the retail necessarily the function of subway/streetcar transit or is that form of transit the result of the nature of the neighborhoods?

Howl will probably disagree with me, but IMO B-D is viable as a retail corridor only because of the CBD and other more densely developed areas to the south, not because of transit. Sure, the transit amenities help, but that district exists because of the commercial context not in separate from it.

[Cismontane]

and not making assumptions about factors not naturally correlated to built environment (like school quality, etc.). Would anyone seriously pick a)? how about b)? It's a serious question, not a rhetorical one. Please provide reasons.

what's your criteria for evaluation?

[docwatson]

What IS perhaps true is that some people attach it to anything that does not look like a 1970s development. It's a bit like "sprawl". It's real, It's a useful term but it can be misused/overused.

This is an excellent point.

Let me set up a sort of straw man of my own. Knowing full well that the actual choices are limitless, if we WERE arbitrarily to limit ourselves to three choices of places to live ... and not making assumptions about factors not naturally correlated to built environment (like school quality, etc.). Would anyone seriously pick a)? how about b)? It's a serious question, not a rhetorical one. Please provide reasons.

Maybe this is on purpose and this is why you call it a straw man, but your examples include no walkable compact small-lot (or even 'typical' suburban lot) single-family homes, a housing type many people have a strong preference for and ones that occupy a good part of the transect. So among these choices, if I want walkable but also single-family, my only choice is the (rather nice) rowhomes. I would guess many would choose a) because of the large yards, but then they need to consider other built environment factors - what's driving like around there? Is that bluegrass all irrigated and how much do those lots cost to buy and maintain? Are you surrounded by country or more and more sprawl (the dream of being in the country ruined by your neighbor's desire to put up another subdivision)?

[Howl]

Howl will probably disagree with me, but IMO B-D is viable as a retail corridor only because of the CBD and other more densely developed areas to the south, not because of transit. Sure, the transit amenities help, but that district exists because of the commercial context not in separate from it.

You and Linda are partially correct; it's not the transit that makes the retail main street work in itself, it is the walkability. Any form of transit station created pedestrians (unless it’s a large park-and-ride station). The subway generates a very high volume of pedestrian traffic that spills out onto the street and past the front doors of all those shops. Add to that the fact that most local streets connect to and run perpendicular to Yonge and Bloor/Danforth making access to the adjacent neighbourhood very easy, and you’ve got a recipe for success. If the subway and streetcars weren’t there, and people needed their cars to get around, many of the pre-war retail streets would have disappeared long ago.

[Luca]

what's your criteria for evaluation?

I'm interested in what YOU would pick. and Why.

[Luca]

Maybe this is on purpose and this is why you call it a straw man, but your examples include no walkable compact small-lot (or even 'typical' suburban lot) single-family homes

Yes, you're right. Iw as trying to offer some 'archetypal' (perjaps 'extreme') examples rather than in-between compromises thus excluding very likely actual outcomes.

I would guess many would choose a) because of the large yards, but then they need to consider other built environment factors - what's driving like around there? Is that bluegrass all irrigated and how much do those lots cost to buy and maintain? Are you surrounded by country or more and more sprawl (the dream of being in the country ruined by your neighbor's desire to put up another subdivision)?

Indeed. My guess would be that if all of those options were provided in equal amounts, as an experiment, say, a lot of people might be surprised by how many, even in the US, might choose d) or even c) or b). I think one of the strongest argument of the NUs is that in many ways the choices have since the 1950s been 'stacked' in favor of option a) by regulation, government action and (last but certainly not least) non-urbanistic, non-architectural factors like crime and education issues.

But obviously no-one with any sense should want to go out of their way to do the opposite and stack the choices necessarily against option a).

[Pragmatic Idealist]

Obviously, large city regions aren't going to be walkable, but are they transitable? Much of the Socal and San Diego evidence shows that if you restrict parking at the destination, people start taking transit a lot more (and developers are a lot happier, since they don't have to provide as much land for low-yielding surface or, worse, structured parking).

The other factor to consider for Socal and San Diego is the relative cost of driving or using transit. At any given relative cost ratio between the two modes the modal share seems to be largely stable (only availability and cost of destination parking seems to reliably control it), but at around $4.00-$4.50 a gallon cost of gas, transit boardings in San Diego - where the morphology makes transit viable in much of the city - start going bonkers. In the two periods in the last decade that gas stayed above $4.00-$4.50/gallon for sustained periods, you saw radical swings in MTS boardings of up to 40% across the system and sometimes 2 or 3 times at specific transit-rich and TOD-planned stops.

This tells you two things: people will use available, convenient and well-designed transit options at or above certain affordability thresholds. Unfortunately, the corollary to this statement also holds: mere accessibility to transit or transit-friendly urban design and planning does not in and of itself guarantee transit use in the absence of an economic necessity (or exigent trigger). Design can enable the capacity for modal shift, but it cannot actually, in and of itself, dictate modal shift.

In fact, it appears that the choice to live in a TOD doesn't actually involve making a commitment to use transit but rather it entails (among many other factors) the purchase of an option by the new TOD resident to enable his or her use of transit in the event certain exigent circumstances occur (triggers such as unavailable destination parking, car breakdowns and servicing, health-related issues, or spikes in the price of oil). Mathematically speaking, this suggests a very very different model than the deterministic model of behavior pushed by the Smargrowth/New Urbanism crowd... which is that the benefit of transit-oriented development is principally option value, not behavioral. This makes all the difference in the world in terms of what urban design and transportation planning decisions one makes and at what threshold levels.

For PI, I suggest taking a look at data on the income elasticity of transit use in Socal vs San Diego vs San Jose. Transit use in LA is somewhat higher a percentage of total trips in Socal (LA in particular) than it is in San Diego but not so if you control for income. Controlled for income, transit use in LA and San Jose is somewhat lower than it is in San Diego despite your (fallacious IMO) argument that LA is more transit-rich. I suspect this has alot to do with what destinations in San Diego are actually served by transit and the greater frequency of transit friendly morphology, but who knows. My point here is that the evidence is far from clear that simply building more transit results in higher transit modal share with any degree of predictability.

The difference is the transit mode and the level of service. Neither San Diego nor Los Angeles have enough rail and B.R.T. yet that are able to attract "choice" passengers. San Diego has a better urban form, though, to support transit. Los Angeles has the benefit of an excellent street grid, and the levels of service on many of the bus lines are now approaching B.R.T. standards. Transit, though, is not necessarily inferior to private cars as the price elasticity of demand might suggest.

Transit has several advantages. It also has a few disadvantages, but these can be addressed by improving the urban form, by providing connecting transportation, and by enhancing the passenger experience and the level of service. Those variables are complex enough to make building reliable econometric models tricky.