Shenzhen Urban

Items relevant for planners in Shenzhen--NOT necessarily about Shenzhen. See also http://szstreet.tumblr.com.

[design-is-fine]

Rob Mallet-Stevens. Album “A Modern City”, 1922. Pochoir coloured plates. London, Benn Brothers, Via Nosbüsch-Stucke

“In 1911, he began publishing pochoir drawings of modern villas and other buildings in a geometric style influenced by Josef Hoffmann, Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. These led to the influential album. Unlike Le Corbusier, Mallet-Stevens had no interest in radicalizing the urban plan. He simply took each of the standard buildings of the modern town, from the fire station to the individual house, and applied a ‘modern’ style to it. It is possible, however, that these illustrations proved much more influential for contemporary architects than Le Corbusier’s austere urban and architectural projects.” (Charlotte Benton, Art Deco 1910-1939, V&A)

[szurban]

The Plan to Build a Skyscraper That Doesn’t Cast a Shadow

And the carefully defined curve of that glass allows the reflected light to follow the shadow throughout the day. Note that the reflected light is diffuse—not a focused death ray.

[szurban]

Ground floor code reforms in San Francisco

From a June 2014 article on the SPUR (San Francisco Planning and Urban Research) website called "Designing at Ground Level"

In recent years, San Francisco, with the help of advocacy groups like Livable City, has revised significant portions of the planning code, with a focus on making the ground floor work for pedestrians. They include:

No parking required in transit-oriented housing.

Minimum ground floor heights were increased to as much as 17 feet.

Transit-oriented districts were allowed a 5-foot height bonus within the ground floor.

Active uses required to a depth of 25 feet from the street frontage.

Ground floor parking must be 25 feet from the street frontage.

Parking on upper floors must have level floors, minimum floor-to-floor heights and other features to ensure they can be converted to other uses in the future.

Stackers and other space-efficient parking solutions are permitted as-ofright.

Neighborhood Commercial zoning was loosened to allow for limited production. Prescriptive limits on equipment and facilities were replaced with performance standards for noise, odors etc.

PDR zoning was loosened to allow limited retail sales onsite.

[szurban]

Los Angeles releases first sustainability plan

City announcement of 105-page “Sustainable City Plan”

Launched April 08, 2018

20-year plan has targets in 14 categories related to our environment, our economy, and equity encompassing water conservation, clean energy, waste, green jobs, transportation, housing, and neighborhood livability.

Several other large cities, including New York, Chicago and San Jose, have released sustainability plans in recent years.

In one of the plan’s more ambitious goals, Los Angeles would source 50 percent of its water locally by 2035 by turning to recycling, stormwater capture and other conservation methods. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power currently gets about 85 percent of its water from outside sources.

In another goal, 75 percent of Angelenos would live within a half mile of a park or open space by 2035. By 2017, 56 percent of residents will do so.

David Pettit, attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, expressed disappointment over the plan’s goal of increasing the percentage of port-related goods movement trips that use zero emissions technology to 25 percent by 2035.

via LA Daily News

[szurban]

China’s megacities are less dense than equivalents elsewhere in the world

From the Economist's "The Great Sprawl of China"

China depends on its cities for economic growth and innovation. But it is failing to make the most of its largest conurbations. Medium-sized agglomerations of 1.5m-6.5m are outperforming bigger ones in terms of environmental protection, economic development, efficient use of resources and the provision of welfare, says McKinsey....Average travel speed in Beijing is half that in New York or Singapore. 

The work units are gone but the tradition of dehumanising architecture persists. Most new developments are built on giant blocks 400-800 metres long....Large blocks mean fewer roads to disperse traffic. Guidelines require a main urban road every 500 metres and an eight-lane road every kilometre.

The ill-defined ownership rights of farmers have encouraged the sprawl. Officials can expropriate rural land easily and at little cost. Doing so is far cheaper than redeveloping existing urban areas. Industrial land is heavily subsidised, so factories have remained in urban areas rather than move to cheaper sites on city outskirts. Since 1992 China has spent 8.5% of its national income on infrastructure each year, far more than Europe and America (2.6%) or India (3.9%).

[szurban]

Lack of Street Connectivity in China increase distances between places, forces people into cars.

From the World Bank report Planning Energy Efficient and Livable Cities (pg. 5)

Greater density correlated with less transportation related energy use, and Guangzhou could have increased density and lower energy use.

And high towers does not mean greater density. Furthermore, which is more enjoyable to stroll through? Paris or Shanghai's Lianyang?

An urban fabric with a low building footprint (10 percent) must have six times taller buildings on average (42 floors) to reach the same built density as an urban fabric of seven-floors high with a building footprint of 60 percent.

This I did not know, that the lower rise, more dense had quite an effect on on housing related energy use.

Unlike in Seoul, the FAR in Chinese cities is unrelated to distance from metro stations. Every extra meter makes a difference as to whether someone takes a subway or drives.

Parks: in Paris, less than 5% of urban area is park, but an average person lives less than 400 m away from one. In Beijing parks cover 30% of the city, but an average person lives 3k away from one. The parks are not accessible to someone to go to on a whim. (pg 17)

The paper also criticizes the large setbacks in Chinese cities which, along with the too wide streets, further create unnecessary distances between places.This lowers densities and increases sprawl and the distances effectively force people into the car. (page 18)

[atlurbanist]

We have largely rebuilt American communities…retrofitting cities to make space for cars, bulldozing old buildings so that we can park them, constructing new communities where it’s not possible to get around without them.

The myth of the American love affair with cars | Emily Badger, Washington Post

(above) 1962, Downtown Atlanta: interstate-highway construction cuts gulfs of separation through neighborhood street grids, ensuring the dominance of personal cars. (via atlurbanist)

[szurban]

A compilation of "future cities"

"A visual history of the future." The 140 page report put out in September "explores the ways future cities have been depicted over the last 100 years." One page is given to each utopian/dystopian vision with a photo and short description.

[szurban]

Speed Limits around the world

Not a good use of colors in this map.

From Greater Greater Washington

[szurban]

More transit means fewer traffic fatalities.

According to Todd Litman: 

Public transport is overall very safe (low crash rate) and secure (low crime rate). However, experts seldom promote transit as a traffic safety strategy, and advocates seldom emphasize safety as a transit benefit. It's time for a new narrative.

[szurban]

“The Stone Age came to an end not because we had a lack of stones, and the oil age will come to an end not because we have a lack of oil.”

—Sheik Zaki Yamani, Oil Minister for Saudi Arabia (1962–1986)

From "An Innovative Path to Sustainable Transportation" in the most recent issue of Access Magazine.

[szurban]

Via Treehugger

[szurban]

From "The Pearl River Delta Megacity" in  TimeOut Hong Kong from a year ago. Good enough article. But there are some inaccuracies in the map. Population densities are not represented accurately, Shenzhen does not have two ports in the middle of Shenzhen Bay, and the SZ-HK  Western Crossing Bridge is not shown.

Note: the photo of 1980 Shenzhen is by Leroy Demery Jr. Check out his Flickr for the best images of Shenzhen from that time.

[szurban]

In New York City:

"if the most energy-intensive large buildings were brought up to the current seventy-fifth percentile, the city’s total greenhouse gases could be reduced by 9 percent."

From an article last year about how LEED platinum Bank of America Building uses more than twice as much energy per square foot as the Empire State Building. "The worst-performing buildings use three to five times more energy per square foot than the best ones."

It seems the massive trading floors and computing power need are the main culprits for the building's intensive energy use, which LEED Core and Shell does not address.

[szurban]

Another reason to regulate for more efficient vehicles: SAFETY for the other driver

The basic premise: more fuel efficient cars are lighter; lighter vehicles cause fewer deaths to occupants in the other vehicle when crashes between vehicles occur. The result: "Excess vehicle weight imposes an external safety cost on other drivers of $79 billion per year."

Regulate the externalities with a fuel tax according to Michael L. Anderson and Maximilian Auffhammer

[szurban]

Source via urbankchoze.

[szurban]

Chinese cities have a flatter density gradient than cities in Europe and the US and it may partly be due to the leasehold, rather than freehold system.

 ...as the city grows, the land leasehold system results in the city center being developed less intensely and more land being used on the outskirts of the city when compared to a fee simple environment. Thus, cities in China are likely to be relatively more spread out, with city centers relatively older than would be the case with “fee simple” ownership. Our model suggests that excess residential land use is about 6 percent. In addition, compared with the ownership case, housing supply will grow more quickly in the near future, but more slowly later on during the transition of the Chinese economy. Parallel to the supply growth pattern, equilibrium price grows relative slowly in the near future, but more quickly later on. 

From "Patterns of growth in Chinese cities: Implications of the land lease" in the Journal of Urban Economics. I have not read the article, only seen the abstract.

A similar paper:"Suburbs or Skyscrapers? The effect of China’s leasing market on housing decentralization." Ungated.

Corruption and a desire for land use fees now may also be reasons. The major Chinese cities have been expanding impervious surface area five times faster than the major US cities.