tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post1613734852437889656..comments2024-03-29T03:50:00.893-04:00Comments on Urban kchoze: European, American and Japanese approaches to height and densitysimval84http://www.blogger.com/profile/10615053214354191224noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-34053733709074374362015-01-05T09:00:54.057-05:002015-01-05T09:00:54.057-05:00Are there any other significantly different approa...Are there any other significantly different approaches to height and density? For example, what about mainland East Asia, or Latin America? IIRC Mexico has an even higher home ownership rate than the USA, in spite of being a considerably poorer country...George Cartyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12170378024031141482noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-70503523680808809522014-09-22T10:07:55.158-04:002014-09-22T10:07:55.158-04:00For Europe: http://t.co/FId4cFJfwQ
For Japan: http...For Europe: http://t.co/FId4cFJfwQ<br />For Japan: http://t.co/xlJmYKtEAg<br /><br />For Montréal: http://www.amt.qc.ca/uploadedFiles/AMT/Site_Corpo/L%60AMT/Portrait_de_la_mobilit%C3%A9/Enquete-OD-2008-resultats-presentation(1).pdf<br />For Vancouver: http://www.translink.ca/~/media/Documents/about_translink/media/2012/2011%20Metro%20Van%20Trip%20Diary%20Survey%20Briefing%201.ashx<br /><br />For Japan, Montréal and Vancouver, the data is trip survey for all purposes. For the US, I posted the numbers I could find, I've struggled to find explicit trip surveys before I posted this article. Since then, I've found a few more, but I've also learned that the typical methodology in the US currently seems to be a bit weird.<br /><br />What I mean is, take walking your dog. How do you count that? Is it zero trip (because it's a round trip to go nowhere in particular)? One trip with destination and origin being the same? Or is it two trips?<br /><br />If I understand correctly, since 2001, the NHTS in the US splits round trips (so says page 6 of this document: http://ejb.rutgers.edu/faculty/pucher/NHTS_TRB_25Jan2011.pdf). This comparison between mode shares in the US and Germany also had to take American double-counting round trips into account to get similar numbers and pointed out that the American survey prompted people many times to count all their walking trips, unlike the German survey: http://www.academia.edu/5075333/Active_Travel_in_Germany_and_the_USA_Contributions_of_Daily_Walking_and_Cycling_to_Physical_Activity (FTR, the numbers they used showed Germans walking in twice as many trips as Americans and biking 10 times more, overall having active transport mode share three times that of Americans, in line with the numbers on my graph).<br /><br />This is pretty major. Someone who owns a dog (and from certain estimates, 36,8% of American households do) and walks it 15 minutes every day would, on an average day, have maybe two car trips (to work and back) and 2 walking trips (walking the dog, counted twice), so has a 50% walking mode share. If you ask me, that's a pretty stupid methodology that balloons walk trips without being representative of anything. Which may account for, for example, walk mode share between 2000 and 2010-2012 increasing from 8,4 to 16,6% in California according to the DOT study:<br />http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/tpp/offices/otfa/documents/CHTS_Final_Report_June_2013.pdf#zoom=85<br /><br />The US methodology also yields much higher number of trips per person than the methodology used in Canada or in Japan (3,6 versus 2,0-2,5), probably largely due to counting round trips twice.<br /><br />So I am in a quandary here. The graph is important to show the impact of urban form on active transport as an utilitarian option. However, the comparability of the data is hard to ensure, given the different methodology. I may update it with better data if I can find them, but I am confident that what it shows is quite comparable to reality if not in the particular, at least in the trend, with active modes being 2 to 4 times more frequent in Japan and Europe as in North America, if only because the Canadian data comes from trip surveys that seems to be of similar methodology to that used in Japan and Europe.simval84https://www.blogger.com/profile/10615053214354191224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-91641540416382876372014-09-22T09:18:59.333-04:002014-09-22T09:18:59.333-04:00Where are the walk/bike mode share numbers from? I...Where are the walk/bike mode share numbers from? I'm asking because the North American numbers seem to be trip-to-work mode shares, whereas the others seem to be trip mode shares. Way less than half of Paris walks to work. The importance of this is that transit users usually take transit to work but walk to other errands, and this means that the transit all-trip share is much lower and the walking/biking share much higher than the trip-to-work mode shares. There's a survey of mode share in Sydney that I can try digging up that cites both numbers, which shows this pattern neatly.Alonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17267294744186811858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-69869715272333843272014-09-21T23:27:45.155-04:002014-09-21T23:27:45.155-04:00Los Angeles is still the only major American city ...Los Angeles is still the only major American city that is denser than in 1950 though. Most are significantly (half or less) less dense than in 1950.<br /><br />Anyways, I think some cities in Europe have built a fair bit of dense neighbourhoods more recently. If you take a neighbourhood like Delicias in Zaragoza for example, I don't know exactly how it came to be the way it is, but the buildings appear to be all modernist (post 1930). If you check out the outlying neighbourhoods of many Spanish cities, you'll see a lot of densely packed mid rises that appear to have replaced 1-2 storey row houses.<br />https://www.google.ca/maps/@41.4987085,2.162244,3a,75y,301.41h,96.67t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sDby0JOxjVVYu7TKqpVU71g!2e0<br /><br /> The more recent (housing boom era) neighbourhoods of Spanish cities are not as dense and more cookie cutter and less organically developed, but are still largely 4-6 storey apartments (with some townhouses). Greek and Italian cities seem to have this too.<br /><br />The per km ridership of the Barcelona metro is towards the lower end of the Japanese range, but it seems to have a more developed rapid transit network than most cities its size. All the Japanese cities that do better have much larger networks and presumably larger populations too. Barcelona only has 20% auto mode share which leaves little room for transit growth.NickDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07006815196885883516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-34722004401183691422014-09-21T19:09:25.129-04:002014-09-21T19:09:25.129-04:00Ah, I see. That makes sense. Boston does have that...Ah, I see. That makes sense. Boston does have that to some extent with high-density residential neighborhoods (Back Bay and the like) around major job clusters, but due to the core city's relatively small size, I think that ends up feeding walking more than transit ridership. I believe Boston has the highest walk-to-work mode share in the US. LA is weird because the transit network just isn't there yet for the most part, and zoning has greatly inhibited the pattern of gradual densification that built most of the inner part of the city.crzwdjkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06394805356595604336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-46400146346415806952014-09-21T13:04:04.195-04:002014-09-21T13:04:04.195-04:00It's more than being polycentric, many mid-siz...It's more than being polycentric, many mid-size Japanese cities are not very polycentric at all. When the traditional CBD is saturated, then you see other centers spring up along rail lines.<br /><br />It's mainly about allowing density near centers of employment and of commerce, so that the largest concentration of population is right next to the largest concentration of jobs, or at least a short transit ride away. If the density of residential areas around subway stations or around CBDs is not significantly higher than the density of residential areas further away, it's not really the Japanese model.simval84https://www.blogger.com/profile/10615053214354191224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-49303681092109607572014-09-21T09:30:34.394-04:002014-09-21T09:30:34.394-04:00Probably the most Japanese-like city in the US is ...Probably the most Japanese-like city in the US is Los Angeles, which has a relatively weak central CBD and secondary clusters of high-rise office towers spread out over a fairly wide area, especially along Wilshire, with plenty of SFR (which is really 2FR, since everyone has an illegal ADU in their backyard) not far away. The best strategy is probably to allow development along the boulevards to intensify to mid-rise densities, let the high-rise clusters keep growing around Metro stations, and keep the SFR (with legalized ADUs) in the remainder.<br />On a smaller scale, I feel like Boston is also pursuing the polycentric model, with Kendall Square and the Seaport growing up as secondary CBDs in addition to the existing Downtown/Back Bay ones, with the former built around a heavy rail line and the latter around lots of parking and a bus tunnel. It'll be interesting to see what happens when Kendall is more built out, and whether development keeps moving up the line to Central Square.crzwdjkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06394805356595604336noreply@blogger.com