Weekly Roundup 24-May-2024

Another Friday, another Rāmere Roundup! Here are a few things that caught our eye this week.

This Week in Greater Auckland

• On Monday, our new writer Connor Sharp roared into print with a future-focused take on the proposed Auckland Future Fund, and what it could invest in.
• On Tuesday, Connor brought the receipts again, with an epic post on how the current Government’s road-building obsession is wrecking Auckland’s multimodal transport plans.
• And on Thursday, Patrick mused on the mulitmodal future of Great North Road and points west, through the lens of one great photograph.

A question for our readers: what’s your most memorable GA post?

At a recent IRL catch-up of the core Greater Auckland crew, we got talking about the size of the GA archive and some of our favourite posts over the years. It was intriguing to hear which stories had made the most powerful impressions.

Our personal faves ranged from classic satire, to super-interesting stats, to songs about street trees, to deep history with cool maps, to posts that quietly pointed out some mundane urban detail in a way that means you can never not notice it now, everywhere you go.

We’re curious: which posts have stuck in your mind, or even changed your mind? What were you inspired to send to friends, family, elected representatives? Any great lines you still quote, years later? Share in the comments, we’re all ears!

Get your steps in

From the Japan Times, of all places, a great read about (the demise of) walking in American cities. Applicable here, too.

The explanation for the decline in walking since the 1960s and Americans’ below-average international showing seems clear: It’s cars. During the second half of the 20th century, almost all new development in the U.S. was oriented around automobiles — and the U.S. became one of the most car-dependent countries on the planet. If you live or work or both in a place built for cars, walking more than short distances tends to be something you have to set out to do intentionally.

A pothole-preventing robot?!

Via reader Stephen, one of those stories that feels like an April Fool, but isn’t.

Free the streets!

A timely article from the NY Times (by Dodai Stewart, with cute Illustrations by Leon Edler) about how congestion-charging helps free up city streets for everyone.

Lively, energetic streets make city living attractive — people to watch, windows to browse, benches to sit on, trees for shade.

But lately, New York City streets are teetering between lively and unlivable. Residents clash over traffic, noise, parking, 5G towers and heaps of trash. Most years, far fewer pedestrians get killed by motorists than in generations past, but last year was the deadliest year for cyclists since 1999.

Still, people who have thought deeply about the state of the city’s streets believe dramatic improvement may be on the way — if New York is willing to seize the moment.

What’s your “third place”?

Writing for Vox, Allie Volpe looks at the importance of those “third places” that aren’t work or home – parks, cafes, pubs, libraries, playgrounds, sports grounds and other social watering-holes. They’re vital for everyone’s wellbeing, so how do we ensure they survive and thrive in our current context?

At their very best, third places allow people of differing backgrounds to cross paths — to develop what are known as bridging ties. As opposed to our closest connections, bridging social networks encompass people who have varying identities, social and economic resources, and knowledge.

[…]

By nature, third places should be diverse, [sociology professor Katherine] Giuffre says. Everyone has a responsibility to act inclusively so the space is safe and welcome to all. “That can be a lot easier said than done,” she says. “Because the teenagers are loud and the old people don’t want to hear them. But we have to open ourselves up to embracing difference.”

Jarrett Walker on planning PT for “the middle 90%”

This great Streetsblog interview with a leading transit planner discusses the traditional (and mistaken, says Walker) dividing of public transport users into “choice riders” – people who have a car, but choose to take the bus or train – and “captive riders”, who are assumed to have no choice but to use public transport.

The point is that almost everyone is in the middle. Sort of choice and sort of captive. And the people we are most likely to attract onto transit are very definitely in the middle.

In many cases, the focus on the choice rider has led us […] into an obsession with what kind of transit service relatively elite people will respond to. […]

What we really need to do is focus on what I like to call the “middle 90 percent” … who do want something that’s decent, who want something that’s a good use of their time, who will use the service if it’s useful to them.

A zoom with a view

The venerable city of Florence is incentivising its people to cycle to work, with a scheme set to run for a year:

The incentive programme is called Pedala, Firenze ti premia (Pedal, Florence rewards you) and it offers participants the chance to earn up to 30 euros [NZ$53] a month. They will receive 20 cents per kilometre, plus five cents for each kilometre on “generic” cycles as long as they remain within the municipality of Florence.

Jane Jacobs on wheels

A gorgeous read about the wheeled adventures of ur-uber-urbanist Jane Jacobs, who famously saved a whole chunk of walkable lower Manhattan from highway-builder Robert Moses and his Roads of Negative Social value. And of course she was at home on a bicycle!

In “Pedaling Together,” an essay from 1985, when Jane was nearly 70, she spoke of the need for reducing car dependency and for better cycling infrastructure, and moreover used the bicycle as a metaphor and model for community activism. […]

Jacobs concluded by saying that “a city good for cycling is also a city good for walking, strolling, running, playing, window-shopping, and listening for bullfrogs if listening for bullfrogs is your thing.”

A vision for safety

The BBC talks to Claes Tingvall, the architect of Sweden’s famous (and famously successful) Vision Zero approach to road safety. A timely refresher for our transport agencies.

As Tingvall puts it: “It should be up to the professional community to make sure that that normal people, doing normal mistakes, don’t lead to them killing themselves or someone else.”

Even intentional law-breaking was to be considered when designing the system. The reality is that drivers do speed, and they get distracted by their phones or other passengers in the car. “Don’t pretend that there are laws that you know everyone will follow,” Tingvall says. “That’s very unprofessional. You would never do that in aviation or in other areas where you really care for safety.”

As speeds rise on motorways, so do risks on nearby streets

Another one for our transport minister and agencies to consider, as they look at raising speeds and reducing safety mitigations: a new study links higher highway speeds to more crashes in adjacent neighbourhoods:

When states raise speed limits on highways, speed-related crash hot spots spike on nearby neighborhood roads, a new study finds — but local communities aren’t preparing for those “spillover” effects, never mind getting a say in how fast motorists should go on the interstates that rip through their communities.

[Co-author Dr. C.Y. David] Yang hypothesizes that, similarly to the “distraction hangover” that drivers experience even after they stop using a cell phone behind the wheel, motorists don’t immediately register just how quickly they need to slow down after they exit the interstate — especially when local roads themselves are designed like highways where it’s perfectly fine to go fast.

“It takes a moment for them to realize, ‘Oh, I need to decelerate because I’m on a local street that doesn’t that’s not designed to accommodate 65 miles per hour [104kmh], now,'” he adds. “‘I’m in a community where there’s children playing.’”

You can find a link to the original study and a summary of its findings here.

Rezoning the garage

Those lucky enough to have a garage know it can be so much more than just a bedroom for a car. Indeed, given the cost of housing, it’s not unusual to see it used as a bedroom for people, whether unofficially or via a consented conversion.

A piece in the Spinoff looks at some other creative ways New Zealanders use their garages. Workshop! Brewery! Party room! Band practice! Art studio!

Interestingly, the related AA survey doesn’t say how many garages are used to store a car – but does note that 53% of people use their garage for parking their bikes and e-bikes.

Urban gardening on the go

Japanese kei-trucks are famous for what they can efficiently fit in their cargo beds. How about a garden bed? Spoon & Tamago reports on an annual kei-truck gardening contest. (Click through to see the prizewinners here; third place features an impressive bridge!)

Relatable content

Doing the rounds on social media, this great cartoon by Tom Gauld for New Scientist captures a familiar feeling…

Local urbanist long reads

There’s a proliferation of voices in the local urbanist realm. Here are a few to bookmark – let us know of others!

• Malcolm McCracken’s Better Things Are Possible has a focus on new housing and transport.
• Darren Davis’s Adventures in Transitland ranges far and wide.
• Shaun Baker’s Multimodal Adventures gets around the city, with great pics from street level.
• Grady Connell’s NZTransit Buzz always has an ear to the ground.
• And Simon Lyall has been thinking about light metro as a possibility for Auckland.

Mahi toi to enjoy

Lastly, here’s a great list from The Urban List (sponsored by AT) of places to see Māori art bringing life to infrastructure around the central city. The article includes a link to other public art around the region.

Pockets of mahi toi (Māori art) are woven through the centre city. What starts as a functional project—say revamping infrastructure—becomes a powerful art project, where local Māori artists hailing from our 19 iwi add their touch to these spaces.

Enjoy your weekend, everyone!

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