Copenhagen: Confirmation of the future sensual city
In August this year Greater Auckland reproduced a chapter I wrote for a book speculating on our future world, The Big Questions, in three posts; here, here, and here. Included was the section below describing the city centre. In bold is a short description of what I imagine the sensual experience of these future streets will be like:
The whole Queen Street valley will be car-free, plied only by emergency and delivery and service vehicles, the latter at set times.…
77 Comments The advice Auckland has ignored for 50 years but must now heed
Engineer planner Lt Col Sir Colin Buchanan is rightly famous for his 1963 report Traffic in Towns and 1964 book of the same name. The report looks ahead to wall of traffic heading to British streets in the post war period and sets out principles and plans to ameliorate the negative effects as much as possible.…
Ch-Ch-Changes
Submissions to the Productivity Commission’s Low-emissions economy draft report close today June 8th, here. Arrrg.
There is a great deal that’s really good in the report, but one thing that I feel the Prodcom is missing is the changing nature of our cities, in particular Auckland.…
Ready Aim? Fire: The Auckland Plan’s missing transport targets.
Time is running out to submit on the Auckland Plan and 10 year budget. Please do, if nothing else just go there to support the all important Regional Fuel Tax, without which very little can be achieved.
Matt discussed it earlier here.…
The Change Agency
Auckland Transport is not (just) a transport agency, it is a change agency.
Auckland Transport (AT) is the lead agency of change to our public realm in Auckland. AT has to front increasing amounts of change in both small and large ways, to our streets, to our daily experiences, and is therefore is the main focus for anyone, reasonable or otherwise, who has a view on these changes.…
Houston, we have a problem
This is a Guest Post by Wellington Architect and regular reader Guy Marriage
For quite some time now, Demographia has been touting Houston, Texas, as the way forward for New Zealand, and especially Auckland, to copy their stunningly low housing construction costs.…
Car-dependency is a bad deal
Is it a good idea to have a transport system oriented primarily around the car? Cars are useful for a lot of things, but is it a good idea for most people to use them for most trips?
This is a practical question rather than a philosophical one.…
50 Years of waiting for an Auckland Rapid Transit system.
My father, Ian Reynolds 1922-2005, was an architect (as was my mother). He was also a what was then called a Town and Country Planner. After returning from working in England after the war he spent the rest of his career as partner in a big multidisciplinary practice in Auckland (missing the city of his youth: Wellington.…
The Ideology of Traffic
Sometimes we come across something that is so perfect and so timely that it just needs repeating as it is. This is one of those times. The following post by Charles Marohn is lifted in its entirety from StrongTowns.org The Ideology of Traffic by Charles Marohn The greatest accomplishment of any ideology is to not be considered an ideology; to be a belief system that is not considered a belief system.…
The Victoria St Linear Park: Why it is vital, but not really a park.
This is one of a series of posts I intend to do about about the city streetscape we ought to be able to expect as a result of the CRL rebuild.
This one will describe the Council’s plans for inner western Victoria St, around the CRL portals, because it seems they are not well understood, especially by some at Auckland Transport, based on the recent release of a proposed design from the CRL team that appears to completely ignore the agreed streets level outcomes.…
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