The Geography of Joblessness
Two articles on employment and its relationship to urban form and transport investment turned up, rather fittingly, on Labour Day. They offer interesting international perspectives, but before we get to them here is a fascinating chart derived from Ministry of Transport Household Travel Survey data that puts the focus on journeys to work into an valuable perspective.…
33 Comments Urban Change: Evolution or Revolution?
“Change is the law of life and those who only look to the past or present are certain to miss the future”
-JFK
Life is nothing but change, and cities being concentrations of human life manifest this fact in their physical fabric: They are constantly changing, always incrementally, sometimes abruptly.…
To drive or not to drive, that is the question: generation Y research
This is a guest post from Dr Debbie Hopkins, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Otago – she’s currently doing some research for the NZTA on non-drivers. Read on to find out more and see if you might be keen to help out with the research by being interviewed.…
Photo of the Day- Cardboard Cathedral
The Transitional Christchurch Cathedral, or Cardboard Cathedral, designed by this year’s Pritzker Prize winner, Japanese architect Shigeru Ban is a rather wonderful thing. Wiki summaries the structure and its reception thus:
The cathedral rises 70 feet (21 m) above the altar.…
Happy City Radio
National Radio’s Simon Morton ran a really good interview with Happy City author Charles Montgomery on the This Way UP Programme on Saturday.
If you haven’t read the book I strongly recommend having a listen, and even if you have, Montgomery’s summarises his main points really well here.…
How can we make road pricing fair?
Talk to a transport economist for more than a couple of minutes (seconds?) and the issue of road pricing will come up. “If only we could introduce road pricing, all our problems would go away,” says your transport economist. Congestion – gone.…
What is Auto-Dependency
In my post on Wednesday about the impact that garages have on neighbourhoods there ended up being quite a bit of discussion on the term auto-dependency. Many readers might not fully understand what the term means so with this post I thought I would take a look at it, how it can be measured and Auckland compares.…
Summer in the City, and a look ahead.
A view from new Britomart bar and restaurant Ostro that seems to perfectly express the contradictory current phase in Auckland City’s development. What a great scene:
Sitting here amidst the sophistication of the latest addition to the our reborn downtown with all the perfectly prepared kai moana you could want, reassuringly expensive wines from every viticultured corner of the country, the cruise liners slipping around North Head, and the sculptural forms of the gantry cranes lined up and waiting patiently in the late afternoon sun like a row of giant robotic footmen, it is hard not to marvel at how lovely Auckland can be and at how far it has come recently.…
Transport is an increasing burden for New Zealanders
One of the fundamental reasons why we think Auckland needs to transform its transport system by focusing on the modes that have missed out so much attention over the last 60 years (public transport, walking and cycling) is because our current car dependency is incredibly expensive.…
Lincoln Rd to be “upgraded”
Auckland Transport is proposing to widen Lincoln Rd – something that in my opinion is probably already Auckland’s most soul destroying street, particularly from a land use perspective. Every time I travel down there (which is frequently as I live not far from it) it always reminds me of the worst aspects of auto-dependency.…
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