CHARACTERISTICS AND PROBLEMS OF URBAN PLACES:

University Degree Architecture, Building and Planning

FIXED TRANSIT ON ALL SECODARY CORRIDORS:

Fixed-rail transit helps to guide development and keep the streets busy. When development happens around fixed-transit, it is easy to get around on foot because everything is closer together. On the contrary, when transit isn't fixed, as with a diesel bus route, or it is designed around the auto, transit becomes impractical because everything is further apart. New York is an example of a walking city that grew up around fixed transit. Dallas is an example of an auto city built up around roadways. It is very convenient to get around without a car in a walking city built around fixed transit. This makes it so there are more people on the sidewalks, and businesses can thrive from walking traffic, without the need for parking. Fixed-transit can be light-rail, a subway, or a bus that operates from overhead wires. A bus way built for diesel buses is also fixed transit, but because the bus can leave the bus way it doesn't have the same positive impact on development and density as other forms of fixed transit.

MIXED-USE NEIGHBORHOOD:

Mixed-use neighborhoods solve many urban ills. By intermingling commercial, residential, and civic functions in the same neighborhoods, you reduce dependence on automotive transport, since destination facilities are always close at hand: one can walk to the market, the salon, the library, school or university, administrative offices, what have you. This means denser development is possible without reducing living spaces; it also means more tax money for more amenities and social programs, since streets don't pay taxes and parking lots don't pay much tax, but homes and businesses do. Yet, since there is less road infrastructure to build and maintain, and utility infrastructure is more efficiently configured, such neighborhoods need less tax money to support their basic functions. This means one could then either lower taxes, or applies them to more desirable civic amenities, such as parks, squares, concerts, etc. More people walking also increases community feeling, reduce opportunity for crime, and allows for more interaction among the citizenry. It increases rider ship on public transit, making it more efficient.

MIXED-INCOME NEIGHBORHOOD:

Mixed-income neighborhoods not only increase urban variety by mixing types and sizes of housing; they also increase the cohesiveness of a community. People from different walks of life come to meet and know each other, however superficially, and are thus less likely to make political or personal decisions based on stereotyped views. Rich, poor, and middle can discover common ground and not base their attitudes toward each other on envy, disdain, or spite. It's a matter of hybrid vigor: purebred ideas, like purebred animals, tend to be delicate, weak, and subject to "genetic" infirmities. We learn not by congregating with those similar to us, but by meeting those who are different. You could say it's the sexuality of the intellect: just as animals who exchange genes evolve into more efficient forms more rapidly than those primitive creatures that don't, so do societies whose members exchange ideas, social concepts, personal philosophies, what have you--even just gossip.

BUILDING OF DIFFERENT AGE, CONDITION AND SIZE:

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BUILDING OF DIFFERENT AGE, CONDITION AND SIZE:

Too often in the last half-century urban developers and city officials have approached revitalization by assembling multiple parcels, bulldozing what existed, and building new. This happens in commercial and residential areas. It is standards set by suburban development and a desire to compete with suburban development that leads to this practice. This will not, however, lead to a healthy city. The mix of old and new buildings provides an interesting streetscape. Older building in poor condition provides the incubators for entrepreneurs to start businesses. The newer buildings provide locations for the more established merchants to set up shop and serve as drawing cards for a business district. The mix also serves to provide residential dwelling units of different size, condition and price making it so the neighborhood is mixed economically and providing places for both the business owner and grocery clerk to live.

LIVING PLACES:

Many cities that developed after World War II or were redeveloped after World War II mirror suburbs in that there are some areas where people live, others where people shop and others where people work. This leads to people moving in mass at different times of the day from one area to the other. This creates needless congestion, streets empty at some times and overcrowded at others. When the places people live are spread throughout the city, many will choose to live near where they work. Stores will locate where people live. Many small stores will serve to supplement or even replace larger stores.

MOVEMNET OF PEOPLE (MOVING IN FROM OTHER PLACES, NAD MOVING OUT TO OTHER PLACES:

A city is more than just a collection of people. It is an incubator of ideas. Certain stability is good for a city, but an influx and out box is even more important. The best cities pull people from far away places. This brings together the widest array of ideas, interests and backgrounds. As important as it is for cities to attract diverse people from far away places, it is important to send them out again. Cities, especially industrial ones suffering from a loss in population often lament the loss of residents who leave. This sending out of your product and the transplanting of native people is also productive and leads to other cities being healthy and energetic places. It can also lead to economic growth when a person with a background in say metal fabricating leaves and initiates activities elsewhere or gains knowledge that will improve processes or establish new markets. People leaving a city sends out messengers with the knowledge needed to make it part of activities elsewhere.

AMELIORATION TEMPERATURE EXTREMES:

Trees and gardens save energy and money and give pleasure to people, living space to animals and birds. Rooftop gardens provide better insulation than any amount of fiberglass batting and can grow food as well; trees provide shade in the summer and obligingly drop their leaves in the winter so sunlight can warm homes and offices, and their transpiration also helps balance local temperatures and reduce need for HVAC..

FARMS WITHIN VITY LIMITS:

The farther food is grown from town, the more it costs and the worse it tastes. Local farming means less fuel and road use, which is good for the earth and reduces need for taxes to support road infrastructure and fuel subsidies. Shorter transport times means food can ripen longer on the branch, so it tastes better and is more nutritious. The necessity to fit farms into numerous smaller spaces in town means fewer big agribusiness operations making their money on economies of scale; instead you have a greater number of small producers, which would lead to more variety of food, more accommodation to local tastes, and more competition (thus better service and lower prices), as well as making commercial organic farming economically feasible. This would again reduce stress on the earth and help minimize dependence on petroleum. Urban farmers' markets bear all this out, providing higher quality food than the supermarkets, yet charging less for it.

Also, the presence of farms provides green space for the citizens and reminds them that all, regardless of pretensions, are tied to the earth.

SHOPS THAT OPEN ONTO THE SIDE-WALK AND UNDERGROUND PARKING:

Shops that open onto the sidewalk encourage pedestrian traffic, and pedestrians are better able to window shop than drivers. Walking of course is exercise too, and people who are walking are more likely to meet or make friends or other social, even commercial, contacts than drivers can. More pedestrian traffic therefore makes for a healthier and richer city. Shops set back behind vast parking lots foster the delusion that they are separate from the city and bear no responsibility to the community that supports them. They practically require driving, which increases civic infrastructure costs and increase social isolation. Sidewalk shops encourage friendly social contact and simply make life more pleasant.

Putting parking in mid-block structures or (better yet) underground accommodates those who must or prefer to drive without fragmenting the city to make room for vast parking lots.

COMMUNICATION:

Spatial organization within the city is often based on what business or groups have to communicate with one another. Changes in communication have drastically altered both the internal structure of the city and how cities are related to one another.

Similarly within the city, banks, title companies, law offices and so on had to be close together so that documents could be transmitted quickly and easily. Again this is no longer necessary.

URBAN PROBLEMS:

Following are the main urban problems.

Poverty.
Crime.
Homelessness.
Environmental degradation.

POVERTY:
A problem both in and of cities. Low incomes associated with:
Poor diets and health
Poor environments (older, less-maintained housing)
Psychological stress of making ends meet
Economic, social, political disadvantage

POVERTY IS A PRODUCT OF:

Unequal income distribution capitalist economy
Uneven distributions of resources and opportunities among places and socioeconomic and ethnic subgroups
Institutional shortcomings:
Inadequate participation and representation in the political process
Inappropriate structure or malfunctioning of the welfare system

CYCLE OF POVERTY:

Family or individual-level process that affects and is influenced by the neighborhood spiral:

Low incomes, poor housing, overcrowding
Leads to poor diets and poor physical health
Leads to absenteeism from work and school
Constrains job security and educational achievement
Limits future and current job opportunities
Psychological stresses of ill-health and reduced economic capacity
Behavioral responses of desperation, anomie
May lead to labeling, in which all residents may find occupational opportunities adversely affected by poor image of their neighborhood

SCHOOL IN POOR NEIGHBOURHOOD:

Obsolete and physically deteriorated
Unattractive to teachers
Resource-poor: Small budgets for staff, equipment, materials
Limits occupational choice and therefore incomes
Fosters negative attitudes about liberating potential of education

CRIME:

Four main links between urban structure and crime:

1. Economic effects:

Relative deprivation leading to resentment and anger that is channeled into violence

2. Social disorganization:

Research shows links between criminal violence and rapid ecological change, such as neighborhood downgrading or upgrading (positive and negative change are both disruptive and associated with crime)

3. Demographic effects

Effects of economic change on particular socioeconomic or ethnic/racial groups
Criminal activity highest in youth/young adults

4. Effects of lifestyle and routine activities

Space-time activity
Presence of deterrents (guardians)

Highest crime rates in areas with low social cohesion and socio-economic status, weak family life, high rates of population mobility and deterioration.

CRIME RATES AND URBAN PATTERNS:

Rise in socio-economic polarization since 1970s

Rise in drug abuse
Rise and then subsidence in drug “turf” wars

INADEQUATE VACANCIES:

Inadequate vacancies place a very real and tremendously harmful social burden upon the poor and working poor while lowering the quality of life for all but the cozy upper classes. The burden of inadequate vacancies is most profound on the lower paid working classes, people in difficult transitions and the homeless.

HOMELESSNESS—UNHOUSING/UNHOUSED PEOPLE:

A state of extreme poverty
Disaffiliation, or a lack of supportive ties to family, friends, neighbors (literally, no place to go)
Excess demand for cheapest accommodations

GEOGRAPHY OF HOMELESSNESS:

Changes in metropolitan structure created “service-dependent” neighborhoods (zones-in-transition):

Rise in welfare-dependency in poverty areas
Expanding array of public and private voluntary welfare agencies
Attracts service-dependent population
“Skid-row” areas cleared by urban renewal projects

Homelessness became more visible.

ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS:

Urban environments as systems dependent on:

Continuous expenditure and capital investment (to maintain services and infrastructure; growth a necessary component)
Efficient government
Planning, management

Combination of public and private financial health and support

ENVIRONMENTAL RESULTS FROM:

Underinvestment and insufficient operating expenditures
Investment or operating expenditures that lag behind growth or decline faster than city population
E.g.: water, air, sprawl, decaying infrastructure

WOOD BURNING:

Cities that allow wood burning in densely overpopulated neighborhoods make life misery for anyone in proximity, especially seniors and people with respiratory problems.

WATER SUPPLY:

Water’s quality and quantity both are concern. A city of 1 million inhabitants consumes about 1.5 billion gallons of water each day.

Subsidence of water table
Seawater intrusions into ground water
Insufficient local ground water: interurban transfers (e.g. Colorado River Project; Owens River in CA)
Infrastructure problems that leak supply (leaky mains can lose 15-20% of total consumption)
Insufficient water treatment systems
Industrial and chemical leaks and contamination

AIR POLLUTION:

As the factories and housing have been in the same areas air, noise and water pollution have been common. Pollution levels along one way streets are often oppressive, toxic and dangerous in many cities.

REASONS OF AIR POLLUTION:

Microclimates and the urban heat island
Urban dust dome: smog
Highest pollution near traffic and industry (poorer neighborhoods also tend to be nearest industrial sites)

INFRASTRUCTURE:

Urban infrastructures, in most places, maliciously and willfully designed to oppress the tenant class of humanity through an unofficial system of general inequality. This occurs because the so-called "democratic" process is skewered in favor of people with driveways, who run our governments. Infrastructure problems arises by:

High costs of repair, even higher costs of cleanup.
E.g. Boston, 3/4 of sewers are > 100 years old: 15% of supply lost to leaks
1992 Chicago, collapse of unused call led to flooding of downtown district. >$500 million in damage; repair would have cost $30,000

TRANSPORTATION/SPRAWL:

Cities represent places having a high level of accumulation and concentration of economic activities. They are complex spatial structures to be supported by transport systems. The most important transport problems are often related to urban areas, especially when urban transport systems, for a variety of reasons, cannot satisfy the numerous requirements of urban circulation. Urban productivity is highly dependent on the efficiency of its transport system, notably to move labor, consumers and freight between several origins and destinations. The growing complexity of cities has been accompanied by a wide array of urban transportation problems.

RESONS OF TRANSPORTATION PROBLEM:

Suburban as well as central city “gridlock”
Lack of maintenance of the roads and reduction in supply
Transit systems based on CBD-focused pattern
Investments needed to maintain and upgrade

Potential for continued problems will derive from fiscal stress for central cities, expanding outwards as first and second ring of suburbs age and lose tax base.

EXCESS TRAFFIC:

The influx of new residents to inner city neighborhoods brings a dramatic rise in traffic along with aggressive driving and competition for scarce parking. Typical drivers drive faster. It is both a difference in social attitude among newcomers as well as a practical means to switch lanes in crowded traffic.

This new level of traffic has brought back increases in pollution such as ozone.