Cherry or grape?

In a world where I could devote a whole working day to blogging this is what I would have done.   I would have ripped the video from the City website of Monday’s Planning Board meeting and cut out the introduction by Peter Calthorpe post that and say: “Watch it dammit!” I was already a fan of Peter Calthorpe, but after listening to him speak, I’ve drunk the kool-aid and asked for another glass.   If there ever was a rock star in the planning and land use world, he would be it.  And it’s not that he’s just a really good speaker with prepared notes, this guy believes in what he is doing and has a lot of passion it.   

Take a look at his approximately 10 minute speech which starts around 18:04, and he will be at the Mastick meeting tonight at 6:30 pm to talk more about the initial steps that have been taken in the planning process.   Peter Calthorpe’s vision is definitely very idealistic, but according to the SunCal representative at the meeting, anything that will be proposed will be in the realm of the possible.

Here is a 2002 interview that I found really interesting, excerpts:

…Scott London: In a nutshell, how would you describe good urban design?

Peter Calthorpe: My short and simple answer is that a well-designed city is walkable. It’s a place where your destinations are close enough to walk to and where you feel safe enough to walk. And it’s a place that is interesting enough socially to make you feel that walking is perhaps something more than just getting from point A to point B. I think that is the heart of it.

…

London: It seems incredible that those subsidies are still in place given that America doesn’t look anything like it did following the Second World War.

Calthorpe: Right. If you look at the demographics, only 25 percent of the population is made up of married families — two people with one or more kids. The other 75 percent are “other.” And one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to housing. However, everybody invests in the same house because of resale and mortgage deduction and other externalities that are dampening the true diversity of our communities. What we need is a much broader spectrum of housing opportunities, from apartments that are conveniently located to townhouses for people without kids to duplexes to small-lot, single-family homes.

…

London: You’ve written about the importance of creating “ecologically sound” communities. What does that mean?

Calthorpe: There are lots of layers to it. Some people argue that we ought to build communities using materials that demand less of the global resource-base. Other people have pointed out that we can make more energy-efficient buildings. I worked in these fields in the 70s. But over the last two decades I’ve focused more on how destructive the automobile is — socially, aesthetically and environmentally. Given that we are tripling the number of vehicle-miles traveled per household per year, this upward spiral of auto-use grabs my attention the most. It’s also something that is in all of our faces. We now live in worlds with six-lane arterials and parking lots. The only peaceful place left is our living room and our backyards, so it’s no wonder that we tend to retreat away from community and neighborhood. Once you get out there, it’s just cars.

You can lead that issue down lots of paths: the amount of land area it takes to create the parking; the impact of all that asphalt on water quality; the lack of percolation in the soil; natural aquifer recharging; amount of land-area lost in terms of displaced ag and habitat; and of course air quality. But it all comes down to a really simple thing: We have a myopic transportation system. The way we design our communities doesn’t allow walking, doesn’t provide decent transit systems and doesn’t provide alternatives to the car…