Built environment

How much shared scooter parking is needed to meet demand and reduce noncompliant parking? Drawing on Lime data from a dozen cities in the US and Europe, this report provides three key planning and policy recommendations for cities to consider as they work to integrate scooters into the overall transportation system:

Ride-hailing is a climate problem for two primary reasons. First, a typical ride-hailing trip is more polluting than a trip in a personal car, mainly as a result of “deadheading”the miles a ride-hailing vehicle travels without a passenger between hired rides. The second reason is that ride-hailing is not just replacing personal car trips; instead, it is increasing the total number of car trips. In the absence of ride-hailing, many would-be ride-hailing passengers would take mass transit, walk, bike, or forgo the trip. This report focuses on ride-hailing, but many of its findings and recommendations apply to taxis as well. For example, electrification, increased pooling, and improved coordination with mass transit would lessen the negative impacts of taxi service on transportation systems and the environment.

On-demand ridesourcing services from transportation network companies (TNCs), such as Uber and Lyft, have reshaped urban travel and changed externality costs from vehicle emissions, congestion, crashes, and noise. To quantify these changes, we simulate replacing private vehicle travel with TNCs in six U.S. cities.

Microtransit—shared transportation that offers dynamic routing and scheduling to efficiently match demand—is emerging as an ally to fixed-route services. However, its positive impacts are too often constrained by the politics and economics imposed by existing transit infrastructure. This paper proposes a solution that ‘‘flips transit on its head.’’ By rapidly prototyping microtransit services across cities and analyzing supply-demand mismatches, it is possible to launch truly data-driven transit services. To illustrate the framework, a unique dataset generated from a year of Dallas Area Rapid Transit’s GoLink service, one of the largest ondemand microtransit services in North America, is used. Mapping and machine learning are combined to empower planners to ‘‘join the dots’’ when (re)designing fixed-route transit lines. It is shown that microtransit should not simply fill in the gaps left by inefficiently scheduled bus routes: by incorporating it fully into their planning processes, cities and transit agencies could dramatically reverse the fortunes of public transit.

Many cities are rolling out bike share programs. However, few studies have evaluated how bike share systems (BSS) are used to quantify their sustainability impacts. This study proposes a Bike Share Emission Reduction Estimation Model (BS-EREM) to quantify the environmental benefits from bike share trips and compare the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions from BSS in eight cities in the United States, including New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. The BS-EREM model stochastically estimates the transportation modes substituted by bike share trips, considering factors such as trip distance, trip purpose, trip start time, the accessibility of public transits, and historical distributions of transportation mode choices.

Jarrett Walker, author of "Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich our Communities and Lives," writes about the costs and benefits of microtransit on his blog, "Human Transit". Walker is skeptical of Microtransit. He argues that it is spacially, economically, and fiscally inefficient and should only be used in very rare and specific cases.

On-demand ridesourcing services from transportation network companies (TNCs), such as Uber and Lyft, have reshaped urban travel and changed externality costs from vehicle emissions, congestion, crashes, and noise. To quantify these changes, this study simulated replacing private vehicle travel with TNCs in six U.S. cities.

This study analyzes the relation between shared mobility services and greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions by using a nationally representative sample of US young adults. We conduct a comprehensive analysis based on the data collected in the 2017 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS).

The Handbook provides methods to quantify GHG emission reductions from a specified list of measures, primarily focused on project-level actions. The Handbook also includes a method to assess potential benefits of different climate vulnerability reduction measures, as well as measures that can be implemented to improve health and equity, again at the project level.

In 2021, City Council directed PBOT to identify new revenue sources that reflect the City’s policy goals, address the bureau’s structural deficit, and provide maximum flexibility to invest in our transportation system, and to present its recommended revenue proposals to Council during the FY 2022-23 budget development process. POEM is an initiative to raise funds for implementing transportatin options by essentially taxing driving.

Automobile-dependent planning has changed automobiles from a luxury into a necessity. Excessive vehicle costs leave many households without money to purchase essential food, shelter and healthcare. They need more affordable transportation options.

This study aims to quantitatively estimate the environmental benefits of bike sharing. Using big data techniques, we estimate the impacts of bike sharing on energy use and carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOX) emissions in Shanghai from a spatiotemporal perspective.

This paper synthesizes and reviews all literature regarding autonomous vehicles and their impact on GHG emissions. The paper aims to eliminate bias and provide insight by incorporating statistical analysis.

Urbanism Next Center Director and Professor Nico Larco testified during the congressional hearing, "The Road Ahead for Automated Vehicles." Professor Larco highlighted the work of Urbanism Next and the potential cascading impacts of autonomous vehicles.

Re-allocating space on streets to accommodate new uses – particularly for walking, biking, and being – is not new. COVID-era needs have accelerated the process that many communities use to make such street transitions, however. Many communities quickly understood that the street is actually a public place and a public good that serves broader public needs more urgent than the free flow or the storage of private vehicles. This book captures some of these quick changes to city streets in response to societal needs during COVID, with two open questions: 1) what changes will endure post-COVID?; and 2) will communities be more open to street reconfigurations, including quick and inexpensive trials, going forward?

Before the pandemic, Urbanism Next developed a framework organizing the disruptions to cities caused by emerging transportation technologies on land use, urban design, building design, transportation, and real estate. COVID-19 has disrupted the trajectory of these emerging technologies and will, in turn, change some our original assumptions. This paper revisits the original Urbanism Next framework, taking into account the cascading impacts of the pandemic. This report is one of two reports completed by Urbanism Next on the impacts of Covid-19.

Townscaper is an experimental community simulation and town-building game where the user can draw a series of buildings to obtain a town and represent urban spaces.

This report discusses 761 walkable urban places in the United States' 30 largest metropolitan areas and their impact on social equity and educational attainment, and their economic impact on office, retail, and housing land uses.

This article examines the theoretical heat-energy demand of different types of urban form at a scale of 500 m × 500 m.

This article discusses regulations around land use and why careful implementation is important. The author studied how two areas of Los Angeles near rail stations developed housing under baseline land use regulations and found that developers were most sensitive to density restrictions and parking requirements.

This EPA webpage explains surface and atmospheric heat islands, and compares conditions at different times of day and in urban vs. rural areas.

In this book, Donald Shoup reports on the progress cities have made on the principles outlined in book The High Cost of Parking. Remove off-street parking requirements, charge the right prices for on-street parking and use that revenue towards improving public services.

As parking demand declines, some developers and designers are thinking about the long term uses of parking garages and designing them to be able to adapt to changing future land use needs.

Open source simulation platform for supporting planning and analysis of urban development, incorporating the interactions between land use, transportation, the economy, and the environment.

A blueprint for designing 21st century streets, the Guide unveils the toolbox and the tactics cities use to make streets safer, more livable, and more economically vibrant.

Riggs, Boswell and Ross describe their pilot street design project deploying Streetplan, a version of the opensource tool Streetmix. As part of the City of San Luis Obispo downtown revisioning project, their efforts inform the process, currently underway, of revising the Downtown Vision Concept Plan.

The New Mobility Playbook is a set of plays, policies, and strategies that will position Seattle to foster new mobility options while prioritizing safety, equity, affordability, and sustainability in the transportation system.

"This plan sets the course toward realizing a healthy, prosperous, and resilient future for our city. It calls on us all to rise to the challenge of transforming our community to create a better life for future generations."

Williams Goldhagen draws from recent research in cognitive neuroscience and psychology to demonstrate how people’s experiences of the places they build are central to their well-being, their physical health, their communal and social lives, and even their very sense of themselves. From this foundation, Goldhagen presents a powerful case that societies must use this knowledge to rethink what and how they build: the world needs better-designed, healthier environments that address the complex range of human individual and social needs.

Urban innovations company Sidewalk Labs and the Canadian government announced a partnership Tuesday to develop 750 acres along Toronto’s waterfront into what they envision as a high-tech living laboratory for solving urban problems. It would be the largest urban redevelopment project in North America.

"A pioneering urban economist presents a myth-shattering look at the majesty and greatness of cities."

This chapter estimates how minimum parking requirements increase the cost of constructing housing, office buildings, and shopping centers. It also explains proposed legislation to limit how much parking cities can require in transit-rich districts.

The article describes the trend of mall development strategy and how the now model of development is integrated into the new lifestyle and space of community.

A new era of shopping centers is upon us. They’re beginning to look and function less like traditional malls and more like lifestyle centers with a strong community vibe.

This blog talks about how the autonomous vehicles will change the built environment such as street design, parking infrastructure, public space, etc. It also mentions how different modes can be integrated with the change of built environment.

In working with Waterfront Toronto, the public entity that owns the land, to develop Quayside, Sidewalk Labs would reimagine urban life in five dimensions—housing, energy, mobility, social services, and shared public spaces—with an aim to “serve as a model for sustainable neighborhoods” around the world.

The storm clouds of sprawl addiction had been gathering for years, but it took the Meltdown and the ensuing Great Recession to make it clear just how damaging that addiction had been to the health of cities across the US and abroad. Sprawl has two really big things going for it, but three even bigger things now going against it which are poised to turn the tide against the pattern of sprawl.

"Mobility Plan 2035 (Plan) provides the policy foundation for achieving a transportation system that balances the needs of all road users. As an update to the City’s General Plan Transportation Element (last adopted in 1999), Mobility Plan 2035 incorporates “complete streets” principles and lays the policy foundation for how future generations of Angelenos interact with their streets."

This report describes a shoppers trip and what the planner may be most interested in about it as well as street design and it's accommodation for all activities that may need to happen throughout the day.

The main objective of this research project is to provide FDOT with information and guidance on how best to begin to prepare for a future in which AV technology first takes root and then takes over the market. The FSU Research Team is investigating the potential impacts of widespread adoption of AV technology on the transportation network and urban form for four key land use and transportation nodes that are vital to the welfare of the State of Florida: Downtown, Office/Medical/University Center, Urban Arterial, and Transit Neighborhood. To accomplish this, the FSU Research Team engaged one-hundred planners, engineers, industry professionals, and public officials in a facilitated visioning session at the 2015 Florida Automated Vehicle Summit (FAV Summit). During this session the research team gathered input on how AVs will impact our communities and how the built environment will need to adapt to accommodate AVs in the coming decades.

"In response to the Trump administration’s withdrawal of support for the international Paris Climate Agreement last year, the City Council adopted Resolution 31757, affirming Seattle's commitment to the goals established in the Paris Agreement, and directing the Office of Sustainability & Environment (OSE) to identify the actions necessary to do our part to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The resulting actions, developed under the leadership of Mayor Durkan, reflect a tipping point in the transition to Seattle’s zero emissions future. They are designed to move beyond incremental change and fundamentally reshape our building and transportation systems for a fossil fuel-free future."

This paper introduces Metrolinx’s recently released Mobility Hub Guidelines and highlights two key aspects of the document: the importance of classifying the current and planned urban context and transportation function at a mobility hub, and methods to overcome challenges in achieving both transport and placemaking roles.

Concerns over rising fuel prices and greenhouse-gas emissions have prompted research into the influences of built environments on travel, notably vehicle miles traveled (VMT). Accessibility to basic employment has comparatively modest effects, as do size of urbanized area, and rail-transit supplies and usage. Nevertheless, urban planning and city design should be part of any strategic effort to shrink the environmental footprint of the urban transportation sector.

With this paper, RMI hopes to (1) offer cities and other mobility and built environment stakeholders an experimentation toolkit that puts them in a position to more quickly unlock the full potential of new mobility in cities designed to shape and enable it, and (2) engage stakeholders in further codeveloping and exploring a concept for living, flexible, and collaborative experimentation sites we’re calling MOD Cities.

This report asks what role AVs can play in our society and how to create policy to allow them onto our streets in a way that will maximize our return?

"CurbFlow is one of a few curb-focused groups that believes it has part of a solution: reorganizing and eventually finding ways to dynamically charge companies for curb space."

This report examines how urban living affects residents’ mental health and happiness, and ways to use this information to create saner and happier cities. Some often-cited studies suggest that urban living increases mental illness and unhappiness, but a critical review indicates that much of this research is incomplete and biased, and the issues are complex, often involving trade-offs between risk factors. City living may increase some forms of psychosis and mood disorders, drug addiction, and some people’s unhappiness, but tends reduce dementia, alcohol abuse and suicide rates, and many people are happier in cities than they would be in smaller communities. This report examines specific mechanisms by which urban living can affect mental health and happiness, and identities practical strategies that communities and individuals can use to increase urban mental health and happiness. This analysis suggests that it is possible to create sane and happy cities.

This article mentions the visible downfall of malls and large stores like Sears and Toys R Us, but it highlights how these stores have impacted individuals and their stories from growing up visiting them.

Robotic parking will be an amenity starting in high-end buildings and becoming standard, like radios in cars, predicts local landlord Brian Veit.