Month: May 2018

At Congress for New Urbanism, Debate Rages Over Autonomous Vehicles

Jared Green3 Comments
Proposal for redesigning Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles / Perkins + Will, Nelson/Nygaard & Lyft

Over four days of the Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) in Savannah, Georgia, autonomous vehicle (AV) optimists and pessimists presented their hopes and fears about the coming technology-driven transportation revolution. AVs can either increase speed and efficiency and reduce transportation costs, or create more congestion and sprawl, kill off public transit, and increase transportation inequities. AVs will be coming in the next few years, or won’t be seen in most places for a few decades. AV ride share companies like Uber, Waymo, and Lyft only have our best interests at heart, or they are self-serving and want to remake streets to optimize for AVs, to the detriment of other modes of transit. AV companies can be given a long leash and work with state or local governments in partnership, or these companies need to be closely regulated.

Amid the broad debate by planners, landscape architects, architects, and traffic engineers that happened across multiple sessions, possible benefits and dangers of AVs became clear, as did the shape of solutions to possible problems.

Possible Benefits

Gerry Tierney, director of Perkin + Will’s Smart Mobility Lab, thinks AVs will enable cities to create narrower car lane widths — just 8 feet instead of the usual 10 or 12. AVs are expected to communicate with each other to increase efficiency and speed, forming a platoon. With this scenario, “headway between vehicles will be shortened, increasing the capacity of streets by two or three times.”

How AVs could platoon / U.S. Department of Transportation

Tierney thinks we can give that extra road space created by AV platoons over to the public realm. “We can create new mixed-use lanes for bikes, e-bikes, scooters, and e-scooters, along with widened sidewalks, and green infrastructure.”

In an analysis of San Francisco’s streets, Tierney found that green space in transportation networks could be increased by 42 percent with the reduced lanes for AVs, spreading 1.3 Golden Gate Park’s amount of greenery throughout city streets.

Car companies will soon offer subscription services so that car ownership — and the number of cars on the road — will decrease. Today, the average car is only used 4-5 percent of the time. With subscription services for AVs, utilization rates will increase to 96 percent. “Fleet size can be reduced but carry the same number of people.”

AVs could be parked in towers, reducing the need for homeowners to purchase a parking lot, which can add 24 percent to the cost of a unit in a city like San Francisco. Parking will plummet, freeing up space for Amazon deliveries and reducing congestion.

According to transportation planner Patrick Seigman, some 80 percent of the cost of taxis are the driver. As such, AV rideshare “taxis” — like Uber or Lyft — will cause the “cost of taxis to plummet.” With buses and trains powered by autonomous technologies, the cost of transit could also further decrease.

Autonomous rapid transit (ART) could further increase road capacity. Tierney imagines 20-seat shuttles on dedicated lanes. Siegman pointed to self-driving shuttles now in use in Switzerland and Las Vegas, which have a top speed of 25 miles per hour. Instead of a driver, they have a conductor who can only push a stop button.

NAVYA’s self-driving shuttle in Las Vegas / NAVYA

Possible Dangers

Peter Calthorpe, a leading planner, said that “autonomous vehicles will mean death for cities.” He said single-passenger ride share travel 35 percent more miles than regular vehicles, and AV shared taxis can be expected to travel 30-60 percent more miles, and AV single taxis, 50-90 percent more miles. “Dedicated lanes for AVs will only increase sprawl as private vehicles travel farther.” Furthermore, given speed is of the essence, “people won’t share — there’s no time advantage to sharing.” With AVs, “vehicle miles traveled will double and roads will become impassable.”

Tierney worried that AVs could create a “two class system” — those with access to AVs and those without. “We could imagine people playing video games in a Mercedes Benz subscription AV while those who can’t afford are then starved of transit options.”

Architect and urban design Kevin Klinkenberg, said in Savannah, Georgia, Uber and Lyfts can be expensive if you aren’t just taking a short trip downtown. “Even if AVs cut the cost by half, there is still a large section of the population who won’t be able to afford them.”

Transit rides are already subsidized and are losing money in many places; AVs can therefore put further pressure on strapped transit systems, speeding up the killing of routes.

He also wondered who will pay for all the beautiful, green, multi-modal, AV-optimized streets, so often seen in renderings? “With AVs, where will the money come from?” Most cities are already completely strapped and can’t fix potholes on time.

Christopher Fornash, a transportation engineer with Nelson/Nygaard, thinks it will be 20-30 years before we see “pervasive autonomy.” He imagines autonomous cars, buses, and trains, with inter-connections. But Tierney wonders where pedestrians will go in this system? “If you have AV through-ports for efficiency, how does a pedestrian cross the street? I hope not bridges.”

Fornash worries that AV companies have already pre-empted city regulation of AVs, because in 10 states, “it’s too late, city right of ways are now in state control. AV companies now have the ability to use streets on their own terms.”

According to Klinkenberg, the transportation system is controlled by a small number of engineers, policymakers, and companies. “It’s not open to political or economic feedback. There will be the same result if you add AV to the mix. We’re just swapping new technology into the same system.”

Possible Solutions

Tierney said it’s important for planners and policymakers to “design around community values and prioritize road access. We need to reverse engineer these systems and design for what we want. There is an opportunity to reclaim cities from the car.”

Alex Engel, program manager with National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), which just released the smart Blueprint for Autonomous Vehicles, said “we can’t let the private sector dominate the conversation about AVs. We need to produce public policies that shape outcomes. We need to use good data and code the curb.”

Calthorpe called for instead investing in autonomous rapid transit (ART), like bus rapid transit (BRT) but with more nimble vehicles, which is already up and running in Zhuzhou, China. “If ART have dedicated lanes, autonomous vans or buses could be 30 percent faster than BRT and cost 80 percent less because there would be no drivers.”

Autonomous rapid transit (ART) in China / VOC.com.cn

Siegman calls for restoring control of streets back to local areas, giving cities and communities the right to “charge right prices for curb access and parking, and driving on streets.”

As an example, he pointed to San Francisco airport, which now charges taxis and ride share a $7.60 fee for accessing the curb for drop-offs and pick-ups in the most convenient zone, but half the price for access to a less convenient spot at the top of a garage.

Cities could charge riders of AVs for pick-ups and drop-offs in order to finance equitable access to public transit, including low-cost ART, and green street improvements.

How Cities Can Prepare for Autonomous Vehicles

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NACTO_Cover
Blueprint for Autonomous Urbanism / National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO)

The rise of autonomous vehicles presents “sweeping opportunities as well as serious risks,” according to Blueprint for Autonomous Urbanism, a new guide from the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) that addresses the impact of autonomous technology. “We have a historic opportunity to reclaim the street and correct the mistakes of a century of urban planning,” says NACTO chair and former New York City department of transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, Hon. ASLA. However, this opportunity is contingent upon proactive policies that put people – not cars – at the center of planning and design decisions.

Despite the hype surrounding self-driving cars, “the potential benefits of automation are not guaranteed,” warns NACTO. Among the potentially negative effects of autonomous vehicles:

  • “Traffic and emissions could skyrocket,” hampering efforts to meet climate goals and undoing years of progress at moving cities toward more sustainable approaches to transportation;
  • “’Robo-routes’ – walls of autonomous vehicles with few gaps – could divide communities,” repeating the mistakes of 20th century urban highway planning and ruining the street level experience for pedestrians and cyclists;
  • “People could be relegated to inconvenient and unpleasant pedestrian bridges,” removing life, vitality, and community from streets; and
  • “High-priced, inequitable mobility could supplant transit,” undoing years of investment and progress in the growth of mass-transit and sustainable, transit-oriented development.

To avoid this future, NACTO says “cities need strong policies to guide the future of automation and help communities shape powerful technologies around their goals, rather than the other way around.” These policies include reducing speed limits; continuing to invest in active modes of transit such as walking, cycling, and mass-transit; pricing curb access; and using data to create safer and more efficient streets.

NACTO_Perspective
The street of tomorrow? / Blueprint for Autonomous Urbanism, NACTO

With the right set of policies in place, autonomous vehicles could represent a powerful tool in helping cities meet transportation and sustainability goals. Streets designed for autonomous technology have the potential to be safer, quieter, and greener, with narrower vehicle lanes, more public transportation, wider sidewalks and bike lanes, and integrated green infrastructure. They can also be more efficient, moving more people and goods with fewer vehicles.

Efficiency
Autonomous technology could allow streets to move more people with fewer vehicles / Blueprint for Autonomous Urbanism, NACTO

For this vision to become reality, however, cities and communities need to be in control of policy making – not mobility companies. If cities do not take the lead now, “transportation network companies and technology companies will shape urban transportation policy by default,” says NACTO.

Already, there are signs of the risks and challenges posed by new mobility technology. Studies are finding that the increasing popularity of ride-hailing services is causing congestion on city streets. And earlier this year, an Uber-operated autonomous vehicle on a test drive struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, raising questions about the safety of self-driving technology. These developments underscore the need for cities, engineers, and designers to address the self-driving revolution proactively and critically.

However, there are hopeful signs that technology companies invested in the autonomous future are taking their impact seriously. Earlier this year, a group of technology and mobility companies, including Uber and Lyft, signed a joint declaration of Shared Mobility Principles for Livable Cities, which pledges to promote equity, support fair user fees, and prioritize people over vehicles. Noticeably absent from the list of signatories, however, is Waymo, the Alphabet subsidiary that has is planning to launch its first fleet of autonomous taxis later this year. Car manufacturers, who are rushing to introduce their autonomous products and services into the marketplace, are also not participants.

Waymo
Alphabet subsidiary Waymo is set to launch its first fleet of autonomous taxis in 2018 / Waymo

In the face of these looming changes, “waiting to see how events unfold is not a viable option,” writes NACTO. Cities must act now to guarantee that that “automation is harnessed to serve the goals of safety, equity, public health, and sustainability” and not roll back more than a decade of progress in the realm of sustainable transportation. “Streets in the autonomous age should give ultimate priority to pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit riders,” says NACTO. “The future street is a place for people.”

Read the full report.

MIT Researchers Seek Optimal Form of Urban Stormwater Wetlands

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MIT_plan_render
Diagrammatic plan / Jonah Susskind, Design Guidelines for Urban Stormwater Wetlands

Cities are sitting on a largely underused public resource: urban stormwater wetlands. If properly designed, these landscapes can reduce flooding, support urban wildlife, and serve as public space. A new report Design Guidelines for Urban Stormwater Wetlands — authored by an interdisciplinary group of researchers and students at the MIT Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism led by Celina Balderas Guzmán, Heidi Nepf, and Alan Berger — advocates for the positive role wetlands can play in cities and outlines research that provides insights for landscape architects, engineers, and planners.

The authors make a case for the potential of urban wetlands, especially in a time of changing climate and deteriorating urban infrastructure. “Wetlands, the world’s most valuable terrestrial ecosystem, provide a multitude of ecosystem services: water treatment, flood protection, carbon storage, habitat, recreation, and aesthetic value,” they write.

And yet, in many cities, existing wetlands have been filled, paved, developed, or channelized, eliminating the benefits they provide. In this context, the authors see opportunity. “Just as urbanization has obliterated wetlands, urbanization can build them new,” they write. “While constructed wetlands are not in all aspects comparable to natural wetlands, they can partially restore some lost ecosystem services.”

However, urban wetlands present challenges for the prospective designer, not the least of which is understanding hydraulic dynamics well enough to create a design that is both beautiful and functional. This is where the team’s research steps in.

At MIT’s Nepf Environmental Fluid Mechanic Lab, the researchers tested dozens of different wetland landform configurations to better understand how “island size, shape, and placement affect hydraulic flow and provide ecological habitat.”

MIT_model_iterations
Topography variations / Tyler Swingle, Design Guidelines for Urban Stormwater Wetlands

Researchers fabricated models of different topographies from high-density foam using a CNC milling machine. The models were then inserted into a flume (essentially a long, plexiglass tank that circulates water) for testing. The researchers used dye to track how different landform configurations impact the speed and direction of water flowing over the model.

MIT_model_test
Model test / Celina Balderas Guzmán, Design Guidelines for Urban Stormwater Wetlands

In analyzing the results of these tests, the authors made some findings. First, topography matters. Topography describes the physical features of a landform. Results varied widely for the different landforms, meaning that certain design approaches are more or less appropriate depending on the goals of the design.

According to the authors, “wetland engineers and designers must make carefully considered design decisions based on hydraulic goals, balanced with ecological and urban goals as well.”

Second, in attempting to slow down water and filter pollutants, smaller interventions may be more effective. “Adding topography subtracts volume from a wetland’s potential water storage capacity,” they write, which means that “water will exit sooner simply because there is less water volume, leading to less pollution treatment.”

In their tests, the researchers found that models were most effective when the total volume of topography equaled approximately 10 percent of the total volume of the basin, although they caution this number may shift in real-world applications.

Of the thirty-four topographies tested, the team found two that provided the best balance of hydraulic performance and pollutant filtering capacity. They conclude the report by applying these topographies to two case study sites: Buffalo Bayou in Houston, Texas, and Taylor Yard, on the Los Angeles River in Los Angeles, California.

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Site Organization Diagram for Taylor Yards, Los Angeles, CA / Waishan Qiu, Design Guidelines for Urban Stormwater Wetlands
MIT_LA_rendering
Rendering of Los Angeles River Case Study / Jonah Susskind, Design Guidelines for Urban Stormwater Wetlands

The case studies are intriguing, but may be frustrating to those hoping for a more detailed explanation of how to apply the team’s findings. However, the authors note that the studies are “urban design frameworks” and meant to be conceptual. Those seeking to transfer the team’s research to real world projects will likely find their topographic models to be helpful starting points, but will still need to develop unique design solutions that respond to site and program requirements.

Ultimately, Design Guidelines for Urban Stormwater Wetlands aims to “inform decision makers, planning agencies, consulting engineers, landscape architects, and urban designers about the efficacy of using ecologically-designed constructed wetlands and ponds to manage stormwater while creating new public realms.”

However, the authors do not present any hard and fast rules for designing urban wetlands. Instead, the report makes a compelling case for why constructed stormwater wetlands are an important and underused resource in urban areas, and provides information that may prove valuable to designers and public officials looking for ways to extract more public benefit from stormwater infrastructure.

“We hope this work gives practitioners and designers a new set of adaptable forms to work with and elaborate upon either in implementation or in future research,” says co-author Celina Balderas Guzmán, describing the study as “a crucial first step to explore forms and validate designs quickly and easily with scientifically rigorous metrics.”

In this respect, the report is a success, presenting imaginative possibilities for new urban spaces supported by hard research. As a resource for designers, Design Guidelines for Urban Stormwater Wetlands may not have all the answers, but it does have important ones.

Anne Whiston Spirn, Mikyoung Kim Design Win National Design Awards

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Anne Whiston Spirn / Arkitekten.se
Mikyoung Kim Design / Mikyoung Kim Design

The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian National Design Museum has announced its 2018 award winners. Among the 10 winners for a variety of design disciplines, MIT planning and landscape architecture professor Anne Whiston Spirn, FASLA, took home the award for “design mind” and Mikyoung Kim Design won for landscape design.

Spirn, who is the Cecil and Ida Green distinguished professor of landscape architecture and planning at MIT, is author of the seminal book The Granite Garden, which is now seen as the foundation of the ecological urbanism and landscape urbanism planning and design movements.

The Cooper Hewitt writes that Spirn’s “writings and action research have brought forth a new state of mind among designers and the general public—provoking the integration of city and nature, advancing design theory and practice, and transforming how people see and act.”

In an 2015 interview to mark the 30th anniversary of The Granite Garden, Spirn discussed progress since the book’s release and where we still come up short:

“We’ve made enormous progress, particularly with water. Ironically, we’ve done less well on climate and air quality. I say ironically, because there’s so much awareness of climate change these days. There’s been a lot of attention paid to design proposals aimed at adapting to rising sea levels, but less to the enormous potential that the design of cities holds for reducing the factors that contribute to climate change in the first place. We need to truly re-imagine the way we design cities.”

Spirn is also the author of The Eye is a Door: Landscape, Photography, and the Art of Discovery (2014), Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange’s Photographs and Reports from the Field (2011), and The Language of Landscape (1988).

And for 30 years, Spirn led the West Philadelphia Landscape Project, an “investigation into how to improve environmental equality and social equity at the same time.” On this work, Spirn said:

“The West Philadelphia Landscape Project was a laboratory for working out ideas about the language of landscape and landscape literacy. It was extraordinary working with 12- and 13-year-olds in Mill Creek, a low-income African-American neighborhood in West Philly, as they learned how to read that landscape.” Learn more about Spirn.

Mikyoung Kim, FASLA, founding principal of Mikyoung Kim Design, was recognized for an “exceptional body of award-winning work that redefines the discipline of landscape architecture and inhabits the intersection of art and science.” Kim leads the firm along with Bryan Chou, ASLA, design leader, and Ian Downing, ASLA, technical leader.

Mikyoung Kim Design works at all scales — from big-picture master plans and large urban parks to bespoke residential spaces and art installations. The firm designs unique places that are not only sustainable and resilient but also magnets for people, especially kids. The firm makes memorable use of materials, transforming them through an intensive, creative process.

Mikyoung Kim Design is perhaps most well-known for its ChonGae Canal Source Point Park in Seoul, South Korea, along the banks of the restored Cheonggyecheon stream. The park became a model for stream and river restoration in a number of other cities. An environmental and cultural asset once buried in the name of progress was unearthed and saved.

ASLA 2009 Professional General Design Honor Award. ChonGae Canal Source Point Park: Sunken Stone Garden, Seoul, Korea. Mikyoung Kim Design / Taeoh Kim

The firm has also won acclaim for its inventive Crown Sky Garden at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago.

ASLA 2013 Professional General Design Honor Award. The Crown Sky Garden: Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. Mikyoung Kim Design / George Heinrich Photography

In a recent interview, Kim explained how they needed to design a healing space without exposing the patients, who had compromised immune systems, to water or soil:

“We had to put aside our preconceived notions of what healing gardens are and really start to abstract nature in order to create this indoor experience for these families and patients.”

She also explained how innovative materials helped forge the connections to nature everyone wanted:

“Throughout our design process, we worked closely with different constituents. We worked with families and patients and brought two options. We brought an option that used more natural materials, and then we brought in a design that had more innovative materials — materials people hadn’t seen before — more contemporary materials built in innovative ways. I’d say 99-percent of kids were drawn to those. They said, ‘Cool, that’s amazing. I’ve never seen that before.'” Learn more about Mikyoung Kim Design.

ASLA 2013 Professional General Design Honor Award. The Crown Sky Garden: Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. Mikyoung Kim Design / George Heinrich Photography

Also worth noting: WEISS/MANFREDI, an architecture firm known for its multi-disciplinary approach, won for architecture design. WEISS/MANFREDI collaborated with Thomas Balsley Associates to create the award-winning Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park, a model for resilient landscape design, in Queens, New York City, and also designed the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle, Washington.