Abstract
Connections between and within cities are vital to the inner workings of a community. People need convenient access to schools, offices, and shopping areas to go about their lives. Unfortunately, much of twentieth-century transportation infrastructure has had damaging effects on communities. Dangerous and difficult-to-cross intersections and multilane roads have hindered people’s ability to move freely and children’s opportunity to play. Urban sidewalks are often unpleasant, unwalkable, or even nonexistent. Transportation infrastructure, epitomized by highways cutting through American neighborhoods in the 1960s, while connecting people on a regional level, had an unfortunate local side-effect: It reduced personal interactions within communities and obstructed their access to places.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
- 1.
Le Corbusier, The City of To-morrow and Its Planning (North Chelmsford, MA: Courier Corporation, 1987), 131.
- 2.
Jane Jacobs, “Downtown Is for People,” The Exploding Metropolis 168 (1958).
- 3.
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Vintage Books, 1961), 29.
- 4.
Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), 21.
- 5.
Alejandro Portes, “Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology,” in Knowledge and Social Capital, ed. Eric L. Lesser (Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2000), 48.
- 6.
Norman Uphoff and Chandrasekera M. Wijayaratna, “Demonstrated Benefits from Social Capital: The Productivity of Farmer Organizations in Gal Oya, Sri Lanka,” World Development 28, no. 11 (2000): 1875–90.
- 7.
John F. Helliwell and Robert D. Putnam, “The Social Context of Well-Being,” Philosophical Transactions: Royal Society of London Series B Biological Sciences (2004): 1435–46.
- 8.
Robert Putnam, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” Journal of Democracy 6, no. 1 (1995): 65–78.
- 9.
Putnam, Bowling Alone.
- 10.
David Popenoe, “Urban Sprawl: Some Neglected Sociological Considerations,” Sociology and Social Research 63, no. 2 (1979): 255–68.
- 11.
Raymond H. Novaco and Oscar I. Gonzalez, “Commuting and Well-Being,” Technology and Well-Being 3 (2009): 174–205.
- 12.
IBM Corporation, The Globalization of Traffic Congestion: IBM 2010 Commuter Pain Survey (Armonk, NY: IBM Corporation, 2010).
- 13.
Herbert J. Gans, “Planning and Social Life: Friendship and Neighbor Relations in Suburban Communities,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners 27, no. 2 (1961): 134–40.
- 14.
David Gray, Jon Shaw, and John Farrington, “Community Transport, Social Capital and Social Exclusion in Rural Areas,” Area 38, no. 1 (2006): 89–98.
- 15.
Donald Appleyard, Livable Streets (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).
- 16.
Allan Jacobs and Donald Appleyard, “Toward an Urban Design Manifesto,” Journal of the American Planning Association 53, no. 1 (1987): 112–20.
- 17.
Michael Southworth and Eran Ben-Joseph, Streets and the Shaping of Towns and Cities (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2013).
- 18.
Eran Ben-Joseph, ReThinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012).
- 19.
Jan Gehl, Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2011).
- 20.
Allan Jacobs and Donald Appleyard, “Toward an Urban Design Manifesto,” Journal of the American Planning Association 53, no. 1 (1987): 112–20.
- 21.
William H. Whyte, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (Naperville, IL: Conservation Foundation, 1980).
- 22.
Ibid.
- 23.
William H. Whyte, City: Rediscovering the Center (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 154.
- 24.
Whyte, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, 51.
- 25.
Robert B. Noland, Orin T. Puniello, and Stephanie DiPetrillo, The Impact of Transit-Oriented Development on Social Capital (San Jose, CA: Mineta National Transit Research Consortium, 2016).
- 26.
Ben Hamilton-Baillie, “Shared Space: Reconciling People, Places and Traffic,” Built Environment 34, no. 2 (2008): 161–81.
- 27.
Marta Bausells, Superblocks to the Rescue: Barcelona’s Plan to Give Streets Back to Residents, May 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/may/17/superblocks-rescue-barcelona-spain-plan-give-streets-back-residents.
- 28.
Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 150.
- 29.
Frances Bunn et al., “Area-Wide Traffic Calming for Preventing Traffic Related Injuries,” The Cochrane Library (2003).
- 30.
Ibid.
- 31.
William Riggs and John Gilderbloom, “Two-Way Street Conversion Evidence of Increased Livability in Louisville,” Journal of Planning Education and Research 36, no. 1 (2016): 105–118.
- 32.
Ben Welle et al., Cities Safer by Design: Guidance and Examples to Promote Traffic Safety through Urban and Street Design (Washington, DC: World Resources Institute, 2015).
- 33.
John Laplante and Barbara McCann, “Complete Streets: We Can Get There from Here,” Institute of Transportation Engineers. ITE Journal 78, no. 5 (2008): 24.
- 34.
Wenjia Zhang, “Does Compact Land Use Trigger a Rise in Crime and a Fall in Ridership? A Role for Crime in the Land Use–Travel Connection,” Urban Studies (2015).
- 35.
Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
- 36.
Paul Michael Cozens, Greg Saville, and David Hillier, “Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED): A Review and Modern Bibliography,” Property Management 23, no. 5 (2005): 328–56.
- 37.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, “Fatality Analysis Reporting System,” 2016, http://www.nhtsa.gov/FARS.
- 38.
World Health Organization, Global Status Report on Road Safety (Geneva, Switzerland: WHO, 2009), http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2009/9789241563840_eng.pdf.
- 39.
UN Habitat, Planning and Design for Sustainable Urban Mobility, Global Report on Human Settlements (Nairobi, Kenya: UN Habitat, 2013).
- 40.
Ian Roberts and Phil Edwards, The Energy Glut: The Politics of Fatness in an Overheating World (London: Zed Books, 2010).
- 41.
Robert Cervero, et al., “Influences of Built Environments on Walking and Cycling: Lessons from Bogotá,” International Journal of Sustainable Transport 3 (2009): 203–26.
- 42.
Lawrence D. Frank, Martin A. Andresen, and Thomas L. Schmid, “Obesity Relationships with Community Design, Physical Activity, and Time Spent in Cars,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 27, no. 2 (2004): 87–96.
- 43.
Ibid.
- 44.
Michael Southworth, “Designing the Walkable City,” Journal of Urban Planning and Development 131, no. 4 (2005): 246–57.
- 45.
Reid Ewing and Susan Handy, “Measuring the Unmeasurable: Urban Design Qualities Related to Walkability,” Journal of Urban Design 14, no. 1 (2009): 65–84.
- 46.
Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City, Vol. 11, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960).
- 47.
Gordon Cullen, The Concise Townscape (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 1971), 27.
- 48.
Ewing and Handy, “Measuring the Unmeasurable: Urban Design Qualities Related to Walkability,” 77.
- 49.
Wesley E. Marshall, Daniel P. Piatkowski, and Norman W. Garrick, “Community Design, Street Networks, and Public Health,” Journal of Transport & Health 1, no. 4 (2014): 326–40.
- 50.
Kenneth E. Powell, Linda M. Martin, and Pranesh P. Chowdhury, “Places to Walk: Convenience and Regular Physical Activity,” American Journal of Public Health 93, no. 9 (2003): 1519–21.
- 51.
Eugene C. Fitzhugh, David R. Bassett, and Mary F. Evans, “Urban Trails and Physical Activity: A Natural Experiment,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 39, no. 3 (2010): 259–62.
- 52.
Chris Rissel et al., “Physical Activity Associated with Public Transport Use: A Review and Modelling of Potential Benefits,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 9, no. 7 (2012): 2454–78.
- 53.
François Reeves, Planet Heart: How an Unhealthy Environment Leads to Heart Disease (Vancouver, BC: Greystone Books, 2014).
- 54.
World Health Organization, “Global Urban Ambient Air Pollution Database (Update 2016),” http://www.who.int/phe/health_topics/outdoorair/databases/cities/en/.
- 55.
Randall Crane and Lisa A. Scweitzer, “Transport and Sustainability: The Role of the Built Environment,” Built Environment 29, no. 3 (2003): 238–52.
- 56.
J. J. Lin and C. C. Gau, “A TOD Planning Model to Review the Regulation of Allowable Development Densities around Subway Stations,” Land Use Policy 23 (2006): 353–60.
- 57.
Janice Fanning Madden, “Why Women Work Closer to Home,” Urban Studies 18, no. 2 (1981): 181–94.
- 58.
Evelyn Blumenberg, “On the Way to Work: Welfare Participants and Barriers to Employment,” Economic Development Quarterly 16, no. 4 (2002): 314–25.
- 59.
Amy Hillier et al., “A Discrete Choice Approach to Modeling Food Store Access,” Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 42, no. 2 (2015): 263–78.; Amy Hillier et al., “How Far Do Low-Income Parents Travel to Shop for Food? Empirical Evidence from Two Urban Neighborhoods,” Urban Geography 32, no. 5 (2011): 712–29.
- 60.
Robert Doyle Bullard, Glenn Steve Johnson, and Angel O. Torres, eds., Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity (Brooklyn, NY: South End Press, 2004).
- 61.
Yang Liu, Beyond Spatial Mismatch: Immigrant Employment in Urban America (Ann Arbor, MI: ProQuest, 2008).
- 62.
Evelyn Blumenberg, “On the Way to Work: Welfare Participants and Barriers to Employment,” Economic Development Quarterly 16, no. 4 (2002): 314–25.
- 63.
Karen Lucas, Tim Grosvenor, and Roona Simpson, Transport, the Environment and Social Exclusion (York, UK: York Publishing Services Limited, 2001).
- 64.
Fengming Su and Michael G. H. Bell, “Transport for Older People: Characteristics and Solutions,” Research in Transportation Economics 25, no. 1 (2009): 46–55.
- 65.
Lucas, Grosvenor, and Simpson, Transport, the Environment and Social Exclusion, vii.
- 66.
Charles Montgomery, Happy City: Transforming Our Lives through Urban Design (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013).
- 67.
Warren Smit et al., “Toward a Research and Action Agenda on Urban Planning/Design and Health Equity in Cities in Low and Middle-Income Countries,” Journal of Urban Health 88, no. 5 (2011): 875–85.
- 68.
Ada-Helen Bayer and Leon Harper, Fixing to Stay: A National Survey of Housing and Home Modification Issues (Washington, DC: AARP, 2000).
- 69.
Patsy Healey, “Collaborative Planning in Perspective,” Planning Theory 2, no. 2 (2003): 101–23.
- 70.
Ria S. Hutabarat Lo, “Walkability Planning in Jakarta,” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkley, 2011).
- 71.
Annette Miae Kim, Sidewalk City: Remapping Public Space in Ho Chi Minh City. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).
- 72.
Benjamin Goldfrank, “Lessons from Latin American Experience in Participatory Budgeting,” Participatory Budgeting (2007): 91–126.
- 73.
Ibid.
- 74.
Greg Brown and Delene Weber, “Public Participation GIS: A New Method for National Park Planning,” Landscape and Urban Planning 102, no. 1 (2011): 1–15.
- 75.
Florian Steinberg, “Strategic Urban Planning in Latin America: Experiences of Building and Managing the Future,” Habitat International 29, no. 1 (2005): 69–93; Miguel Kanai and Iliana Ortega-Alcázar, “The Prospects for Progressive Culture-Led Urban Regeneration in Latin America: Cases from Mexico City and Buenos Aires,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 33, no. 2 (2009): 483–501.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Robert Cervero, Erick Guerra, and Stefan Al
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cervero, R., Guerra, E., Al, S. (2017). Better Communities. In: Beyond Mobility. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-835-0_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-835-0_2
Publisher Name: Island Press, Washington, DC
Print ISBN: 978-1-61091-928-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-61091-835-0
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)