4 ms·

Preferably both things should go together. You plan the neighbourhood and the same time start planing the transport. There is a lot of books on what makes city

by orian 10y ago

Preferably both things should go together. You plan the neighbourhood and the same time start planing the transport. There is a lot of books on what makes city good place to live this days on. I found it fascinating (as SWE).

ChuckMcM 10y ago
Great idea but way too late in this case. And, at least in this area, urban planning is a moving target since there is no single authority that can move all of the pieces. For example, a city can zone land to be high density residential but that doesn't necessarily mean that people who live there will sell their low density houses so that they can be redeveloped. A high density area can "want" a public transit station, but the transit authority may not have the funds, or the motivation to give them a station. And there is no means for a city government for "force" them to. Instead, we're left with the "master plan" system which is a living document that the city government maintains which expresses a "vision" of what the city would like (their plans) and the city council signs up to help make it real when there is something within their powers to do to help it.[1] A previous example of how hard that can be is the "Coyote Valley" area in South San Jose that was going to be "anchored" in part by large campuses of big employers (Cisco was the headline client). But the dot com crash hit and Cisco never moved in. A current example is the new Apple "spaceship" campus in Cupertino which is to far away from the train station and in a set of roads that don't easily feed or drain to the 280 interstate. [1] And part of that is the problem in Sunnyvale, the plan says one thing, and when councilmembers have voted to help implement it, it has irritated citizens who didn't realize that was what the plan said.
- eitally 10y ago
  As someone who commutes [usually] on 280S from Mountain View to San Jose -- adding about 5 miles to my optimal commute -- because 101S-->87S is even worse, I'm dreading the opening of the new Apple campus.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    Note though that most of the new Apple Campus was the rather large HP Wolfe Road campus. I don't know how the population of the campus changes between the two companies (and it's obviously near zero at the moment) but it's not like there was nothing there before.
    - ChuckMcM 10y ago
      One of those weird tidbits ... the Apple building at 300,000 sq feet has nearly 4x the office space of the HP buildings it replaces (75,000 sq ft)

by orian 10y ago

ChuckMcM 10y ago

Great idea but way too late in this case. And, at least in this area, urban planning is a moving target since there is no single authority that can move all of the pieces. For example, a city can zone land to be high density residential but that doesn't necessarily mean that people who live there will sell their low density houses so that they can be redeveloped. A high density area can "want" a public transit station, but the transit authority may not have the funds, or the motivation to give them a station. And there is no means for a city government for "force" them to. Instead, we're left with the "master plan" system which is a living document that the city government maintains which expresses a "vision" of what the city would like (their plans) and the city council signs up to help make it real when there is something within their powers to do to help it.[1] A previous example of how hard that can be is the "Coyote Valley" area in South San Jose that was going to be "anchored" in part by large campuses of big employers (Cisco was the headline client). But the dot com crash hit and Cisco never moved in. A current example is the new Apple "spaceship" campus in Cupertino which is to far away from the train station and in a set of roads that don't easily feed or drain to the 280 interstate. [1] And part of that is the problem in Sunnyvale, the plan says one thing, and when councilmembers have voted to help implement it, it has irritated citizens who didn't realize that was what the plan said.

eitally 10y ago
As someone who commutes [usually] on 280S from Mountain View to San Jose -- adding about 5 miles to my optimal commute -- because 101S-->87S is even worse, I'm dreading the opening of the new Apple campus.
- ghaff 10y ago
  Note though that most of the new Apple Campus was the rather large HP Wolfe Road campus. I don't know how the population of the campus changes between the two companies (and it's obviously near zero at the moment) but it's not like there was nothing there before.
  - ChuckMcM 10y ago
    One of those weird tidbits ... the Apple building at 300,000 sq feet has nearly 4x the office space of the HP buildings it replaces (75,000 sq ft)