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I have visited four cities in western Europe in the last ten years: Paris, Toulouse, Marseille, and Barcelona. Of those, only Marseille was not actively planni

by blahedo 16y ago

I have visited four cities in western Europe in the last ten years: Paris, Toulouse, Marseille, and Barcelona. Of those, only Marseille was not actively planning and/or building a new subway line while I was there. They're certainly not on the scale of East Asia, but it's hard to claim they're in a "stasis field". Or at least, you'll have to extend your exception to France, maybe. Now, US systems are a different story; of a dozen or so cities I've visited recently, Portland is the only one I can think of that was actively building.

elblanco 16y ago
You're right, I'm being a bit unfair. But most of what I've seen in terms of system plans in Western Europe and the U.S. are very minor extensions to the systems...perhaps 3 or 4 stations over the next 5-7 years. And places like L.A. I think absolutely stand-up to the criticism of being locked in stasis. Even the planned system looks embarrassing for the second largest metro region in the U.S. D.C. is maybe a slight exception with an entire new line (and 11 stations) actually in the process of being built over the next 6 years. But lets put that in perspective, the Shanghai system opened in 1990, and 20 years later has 269 stations with dozens more still in the works. I'm not expecting the same thing for D.C., but L.A. is a similarly populated metro region. One other thing to think about, and part of my fixation on metro systems I think, is how the systems tend to define how the cities develop. It's a catch-22 in a way, we build the systems to service the denser parts of a city, but the presence of the system builds density in the immediate (walkable) distance from the station. Outlier areas, away from the metro center, can become perfectly fine mini-city centers in and of themselves (see the edge city phenomenon). Just the fact that the silver line is being built has stirred a tremendous amount of city planning and building along its length with areas like Tysons Corner being virtually rebuilt to support a walkable city center type environment centered around the stations. This type of co-development is critical I think to sustainable urban planning. You can't build a car free urban area if people can't get into and out of the urban center.

by blahedo 16y ago

elblanco 16y ago

You're right, I'm being a bit unfair. But most of what I've seen in terms of system plans in Western Europe and the U.S. are very minor extensions to the systems...perhaps 3 or 4 stations over the next 5-7 years. And places like L.A. I think absolutely stand-up to the criticism of being locked in stasis. Even the planned system looks embarrassing for the second largest metro region in the U.S. D.C. is maybe a slight exception with an entire new line (and 11 stations) actually in the process of being built over the next 6 years. But lets put that in perspective, the Shanghai system opened in 1990, and 20 years later has 269 stations with dozens more still in the works. I'm not expecting the same thing for D.C., but L.A. is a similarly populated metro region. One other thing to think about, and part of my fixation on metro systems I think, is how the systems tend to define how the cities develop. It's a catch-22 in a way, we build the systems to service the denser parts of a city, but the presence of the system builds density in the immediate (walkable) distance from the station. Outlier areas, away from the metro center, can become perfectly fine mini-city centers in and of themselves (see the edge city phenomenon). Just the fact that the silver line is being built has stirred a tremendous amount of city planning and building along its length with areas like Tysons Corner being virtually rebuilt to support a walkable city center type environment centered around the stations. This type of co-development is critical I think to sustainable urban planning. You can't build a car free urban area if people can't get into and out of the urban center.