The official tumblr of amtrak

[The official tumblr of amtrak]

Urban Design Concept of the Day

Parking Minimums

A parking minimum is the minimum amount of parking allowed for a business to have for it to legally be built. It is typically based on sq. footage, number of units or maximum occupency. They are terrible. This is because of how they make proper density almost impossible and destroy land for parking that will never be used outside of black friday. This ensures car dependency. Also many in US city’s parking minimums are unnecessarily high leading to the problem of empty parking lots that can’t legally be redeveloped being even worse. Luckily they are being gradually removed from most real cities.

[The official tumblr of amtrak]

Urban design concept of the day

Dedicated lanes

Transit needs a dedicated ROW to move efficiently, but sometimes there isn’t enough space or budget to build underground or elevated tracks, that’s where streetrunning comes in. When you run a line like a tram, lightrail or BRT on the Street it is significantly cheaper to build but slower and less safe with the chance of getting stuck in traffic, hit by a car or by having a car park in front of the vehicle. This can be solved by slightly increasing costs and giving the transit it’s own lane and signal priority as if cars can’t drive where the transit is, then the transit can move at considerably higher speeds. Basically giving transit a dedicated transit lane on a street makes it cheaper to build but still keeps the trains fast and efficient

[The official tumblr of amtrak]

Urban Design Concept of the Day

Redundancy in Transit

Redundancy is a key element to good transit design, always make sure that there are multiple ways to get between locations in a city. if there is only one way to get between two locations, then there is an exponentially higher number of points of failure on a system and it is harder to get between locations as there are fewer options, overallit makes transit less appealing as a method to move about in a city. This is why things like ring lines are so important to the design of transit systems. The lack of redundancy and interconnectivity in our transit systems is why American transit systems lag behind European and East Asian Cities in terms of ridership

[The official tumblr of amtrak]

Urban design concept of the day

Pedestrian Plazas

A pedestrian plaza is an urban open space designed for pedestrians to exist in. They help to improve the walkability of an area by giving people a place to exist without any requirements acting as way finding markers, space for small businesses, and a place to meet people. They play a key role in adding in Greenspace and escapes from urban environments to our cities. Plazas differ from parks due to how they focus on being just open space and not a natural space. They have evolved from the town squares and commons of europe and early American cities. Often times they are small taking up a city block or 2 at most and will have shops surrounding them. A small one may be as simple as a closed off alley with seating or it may have public art, a market or many other purposes.

[The official tumblr of amtrak]

[amtrak-official]

Is your commercial district dead? are apartments too expensive? try a Vacancy tax, it forces those nasty developers to lower rents with one simple trick. Making it so they get fairly taxed for the space they use in our cities! Developers and landlords hate this one simple way to make small businesses and apartments affordable

[amtrak-official]

Basically you tax apartments and rental spaces, it can be as low as 1% of the rent price annually as long as they are vacant and it forces developers to lower rents or else they take losses, this has been shown to work in Vancouver where it managed to cause over a 3rd of empty units to become occupied within 3 years

[amtrak-official]

Fuck it, this can be

the urban design concepts of the day

[The official tumblr of amtrak]

Urban Design Concept of the Day

Streetcar suburbs

The Streetcar suburb is a form of transit oriented development where a neighborhood is oriented around a Streetcar stop. They grew to prominence between the 1880s and 1920s during the height of streetcars in north america. Drspite the removal of streetcars they havr still thrived as urban neighborhoods even today as a result of of how they differ from modern suburbs by being denser, having mixed use zoning and being more Walkable making them a healthier, more environmentally friendly form of the suburb. Examples of Streetcar suburbs can be found in Louisville with the Highlands, West Philly, Shaker Heights in Cleveland, Somerville in Boston, and West Hollywood in LA

[The official tumblr of amtrak]

Urban Design Concept of the day

Bicycle Infrastructure

Bicycle Infrastructure is infrastructure built to accommodate and encourage cycling as a means of transit. It can exist as separated bike lanes, bike paths, separate bike intersections or other things involving separating bicycle traffic from cars. It can also be bike stands and street trees which make it easier for people to bike. In general the goal of bicycle infrastructure is to design a space to be able to be used by a cyclist instead of just a car owner

[The official tumblr of amtrak]

Urban Design Concept of the day

Adaptive Reuse

Adaptive Reuse is the practice of using existing infrastructure for a new purpose, such as a building redevelopment. It can be done in a way to affect an urban environment with projects like the Highline in New York or the Beltline in Atlanta. It is important in urban design as it helps to maintain continuity, allows for new uses of old infrastructure, maintains density, and keeps construction to a minimum. It is more of an architectural term than an urban design term, but it is an important thing to understand when looking at planning documents as it is a good way to improve an area with minimal damages and to give new life to aging buildings

[The official tumblr of amtrak]

Urban Design Concept of the Day

The 15 Minute City Concept

The 15 Minute City is the concept that everything a person needs including housing, grocery stores, restaurants, schools, clinics, parks and shopping should be within a 15 minute walk or bike ride of people’s homes. This is to be accomplished by implementing mixed use zoning and greater housing density. The 15 minute city concept is promoted as areas that are 15 minute cities are shown to healthier for the people who live in them, have strong communities, and are better for the environment as walking and cycling are better for you than automobiles. The concept while frequently discussed as a goal to reach does already exist in places like Centercity Philadelphia, the Loop and Near Northside of Chicago, Manhatten and the downtown and Capitol Hill neighborhoods of Seattle as well as many European cities. It has been proposed and risen to prominence as an alternative to the current suburban model of development

[The official tumblr of amtrak]

Urban design concept of the Day

Daylighting

Daylighting is the practice of removing obstacles to sight lines of vehicles to make intersections safer, this is typically done by removing parking spaces and adding curb extensions. Basically it makes it so drivers can see pedestrians so those pedestrians don’t end up surprising the driver and getting hit by the driver. It is one of the key practices in helping to make pedestrians safer in downtowns and other places with tight streets