Eran Ben-Joseph

Street Standards and the Shaping of Suburbia

Abstract The current surge of interest in reassessing the physical form of the American suburb is heightening awareness of the physical and social impacts of local street design. Yet one hundred and fifty years of ideology are so thoroughly embedded in the making of suburban streets that challenges to traditional street layouts and design usually meet with outright rejection. How did the design process and built environment become so dependent on certain regulations and criteria? The historical evolution of suburban residential street standards is traced here through a review of professional and technical publications, as well as historical precedents. Urban designers, planners, and engineers should work together to develop street designs that are more responsive to the diverse users of streets and to varied social and geographic settings.

Urban Simulation and the Luminous Planning Table: Bridging the Gap between the Digital and the Tangible

Multi-layered manipulative platforms that integrate digital and physical representations will have a significant impact on urban design and planning processes in the future. The usefulness of these platforms will be in their ability to combine and update digital and tangible data in seamless ways to enhance the design process of the professional and the communication process with the public. The Luminous Planning Table is one of the first prototypes that use a tangible computerized interface. The use of this system is unique in the design and presentation process in which, at the moment, the activity of viewing physical models and the viewing of animation and computerized simulations are separate. This ability to engage and provide an integrated medium for information delivery and understanding is promising in its pedagogical, professional, and public engagement outcomes.

Virtual and actual: Relative accuracy of on-site and web-based instruments in auditing the environment for physical activity

OBJECTIVES To assess the relative accuracy and usefulness of web tools in evaluating and measuring street-scale built environment characteristics. METHODS A well-known audit tool was used to evaluate 84 street segments at the urban edge of metropolitan Boston, Massachusetts, using on-site visits and three web-based tools. The assessments were compared to evaluate their relative accuracy and usefulness. RESULTS Web-based audits, based-on Google Maps, Google Street View, and MS Visual Oblique, tend to strongly agree with on-site audits on land-use and transportation characteristics (e.g., types of buildings, commercial destinations, and streets). However, the two approaches to conducting audits (web versus on-site) tend to agree only weakly on fine-grain, temporal, and qualitative environmental elements. Among the web tools used, auditors rated MS Visual Oblique as the most valuable. Yet Street View tends to be rated as the most useful in measuring fine-grain features, such as levelness and condition of sidewalks. CONCLUSION While web-based tools do not offer a perfect substitute for on-site audits, they allow for preliminary audits to be performed accurately from remote locations, potentially saving time and cost and increasing the effectiveness of subsequent on-site visits.

Changing the Residential Street Scene: Adapting the shared street (Woonerf) Concept to the Suburban Environment

Abstract In the 1970s, the Dutch city of Delft adopted a new residential street layout. Its fundamental concept was the antithesis of the notion of segregating pedestrians and vehicles. It emphasized integration of traffic and pedestrian activity as a positive principle for street planning. The shared street approach was later systematized by local agencies and given legal status by the national government. This new concept has drawn global attention, and similar street designs are appearing not only in Europe, but also in Japan, Australia, and Israel. The shared street concepts adaptability to different countries and societies reinforces its status as a valid, flexible choice for residential street layouts. Studies and surveys of shared streets in these countries have found considerable reductions in traffic accidents, increased social interaction and play, and a high degree of satisfaction by the residents. The available data and the successful implementation of the shared street in other countries can...

Relationships Between the Built Environment and Walking and Weight Status Among Older Women in Three U.S. States

There are few studies of built environment associations with physical activity and weight status among older women in large geographic areas that use individual residential buffers to define environmental exposures. Among 23,434 women (70.0 ± 6.9 yr; range = 57-85) in 3 states, relationships between objective built environment variables and meeting physical activity recommendations via walking and weight status were examined. Differences in associations by population density and state were explored in stratified models. Population density (odds ratio [OR] =1.04 [1.02, 1.07]), intersection density (ORs = 1.18-1.28), and facility density (ORs = 1.01-1.53) were positively associated with walking. Density of physical activity facilities was inversely associated with overweight/obesity (OR = 0.69 [0.49, 0.96]). The strongest associations between facility density variables and both outcomes were found among women from higher population density areas. There was no clear pattern of differences in associations across states. Among older women, relationships between accessible facilities and walking may be most important in more densely populated settings.

Double standards, single goal: private communities and design innovation

Some 47 million Americans—one in six—live in communities run by collective private ownership of residential property. The spread of home‐owner associations, condominium associations and cooperatives is transforming planning practices and development design. A nation‐wide survey of municipalities and developers demonstrates the existence of two sets of standards and design parameters: those that pertain to the public domain and those applied to private communities. Public officials often regard the latter, with their privately owned streets and open spaces, as a tool for promoting flexible planning, frequently resulting in innovative and efficient land use and original layouts, characteristics absent from conventional subdivisions. Developers see private communities as a medium for a simplified approval process and the introduction of design innovation. They are using private development to push the density and efficiency envelopes while protecting environmental resources and increasing marketability and financial returns. Public officials agree that because local government has no legal or maintenance responsibilities for private development, and is thereby cleared from liability concerns, such communities often use land more efficiently, through clustering and narrow‐street systems. We must recognize that the current practice of allowing different sets of standards for private developments acknowledges the inadequacy of standards applied to public ones, and validates the impression that typical regulations are not determined by actual performance, marketability or good design.

By Community or Design? Age-restricted Neighbourhoods, Physical Design and Baby Boomers’ Local Travel Behaviour in Suburban Boston, US

This article analyses the travel behaviour, residential choices and related preferences of 55+ baby boomers in suburban Boston, USA, looking specifically at age-restricted neighbourhoods. For this highly auto-dependent group, do neighbourhood-related characteristics influence local-level recreational walk/bike and social activity trip-making? The analysis aims to discern community (for example, social network) versus physical (for example, street network) influences. Structural equation models, incorporating attitudes and residential choice, are used to control for self-selection and to account for direct and indirect effects among exogenous and endogenous variables. The analysis reveals modest neighbourhood effects. Living in age-restricted, as opposed to unrestricted, suburban neighbourhoods modestly increases the likelihood of residents being active (i.e. making at least one local recreational walk/bike trip) and the number of local social trips. Overall, the age-restricted community status has greater influence on recreational and social activity trip-making than the neighbourhood physical characteristics, although some community–neighbourhood interaction exists.

Indicators for Sustainable Urban Development

This chapter explores the critical issue of measuring sustainable urban development (SUD) via the use of indicators. The chapter begins by situating indicators within the broader urban planning process, showing how they help measure goals and objectives, define evaluation criteria and monitor progress. Recognizing the inherent complexity of the sustainability concept, the chapter then presents the hierarchy of information generally used, in the measurement process. Several different approaches and techniques for measuring sustainability — via indicators and indices — are presented, and building on these precedents, the sustainable indicator prism is proposed as a means for structurally guiding and understanding the informational and geographical scales implicit in the multidimensionality of sustainable urban development (SUD). The chapter recognizes that a “one-size-fits-all” approach to SUD indicators is not possible; key challenges include the lack of responsible authority and the lack of place-specific data. Ultimately, indicators must reflect political reality, information availability and a relevant scale of analysis.