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| Typical Jakarta Traffic Jam |
According to recent news reports in the Jakarta Globe, the project still appears to be unsustainable. The question is has the issue in cases like Jakarta been actually addressed in the correct comprehensive manner? Lets look at the key factors in Mass Transit or take a step back and look at the issue of tranportation in a metropolis like Jakarta.
What is the main objective? To transport people from home to work and to other places of interest or necessity with comfort, efficiency and economy for everyone. The simple fact is individual auto transport for each individual is not a sustainable solution both from and environmental and now an economic perspective with the price of oil, but also with the cost of space for roads and the resultant waste of time due to traffic jams.
To make Mass Transit effective and efficient the destinations of travel should be within walking distance of stations. (Secondary feeder transport has a second important layer of importance.) To make the mass transit economiclly viable it needs to carry a critical mass of passengers spread out over the system as evenly as possible. Both of these criteria indicate from an urban planning persepctive the development around stations need to have density!
Density of land along with the conveince of Mass Transit always makes land more valuable. Governments have the ability to dictate development zoning and density and directly alter the land value and this exactly what governments like Jakarta should do to finance and make Mass Transit viable and effective once it is built.
Legislation needs to of course go hand in hand with the approach where by once new stations are located, the land around can be purchased by the government at existing market price and only the govenment can get the initial benefits of the Mass Transit. I believe both in Singapore and Hong Kong similar policies are in place.
The following excerpt from Hong Kong's MTR Business Overview document, page 8, Property, dated September 2012:
We can see the lesson from places like Los Angeles which has implemented at enormous cost extensive Mass Transit (LA Metro) but without development density reallocation. The initial cost was some how funded through goverment coffers but the operations continues to be subsidized since the population bases that the stations reaches are very low density due to the suburban nature of LA. According to the Fiscal Year Budget 2012 fares will only account for about 8% of the required cost to run the entire network and another 4% by other revenue sources such as rental of space and advertising.
The following 2 aerial photos of the LA Metro station location on Wilshire Blvd and Western Ave Station and the Fortress Hill Station in Hong Kong show the contrasting densities which are one of the factors directly related to the successes of the respective Mass Transits.
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| LA Metro - Wilshire and Western Station (400m yellow line for scale) |
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| Hong Kong MTR - Fortress Hill Station (400m yellow line for scale) |
In the case of Hong Kong's Fortress Hill Station, some of the older buildings are about 5 stories but are rare and being replaced, along the main King's Road the norm would be about 12 stories minium for the older buildings and the more standard density now would be about 30 stories especially very close to the MTR stations.
Comprehensive urban planning solutions are just that, ones that coordinate all aspect of city planning including legislation, mass transportation investment cost and running cost, land use, development density, economics, etc. to name a few. To simply find some donor to finance the building of a Mass Transit System and have that built alone will not solve cronic traffi jam problems in a metropolis like Jakarta only an integrated approach will have a long lasting positive impact. This post just touched on a few of the key issues to start to formulate a successful Mass Transit System for a metropolis like Jakarta and is by no means comprehensive which is what will be required.
Related thoughts by Jiwa Stuido:
6.0 Urban vs Suburban why I appreciate Urban so much!
10.0 Jakarta Busway a Catalyst for Urbanization
14.0 Los Angeles – the Good, the Bad, the Future?Jiwa Studio, Singapore
March 2013
The article is interesting and takes a sensible approach to the question it poses about cities and traffic. I was especially pleased with one observation: "To make Mass Transit effective and efficient the destinations of travel should be within walking distance of stations." Overall a pretty good piece.
ReplyDeleteHowever the problem with the article lies within its assumptions, key among them that cities can be sustainable. It may be possible to make cities sustainable (I am skeptical, but with so little evidence I can't conclude much). The inherent problem with cities is that their overhead is enormous. Cities require vast distribution and transportation networks in order to exist. Whether or not these networks can be sustainable, they cannot be both sustainable and as prosperous as sustainable communities on a smaller scale - communities that bypass the level of infrastructure needed for distribution and transportation (which by itself adds no fundamental value to the society - quite the opposite.)
Try as I may, I can see little value in they type of transportation and distribution networks that so define our society. Before the advent of modern communications, these networks did provide great value - they helped structure human endeavors to allow information to flow within the limits of technology. The reason mass production came into existence was in response to the need for managing information in ways that were not possible previously. With modern communications, this need no longer exists. Cities are relics of the past.
The proper goal for people today is to secure prosperity for their children. The only possible route to prosperity entails embracing sustainability (and its prerequisites, such as near zero use on non-renewable resources). After all, sustainability is inevitable: if we are doing things that are unsustainable - that cannot be sustained - they WILL not be sustained. Sustainability is inevitable. Prosperity is not. Anyone who cares for any child anywhere must realize this and act accordingly.
By Jim Stiles
(from Linkedin Green Cities discussion group)
Jim
ReplyDeleteThanks for your views. My views about the real trigger to move the world towards sustainability is economics as in the first post of my blog: http://jiwastudio.blogspot.sg/2011/10/urban-planning-lifestyle-natural_12.html
Basically I see that the world can never find full agreement so economics is the only thing that will be common to everyone bidding for the limited natural resources and this will be the real shaper of a movement towards sustainability. But in the mean time I do not think we all give up. As professionals we must constantly push the direction in all aspects and when the economics becomes the determining factor we are already in a position to execute.
Modern communications is fantastic, but I think face to face human interaction can never be 100% replaced, so the city serves as an important part of human interaction, just as it serves an important part of human physical exercise and that is another reason I think walking cities are extremely necessary.
I agree with much of what you say. Economics is more likely to drive most decisions than any kind of widespread agreement about what is needed. Unfortunately, economic processes have been corrupted by a combination of factors. Vast subsidies for exploiting non-renewable resources continue to destroy economic incentives for alternatives. At a more fundamental level, over the centuries economics has become increasingly absurd. It started out well, with Aristotle and his collaborators working on the stewardship of households (literally). However neoclassical economics assumes that people are rational and can assign quantitative values to their desires, individuals maximize utility and firms maximize profits, and people act independently on the basis of full and relevant information. I could go on listing problems with modern economics, but suffice it to say that if we simply rely on modern economics for the salvation of future generations from our excesses, we may have a long wait.
DeleteI also agree that human interaction has enormous value and cannot be replaced by modern communication. However as far as I am able to tell, modern cities are incompatible with prosperous sustainability. Cities may make for efficient consumerism, but I am convinced that we must become far more involved in producing what we need ourselves. Cities cannot do this, since at its most basic, growing food requires lots of sunlight, and there simply is not enough of it to go around in large, dense cities. It is possible to reduce this problem, but it is not possible to eliminate it.
I think that the appeal you find in modern cities is widely shared, and your focus on walkable, livable cities is good. However, as far as I can tell, it is a dead end. Large, dense cities will never be prosperous and sustainable. Although this may pose some problems, I do not think that it is a tragedy. Smaller, more sustainable communities will each have their own character and attract people who share similar interests and values. Plus people will visit other communities all the time, although such trips will probably be less frequent than they are now. However, when combined with improved communication, I think that the result should satisfy most people.
The world that emerges in the wake of massive resource depletion and climate change will not meet all of the desires of everyone. Still it can be a good one. Changes are going to be large, but they do not have to all be bad. Prosperity and good lives will be possible as long as we understand what is possible and live within our constraints.
Jim
By Jim Stiles
(from Linkedin Green Cities discussion group)
Jim
DeleteI admit I have very little knowledge about economics but my perception is as you say the current situation is "corrupted" for many reasons. I see ultimatly the settling of absolute values based on what one "actually has" in terms of actual hard resources and not on what one "makes up" (printing of money or borrows) it will be more in line with a "barter system". But this still doesn't answer the question of paying for the cost to the environment and this can only happen when there is some universal world wide agreement.
Back to the subject of the physical make up of cities of the future, how do you see them ultimately looking like?
On the points you make about economics - we would have a far more stable economic system if values were based on what one has rather than the rate at which a thing is growing. On the other hand, the later, 'derivatives-based' economics tends to pump up the availability of credit, which heats up the economy and benefits growth oriented businesses. I have no great answers for the questions in this domain.
DeleteSetting values on environmental assets does take working relationships, but does not require anything as difficult as universal agreement. A strong majority is probably sufficient to yield near-universal compliance. It seems like this should be do-able, but I see little evidence of progress.
As for cities, I think that large, dense cities are inherently unsustainable (the fact that they are efficient ways to consume seems to hide this fact). In the future there are two fundamental truths that will drive settlement patterns:
1) all energy and other resources must be renewable. With material resources, density makes this easier, but with energy resources the penalties for exceeding the energy density available from natural sources (solar, wind...) become very large.
2) the costs and impacts of transportation and distributing goods and services are (from the standpoint of providing value to the general populace) infinitely greater than the value - moving a kilowatt hour from here to there and likewise of a ton of iron ore is pure cost if the resources are used where they are produced. In the case of sustainable energy, this means that the best sources are inherently local. It is less clear in the case of material resources, but for example a carrot from your neighbor is probably better than a carrot from Argentina (likewise for most food and many other resources).
These fact point me to a conclusion that communities (or more precisely, neighborhoods) should be scaled by the ability of people to walk where they are going, at least for everything they really need.
There is real value in personal participation in larger communities, especially for people working in technical and other intense intellectual specialties. Drives like these will lead people to try to find ways to create larger and denser settlements. They are likely to enjoy some degree of success, especially if it enables them to produce that contribute to the prosperity of people who are more concerned with more basic issues.
In terms of predictions, I think that peoples basic needs will probably be met best in neighborhood-scale communities - about 1000 people (a number that could vary significantly, depending on many factors).
At the other extreme, I think that cities of tens of thousands of people might possibly prosper. They will have to be propped up by the smaller communities that live in closer harmony with what the earth can provide, but I have no problem envisioning such a thing. In rare cases, cities might exceed 100,000 people. I feel somewhat skeptical of this - we need to have far more intimate relationships with our environment to provide the kind of stewardship that is needed to assure prosperity than I see as possible with such large cities, but my conclusion is certainly suspect given the qualitative nature of my key arguments.
I think that within about 100 years, most prosperous communities will have between 500 and 5000 residents. They will be built around a tightly integrated neighborhood hub where lots of services are available, and will be surrounded by larger plots of land used for low density uses such as recreation, larger farms, forests, lakes, etc. Most homes will raise over 50% of their own food. The most prosperous and sustainable homes are likely to mostly exist within greenhouses, which will protect the dwellings inside them from weather extremes (increasing their efficiency and durability). The spaces around the dwelling, including the roofs. will be all about producing food.
Out of space now. Jim
By Jim Stiles
(from Linkedin Green Cities discussion group)
Fantastic analysis.
ReplyDelete