Keywords: equity, urban planning

detailed annotation

Keywords: urban economics, equity

Keywords: equity, gender, transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: equity, urban form

Keywords: equity, transit, finance

Keywords: transit, finance, equity

Keywords: transit, finance, equity

A good overview of the full breadth of equity issues in transportation planning. A few distinctive points: 1) access to health care is often ignored. 2) Residential dispersal is a valid solution to spatial mismatch, but transportation is usually touted as the politically easier solution instead. My thoughts: in some ways, providing subsidised transit connections for reverse commutes is a subsidy to suburbanising businesses, giving them access to low-wage employees at a low-cost location. Without that access, they might choose to locate closer to low-wage workers. 3) In addition to poor/rich urban/suburban, short trip/long trip cross-subsidies, there are also peak/off-peak trip cross-subsidies: off-peak travellers (e.g., low income midnight shift workers, part-time workers) do not require the expensive “peaked” service of the regular workday. (To be fair, late night service is also often heavily subsidised.) 4) The rationale for federal/state funding of transit projects in suburban areas, despite inefficiency: suburbs pay a substantial chunk of taxes, and need to see some returns. If the funds didn't go through a federal level, this might not be an issue: cities could fund their own transit projects... 5) The environmental justice discussion is interesting, particularly the details of the various Bus Riders' Unions. 6) Rich drivers generate more pollution than poor drivers, both from longer trips and from lower fuel efficiency.

Keywords: transport planning, equity

In the first three chapters (the only part I've read), there were some very interesting discussion of growth management policies, equity and racial segregation in the USA.

One point I found interesting was the discussion of preferences. In general, Americans want single-family detached houses, auto-based travel, free parking and short travel times. The planning system in many ways guarantees the first two: suburbs have extremely high minimum standards for housing (low density single-family homes), and generally provide generous roads and free parking. The last aspect of preferences cannot be guaranteed due to growth and swamping of existing roads by new travel, discussed at length in the book. This is the aspect I find interesting: the system is inherently biased towards one set of preferences (housing) and limits trading off housing against travel time-if an individual prefers short travel times and is willing to accept “lower quality” dense housing in return, that option is rarely available. In other words, this minimum provision limits choices, a point that Andre Sorensen has made repeatedly in his discussions in the course I'm taking.

Downs notes that one-third of US households did not live in single-family homes in 1990, and one-third were renters (presumably with substantial overlap). He describes the provision of low-cost housing as a “trickle-down” process: since cheap new housing is prohibited, only degraded older houses are available for those who cannot afford the suburban single-family home. This process breaks down when “net housing construciton is lower than net household formation”-i.e., periods of rapid growth.

Keywords: urban planning, equity, zoning, urban politics, smart growth

Keywords: equity, gender, urban planning

Some interesting notes on racial/income equity in transit service. Apparently, transit users were only 20% minorities in 1977-but that rose to 63% by 1995! I hadn't realised that the racialisation of transport in the USA was so recent. Also, some interesting notes on US funding formulas for transit: a heavy weight on service area coverage, and little weight on ridership achieved.

Keywords: equity, transport planning, finance

Keywords: zoning, equity, urban planning

Keywords: equity, gender, urban planning

Keywords: transport planning, equity, parking

Keywords: transport planning, equity, parking

Keywords: equity, transport planning

Keywords: sociology, equity, urban economics, urban planning, urban form

detailed annotation

Keywords: urban planning, equity, transport planning, general interest, sociology, streets, pedestrian planning, accessibility, urban design

An interesting essay. Jacobs examines the schools within environmental economics, with a fairly critical eye. He discusses five classes: A. traditional (status quo); B. neoclassical I: financial incentives (tradable quotas); C. neoclassical II: financial incentives (taxes, etc.); D. neoclassical III: monetary valuation (cost/benefit analyses); and E. property rights. He looks at how they address four questions: 1. ethics of environmental objective setting (what level of environmental protection should society choose?); 2. institutions (how should this level be chosen?); 3. instruments (how should this level be achieved?); 4. distribution (how shold costs/benefits be distributed within society). He contrasts the environmental economists with his own more political school, an “environmental democracy” based on sustainability principles. Generally, he seems to be favourable to B and C, which study only instruments; he sees these as tools compatible with environmental democracy. He is less kind to D and E, which try to answer question 2; he argues that they are unlikely to achieve sustainability, due to the market's inherent tendency to discount the future. He points out many flaws in his own preference (a democratic institution to make decisions), but prefers its basis in a public debate of ethics.

Keywords: environmental economics, economics, equity

Keywords: urban planning, sociology, equity

Keywords: transport planning, equity, parking

Keywords: transport planning, equity, parking

Keywords: transport planning, equity, parking

Keywords: sociology, equity, urban economics, urban planning, urban form

Keywords: general interest, history, equity

Keywords: equity, transport planning

Keywords: equity, transport planning

Keywords: equity, transit

Keywords: equity, gender, transport planning

Keywords: congestion pricing, equity, accessibility

Keywords: congestion pricing, equity, accessibility

Transportation and land use research of the past decade has focused in large part on the question of whether manipulating land uses in the direction of “smart growth” alternatives can reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT) or otherwise improve travel behavior. Yet the notion of “manipulating” land uses implies that the alternative is somehow self-organized or market-based. This view appears to underestimate the extent to which current planning interventions in the United States-largely focused on lowering development densities, mandating ample road and parking designs, and separating land uses-impose an auto-oriented template on most new development. Rather than a market failure, the paucity of “smart growth” alternatives may be a planning failure-the result of municipal regulatory exclusion. This problem definition would shift the burden of proof for policy reform, as uncertainty in travel-behavior benefits would hardly justify the continuation of exclusionary regulations. If municipal regulations in fact constrain alternatives to low-density auto-oriented development, one would expect developers to perceive unsatisfied market interest in such development. This article studies, through a national survey (676 respondents), US developers' perceptions of the market for pedestrian- and transit-oriented development forms. Overall, respondents perceive considerable market interest in alternative development forms, but believe that there is inadequate supply of such alternatives relative to market demand. Developer-respondents attribute this gap between supply and demand principally to local government regulation. When asked how the relaxation of these regulations would affect their product, majorities of developers indicated that such liberalization woud lead them to develop in a denser and more mixed-use fashion, particularly in close-in suburban locales. Results are interpreted in favor of land-policy reform based on the expansion of choice in transportation and land use. This view contrasts with a more prevalent approach which conditions policy interventions on scientific evidence of travel-behavior modification.

An excellent article, rebutting the claims of many others in the research community. The abstract is an excellent summary of the points made in this article. References BoaCra01, EwiCer01, Cra99 and Dow92. The latter is quoted: “[T]he belief that sprawl is caused primarily by market failures is based on the false assumption that there is a freely operating land use market in US metropolitan areas. No metropolitan area has anything remotely approaching a free land use market because of local regulations adopted for parochial political, social and fiscal purposes.”

Keywords: urban planning, land use transport link, equity, zoning

Some great equity context, including the Tiebout hypothesis.

Keywords: land use transport link, equity, travel behaviour, zoning

Keywords: geography, canada, equity

Keywords: geography, equity

A very interesting read. Litman raises a number of issues associated with housing that I hadn't considered-my first reaction is to question Vancouver's downtown development patterns. Are parking requirements responsible for the tower fad, by making townhouse and four-story apartment development uneconomic for developers? On interesting bit of trivia: curb cuts reduce onstreet parking capacity. His parking management solutions are quite valuable and innovative ideas, and the studies he cites in Victoria and Mississauga are useful; I should follow up on all of his references. Of the management solutions, the two ideas I found novel were: shared parking, where apartments and businesses share spaces due to opposite peak demand times - very practical for residential downtowns; transportation management associations, where a neighbourhood organisation is formed to trade parking in a neighbourhood. I was initially convinced by his arguments about reducing developer incentive to create low-income housing, but I'm now a little skeptical; figure 12, in particular, says to me that in a scenario where 0 parking spaces are required, developers will have a huge incentive to produce high income housing, since the relative profit difference will be so much greater. Of course, this ignores the entire demand side of the equation. Overall, I think more analysis is needed to determine the real effect on developers.

Keywords: parking, urban planning, transportation demand management, equity

Keywords: transportation demand management, equity, insurance

Keywords: sociology, equity, urban planning

Keywords: equity, canada

Keywords: equity, canada

Keywords: urban planning, sociology, equity

Keywords: urban planning, equity, parking

Keywords: zoning, equity, urban economics, urban planning

Keywords: equity, transport planning

Keywords: transport planning, equity

This paper shows that road pricing can be regressive, progressive or neutral, and refutes the generalised idea that road pricing is always regressive. The potential distributional impacts of a road pricing scheme are assessed in three English towns. It is found that impacts are town specific and depend on where people live, where people work and what mode of transport they use to go to work. Initial impacts may be progressive even before any compensation scheme for losers is taken into account. When the situation before the scheme is implemented is such that majority of drivers entering the area where the scheme would operate come from households with incomes above the average, it can be expected that, once the scheme is implemented, these drivers coming from rich households will continue to cross the cordon and will be prepared to pay the charge. In such a case the overall effect will be that on average, rich people will pay the toll and poor people will not.

Keywords: congestion pricing, equity

Keywords: urban form, urban planning, equity

detailed annotation

Keywords: geographic information systems, spatial modelling, transport modelling, equity

Keywords: urban planning, equity, parking

Keywords: urban politics, equity, zoning

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, equity

Keywords: equity, transit

Keywords: transport modelling, equity

Keywords: urban planning, zoning, urban economics, equity