Explosive Growth in Milton Leaves Downtown Behind

[AlchemisTO]

Interesting discussion we have here, Tdot

Couldn't sprawl be seen in the same light as your slum scenerio, the only difference being the step up in affluence and accompanying organizational sophistication?

Slums are unplanned, while subdivisions with their segregated land uses and complicated surveywork could only be the product of extensive planning. I think it's pretty funny and ironic that the role of planners today is to create neighbourhoods that approximate the liveliness and vibrancy of the least planned neighbourhoods of the world. I always get a chuckle out of this.

The other irony is that although suburban sprawl is more sophisticated in its organization, it inevitably deteriorates over time while the unorganized chaos of a third world slum leads to the foundation of a stable neihgbourhood.

Also, North American cities might not turn out to be the planning special cases we assume. What I mean is that the form of cities around the world, local geographic constraints aside, may for the most part be converging regardless of planning. The differences now may be temporary in nature resulting from the relative size and affluence of a city at the time when revolutionary technological changes occur

This is the argument put forth by Robert Bruegeman in his book Sprawl, but the book disingenuously hides behind density statistics that give Phoenix the same population density as greater Paris.

If sprawl is a product of affluence and the specific time when upward mobility occurred in the general population, why is Spain, an affluent country with large tracts of arid land home to some of the most densely populated urban cities on the planet while a country like Poland, which is noticeably poorer and enjoys fertile farmland building sprawl? Why do Italians have one of the highest rates of car ownership and live in single family houses in their mountainous country while richer Germans live in apartment houses? Why does a country as rich as Switzerland have the highest per capita rail rideship in the world? I am not yet convinced that affluence trends to sprawl.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Alch:

Slums are unplanned, while subdivisions with their segregated land uses and complicated surveywork could only be the product of extensive planning. I think it's pretty funny and ironic that the role of planners today is to create neighbourhoods that approximate the liveliness and vibrancy of the least planned neighbourhoods of the world. I always get a chuckle out of this.

One also has to question whether the issue is planning, or the need to hang onto "the plan" at all cost, regardless of changes in need and context. Don't forget that the state of planning and non-planning could very well be dialectical - whereby one start off at either state, and as time passes the shortcomings of either approach becomes clear, resulting in the need for the opposite, so on and so forth. So to take the favelas as an example, the locale could very well evolve to a point where infrastructural, safety and other needs will result in some sort of "plan" to address these deficiences; in time, the result of such planning will be taken for granted and used for further uplanned changes, etc.

AoD

 

[Admiral Beez]

Re: milton

I personally can't stand the crammed-in subdivisions that offer none of the privacy of rural living, and none of the walkable benefits of city living... but maybe I'm the exception?

I'm with you there Maxi. I've lived in the 'burbs and downtown, and I'll take my Cabbagetown semi anyday.