Per reporter: Suna Per editor: Liu Yanmei
Image source: Photogram_501625273
In the second half of the 19th century, two things invented by humans changed the city, one was that the elevator made the city grow high, and there were skyscrapers; Second, cars spread the city on the ground, and there are highways.
"The skyscraper erects the street, it frees up the space, and of course the car invades."
Are cities built for cars or for people? At the beginning of "The City in the Interview Book", the author Wang Jun bluntly threw out such a question and began to explore it step by step.
"The City in the Interview Book" (Expanded Edition), by Wang Jun, Life, Reading, and New Knowledge, 2016.05
Behind the "standard" answer, which seems to be taken for granted, there is also a series of tug-of-war between cities, roads, cars and people.
Whose city
In 1925, the French architect Le Corbusier proposed the construction of high-rise low-density cities dominated by high-speed arteries in "The City of Tomorrow" to usher in the era of automobiles. Le Corbusier believes that high-rise buildings should be developed on smaller land and large roads and viaducts should be used to meet the needs of cars.
Over the past few decades, with the rapid economic development, the number of cars in Chinese cities has increased rapidly. Since the 90s, many Chinese cities have made providing smooth passage space for motor traffic as a priority goal for road construction.
At the same time, the planning model of "big road + large residential area + large shopping center" dominated by car traffic has rapidly covered China's urbanization space. From the development trend of road area and road length, it can be found that the growth rate of road area is faster than the growth rate of road length, and the scale of urban roads is getting bigger and bigger.
Source: "The Phenomenon of Wide Roads in Chinese Cities, Its Impact and Countermeasures", Wang Zhigao
"The City in the Interview Book" believes that the wide road "condones" the development of an urban belonging to the car, which also brings a series of complex contradictions and problems. For example, the problem of high energy consumption is accompanied by problems. In 2014, PetroChina's dependence on foreign countries increased from 30.2% in 2000 to 59.5%, far above the international alert line of 50%.
Another example is the problem of high land consumption. During the interview, Wang Jun realized that the low-rise buildings in China's old cities did not have serious shading problems, so they formed a "low and dense" compact texture. However, with the development of high-rise buildings, in order to avoid serious shading problems, the building spacing must be increased, resulting in a "high and thin" loose pattern, the two sides of the road lose the continuous building interface, the street becomes a road, and the commercial opportunities on the street are reduced.
"When the road is wider, the popularity is dispersed." These are the words of Wang Jun's interview with a chief architect. At that time, the architect pointed to Guang'an Avenue on the south side of the Qianmen commercial district on the drawing and said, "This street is 70 meters wide and runs through the south city of Beijing from east to west, and as a result, the past three major commercial districts of Caishikou, Zhushikou and Ciqikou have declined." Such a wide road, so many cars whizzing by, who is shopping! ”
Wang Jun also shared the experience of the "big excavation" program in Boston, USA.
Boston once had a world-class traffic problem - because the elevated central arterial highway crossed the city center, high traffic not only led to congestion and high accident rates, but also blocked the connection between Boston's northern section and the waterfront area and downtown, limiting the ability of these areas to participate in the city's economic life. Eventually, the elevated central arterial road was demolished before it reached the end of its useful life.
The lesson of Boston's "bought" is: wherever the road is built, the car is blocked; The more you think about the car, the less the car thinks about your city.
Space scramble
A common view is that when a city prioritizes the development of vehicular roads, it inevitably squeezes the living space of pedestrians and businesses that thrive on pedestrians.
In "The Death and Life of America's Big Cities", author Jane Jacobs fiercely attacked American urban construction: "The fast lane extracts the essence of the city and greatly damages the vitality of the city." This is not a remodeling of the city, this is a ransack of the city. ”
"Interview with the City in the Book" shares the advice of Yang Baojun, then chief planner of the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design (now chief economist of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development), in 2007: From the perspective of land development, to increase the value of land, it is better to break down a large road into several small roads, increase the density of the road network, so that more neighborhoods can be served.
Relatively speaking, in urban spaces with high road network density, a large number of frontages provide simple employment opportunities, and the value and efficiency of land use are also improved. At the same time, it maintains the human scale and urban density, and maintains and develops the diversity of the city and the pedestrian system.
In June this year, the 2022 "Monitoring Report on the Density and Operation Status of Road Network in Major Cities in China" was released. As of the fourth quarter of 2021, the overall average density of the road network in 36 major cities across the country was 6.3km/km2, an increase of about 1.6% compared with the average density of 6.2km/km2 in the previous year. The road network density of the three cities of Shenzhen, Xiamen and Chengdu is above 8km/km2, which meets the national target of "8km/km2".
Source: Monitoring Report on Road Network Density and Operation Status in Major Cities in China
The "humanized" care for the livability and comfort of the city reflected in the "urban road network density" not only reflects the "people-oriented" urban design concept, but also reflects the people's yearning for a better life.
The density of the road network is high, there are more "golden horns" and "silver edges", more business opportunities, and more employment. Just as there is a saying in the real estate industry "golden horn silver edge grass belly", the road network is dense, the "golden horn" and "silver edge" are more, the "grass belly" is smaller, the value of the land will go up, and the whole city will also get more benefits.
Bus orientation
Increasing the density of the city and replacing car travel with public transport, walking and bicycles will also further extend the life of the old city.
Image source: Photogram_501049732
Interviews with Cities focuses on the changes that rapid transit (BRT) routes are making to cities.
Bogotá, Colombia, with a population of more than 7 million, built a world-class bus rapid transit system, the largest network of cycling paths in Latin America (250 kilometers), the longest pedestrian street in the world (17 kilometers), hundreds of kilometers of sidewalks leading to the poorest areas of the city, and more than 1,000 new or converted parks between 1998 and 2001; On two working days a year, private cars are prohibited from entering the city's 35,000-hectare area.
Relying on drastic traffic changes, Bogotá not only quickly removed the hat of "blocking the city", but also provided citizens with public spaces to enjoy and unprecedented travel conditions. "In Bogotá, we chose to build a city for the people, not for cars." The mayor of Bogotá at the time said.
Previously, one of the clear development goals of the National New-type Urbanization Plan (2014-2020) was that "the urban development model is scientific and reasonable", and "the intensive compact development model with high density, mixed functions and public transport orientation will become the dominant model". The "14th Five-Year Plan" New Urbanization Implementation Plan also specifically pointed out when deploying "building a livable, resilient, innovative, smart, green and humanistic city" to "build an urban road network system with reasonable gradation according to narrow roads, dense road networks and microcirculation".
This reveals the intrinsic relationship between transportation policy and urban form - only by forming a public transport orientation can the density of the city be increased, the mixed use of functions can be realized, and the intensive compact development model of "narrow roads, dense road networks, and microcirculation" can be realized.
To develop bus rapid transit, it is necessary to cover urban arterial roads in a short period of time and form a network to achieve the replacement of car transportation. Bordeaux, France, allocates two-thirds of the driving lanes of the urban arterial road system to public transportation, and one-third of the driving lanes are allocated to car traffic, ensuring the priority development and operation efficiency of public transportation with the most right of way, and reversing the dependence of citizens on car traffic in one fell swoop.
For China's cities today, with increasing urbanization rates and urban car ownership still growing, the limited road area is prioritized for the public transport system used by most people or cars for personal use. This involves the redistribution and balance of stock resources, which is still a question that needs to be answered in new urbanization.
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