Cities21

Sir Peter Hall: "The social perception of public transportation depends on the quality of the transportation. I think we may be looking to technological advances in public transportation to create new kinds of personal rapid transit. We had a big breakthrough announced only a week ago that a British system called, literally, PRT, Personal Rapid Transit, is going to be adapted for Heathrow Airport progressively over the next ten years. And when you drive your car into Heathrow to one of the parking lots, you will get your own personal vehicle and program it to go to your terminal, or vice versa. And if this is as successful as I think it will be, this could be a big breakthrough in developing new kinds of totally personalized rapid transit, which could transform our cities in ways that we can't yet see." Dec 15, 2005 at a major "Sustainable Cities" address at the National Building Museum.

Our capstone research project, the "Suburban Silver Bullet," demonstrates how these and other concepts can combine to create: no taxpayer cost, less traffic and greenhouse gas, more housing and social vibrancy, greater auto-free mobility, increased public transit revenues, increased office and residential land values, retail sales, and ability to attract employees.

Mission Statement (with definitions of industry-specific terminology)

Sound bite: "Recent national studies conclude that there is no 'silver bullet' to reduce housing costs and traffic congestion. Cities21 disagrees. We have designed a real suburban silver bullet: less traffic, more housing, no taxpayer cost. Our design uses personal monorail and advanced cellphone technology to give people alternatives to driving alone and to reclaim parking spaces for better use."

Cities21 is a loose group of professionals conspiring at the nexus of: transit villages, real-estate in-fill, workforce housing, new mobility, natural capitalism, ITS-4-TDM, high-touch, and automated transit (all are defined below). We catalyze quantum efficiency gains at major activity centers, improving twenty-first century cities. The challenges are great, but the synergies between these concepts enable viral, large-scale change.

Transit villages: Transit villages, also known as transit-oriented development (TOD), are dense, vibrant communities within an easy walk of high quality train and bus systems. Benefits include: Reduced air pollution and energy consumption, open space preservation, improved mobility for children/seniors, and decreased infrastructure costs. A Bay Area example is the Calthorpe-designed Crossings 18-acre housing project (397 housing units) adjacent to a Mountain View Caltrain station. Berkeley Professor Robert Cervero's study of rail land value impacts demonstrates more than 100% increase in land value for office parcels (25% for residential) within 1/4 mile (easy walking distance) of Caltrain commuter rail stations in mixed-use (retail, office, and housing combined) districts. Transit is a "means" to a real-estate "ends." See transitvillages.org, calthorpe.com, http://angeles.sierraclub.org/news/TransitVillages.asp.

The contribution of transit villages to a vibrant, sustainable future cannot be understated. For quantum change, dramatically larger transit villages - 70 times larger than typical transit villages - known as extended TOD, are needed. Extended TOD blankets much larger areas with a very high quality feeder/distributor transportation system, connecting with the train and bus systems, further reducing the need to drive.

Real-estate in-fill: Inner ring suburban/urban development is more efficient than outer ring development. Palo Alto is an inner ring suburb between San Francisco and San Jose. Vacaville, Gilroy, and Livermore are outer ring suburbs that penetrate into what was once the Bay Area's greenbelt (the line of demarcation between developed land and open space).

Large surface parking lots in office parks (and other major activity centers) represent an inefficient use of space as well as a major opportunity. Cars are allotted more space than people in office parks. Cars take up 325 square feet (allocating a portion of asphalt roads and parking lot landscaping to each car) versus 250 square feet per person (allocating a portion of hallways, restrooms, and reception area to each person). Employers don't want to pay rent for excess parking spaces. Real-estate developers save money by putting in fewer parking spaces. When office park parking lots can be reclaimed (in-filled) for more productive use, everyone wins. Advanced transportation schemes can "unlock" this underutilized real-estate.

Workforce Housing: Housing near and within office parks has huge potential benefits. Locating housing next to jobs will: decrease commute times and particulate/greenhouse emissions; allow workers to walk and bike to work; reduce regional pressure to grow outside of inner-ring suburbs; preserve the greenbelt; enable new, lucrative in-fill real-estate development; make office parks less deserted at night and on the weekend; permit shared parking between complimentary office and residential uses; allow land-constrained upscale cities like Palo Alto to meet their state mandated "fair share" housing element goals while protecting high-priced detached single family homes.

Cities are beginning to mandate workforce housing through housing preference policies. The Fair Housing Act permits thoughtful plans for local workforce preference housing, especially when affordable housing is included. Stanford University has helped pioneer workforce housing policy.

New Mobility: Dr. Susan Shaheen (of CCIT & PATH) defines new mobility service as "a new transportation approach that focuses on pairing clusters of smart technologies with existing transportation options to create a coordinated, intermodal transportation system that could substitute for the traditional auto."

A comprehensive, integrated mobility system is described in the Silver Bullet report. For an image, click here.

Natural Capitalism - Environmental concerns create opportunities for commercialization of new technologies. See "Natural Capitalism, Creating the Next Industrial Revolution" by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins. The stage has been set for the private sector market to bring about environmental improvements. While other sectors are financially strapped, profit-making green enterprises have no problem growing rapidly. The long-term (10 to 40 year) forecast for environmental degradation and oil shortages creates an almost limitless growth market.

ITS-4-TDM (Intelligent Transportation Systems for Transportation Demand Management) - ITS applies modern technology such as cellular, WiFi, web, and automated telephony to address transportation problems. TDM: measures taken to reduce solo commuting, including: carpooling, carsharing, flextime, guaranteed ride home, transit subsidies, parking cash out, paid parking, park & ride facilities for transit, shuttle services, scooters, and telecommuting. Stanford is the South Bay TDM leader. EPA's TDM case study database can be found here. An exhaustive guide to TDM can be found at vtpi.org.

ITS-4-TDM examples include Nextbus's "time to next bus" displays at bus stops and the Cities21 TrakRide wireless carpool assistant.

High-touch - Naisbitt's Megatrends describes the need for high-touch (personal, customized) features complimenting high-tech features. Nowhere is this more important than in designing new mobility solutions: customized solutions recognizing the delicate individual psychology of commuting. The cultural resistance to commute alternatives is also best addressed via high-touch systems: personable neighborhood "commute coordinators" and web chat boards for problem solving and venting. In addition, dense/vibrant transit villages increase a sense of community by facilitating "chance meetings" on the street and improve safety by putting more "eyes on the street."

Automated Transit - New and improved automated transit technology is under development: personal monorail (personal rapid transit), group rapid transit, automated bus rapid transit, and smart jitneys.

More mission statement vocabulary

Conspiracy: Taken from the book, The Aquarian Conspiracy, where small networks of dedicated people merrily make things better rather than growing disillusioned or apathetic. A conspiracy (collaboration) to bring about change within a stifling policy context where the experts claim there is no solution. If the solution set is required to be "in-the-box," we agree with experts' pessimism about solutions. But why limit yourself to the current box? See also, "How to Change the World - Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas," by David Bornstein.

Viral: For one example, there are more than 200 major employment centers with a total of more than 6M workers in the U.S. Should one of these be transformed, then rest will follow. A change in a single suburb can spread to transform U.S. work patterns. For a second example: "The first electronic trolley line opened in Richmond in 1888, was adopted by two dozen other major cities within a year, and by the early 1890’s was the dominant mode of intraurban transit. The rapidity of the diffusion of this innovation was enhanced by the immediate recognition of its ability to mitigate the urban transportation problems of the day." (Peter Muller) See also the book, The Tipping Point.

Quantum, as in a "quantum leap." Quantum is large, revolutionary, and paradigm-shifting. Quantum connotates a breakthrough in solving a long-standing problem that was heretofore unsolvable. Quantum is very specifically NOT incremental change. In the twenty-first century, public policy bias is accelerating in favor of incremental "solutions."

Efficiency, as in sustainable: jobs near housing, less miles driven per car, more services in your neighborhood (necessitating fewer trips outside the neighborhood), less traffic congestion, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and lower energy consumption.

Cities21 is a Palo Alto, CA 501c3 (non-profit) project of the San Francisco Foundation Community Initiative Funds Contact: cities21 at cities21 dot oh arrr gee.