CITICHAT 3/2008 - 25 January 2008
Rand Steam Laundry
Laundry Lamentations
At the end of the day what is it that makes some people care and others not give a damn? Why do some people thrill to experience examples of cultures and structures from a previous way of life whilst others see history and heritage as a stumbling block to their concept of progress? Why do we allow our lives to become so busy that in always focusing on the urgent, we forget about what is truly important?
Thousands of people a week must have driven past the Rand Steam Laundries buildings on the corner of Barry Hertzog Avenue and Napier Road without so much as a glance. With the actual laundry long since closed, some might have visited to do business with one of the small traders - blacksmiths, carpenters and furniture repairers - that operated from the site for the past 27 years. Few may have known the story behind the site and the buildings on it. Even fewer may have appreciated the sophistication of some aspects of the design and construction of the buildings to house what, in the early 1900s, was a new technology. Yet the complex encapsulated an amazing story that was part of the history of this crazy mining city. Now the buildings are gone, another example of man’s greed and of deliberate flouting the law of the land.
Charles van Onselen (“Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand 1886-1914 – ‘New Nineveh’) provides a fascinating history of the development of capitalism in Southern Africa. “The South African transition to capitalism – like that elsewhere - was fraught with contradictions and conflicts and its cities were thus capable of opening as well as closing economic avenues, and there certainly was always more than one route into or out of the working class”. One chapter that exemplifies this statement and provides amazing detail of this transition is that on the ‘AmaWasha’ – the Zulu washermen’s guild of the Witwatersrand.
The AmaWasha appeared to have emerged in the early 1870s in Natal through the lowly washermen’s caste of ‘Dhobis’ who had emigrated to Natal and started practicing their traditional profession – “the commercial washing of clothes”. Local Zulus were quick to recognise the opportunity to also earn an income from such work and even quicker to seize on the opportunity that the later discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand presented, accompanied as it was by rapid growth and services needs. By 1890, van Onselen records, there were already a couple of hundred AmaWasha, who had even adopted the ‘Dhobi’ turban, at work in the Braamfontein Spruit to the north of the mining camp. By 1896 there were over 1 200 washermen located at eight or more sites, the bulk of which appeared to have been concentrated in the Richmond area which was “by far the best developed of the sites….the owners provided eight wood and iron structures to accommodate some of the washermen and a small building in which the laundry could be safely stored overnight.” In October 1895, the washing sites were closed by health inspectors following a drought in that year that basically resulted in contamination of the work places. In 1896 a sub-committee of the Johannesburg Sanitary Board was, inevitably, appointed to examine longer-term solutions for public washing. As one would expect, the process provided an opportunity for capitalist connivance and corruption with vested interests trying to steer the process to their own interests even as far away as Witbank as well as to start mechanised processes in opposition to the labour intensive ‘AmaWasha’.
The first steam laundry was in fact founded before 1895/6 whilst the Auckland Park Steam Laundry Company was floated in June 1896 “with a registered capital of 12 500” (pounds Sterling). This was situated on the Richmond Estate, the centre of AmaWasha activities until they were forced to Witbank. There are still some rocks near the canalised stream on the site – the last exposed natural section of the Amawasha site.
The saga continued over a number of years; a return of some AmaWasha to the city, then their removal to Klipspruit, the growth of Chinese laundries and, of course, increasing technology. Of their removal to Klipspruit, van Onselen records that “the municipality was laying long-term plans to develop a permanently segregated community at Klipspruit” which would be both largely self-supporting bur possibly income generating. “The idea of segregation being paid for by the segregated held enormous appeal for white administrators. By 1906, an ironing room, a fenced in drying site and the first of one hundred specially designed concrete washtubs had been erected at Klipspruit. With blind ruthlessness and staggering cynicism the Council prepared to move the washermen for the last time – this time to an uneconomic washing site that shared its setting with the municipal sewerage works.”
History repeats itself! This time it is an aptly named corporation, Imperial, that ‘with blind ruthlessness and staggering cynicism’ has destroyed not just one of the last local examples of steam driven industry, but crushed a place where South African history converged: the struggle of poor people to earn an honest living; colonial segregation; indifference; displacement; discrimination; lack of compassion and the eventual disintegration of the AmaWasha.
So how could this happen? After all we do have good legislation in the form of the National Heritage Resources Act of 1999, the Preamble to which contains, inter alia, these fine words: “This legislation aims to promote good management of the national estate, and to enable and encourage communities to nurture and conserve their legacy so that it may be bequeathed to future generations……our heritage is unique and precious and it cannot be renewed…..It helps us to define our cultural identity and therefore lies at the heart of our spiritual well-being and has the power to build our nation……it deepens our understanding of society…….”
Well, the story appears to be that the Imperial Group, through their property company, bought the site in March 2006 specifically for the construction of a showroom. The previous owners evidently warned them that this was a heritage site; the Parktown and Westcliff Heritage Trust (PWHT), knowing the importance of the site and what it represented, applied for the site to be ‘provisionally’ protected in terms of the National Heritage Resources Act of 1999 and the Provincial Heritage Resources Agency of Gauteng (PHRAG) gave notice to that effect in the Provincial Gazette of 20 September 2006. PWHT also lodged an objection to any rezoning of the site for motor showroom purposes. A reporter who covered the purchase at the time was told by someone from Imperial that they weren’t interested in keeping the old buildings – they would demolish first and risk the fine, “It’s only R10 000.” The company’s attorneys denied that this comment had been made, stating that their clients were fully aware of the National Heritage Resources Act and that they had no intention of doing anything that would contravene the Act!
On Wednesday 9th of January this year preparations for demolition were underway, the roof sheeting was being stripped. PW&HT’s Flo Bird spoke to the responsible Imperial executive pointing out that they were acting illegally – he claimed that they had a demolition permit from the Chief Building Inspector of Johannesburg. Flo pointed out that the City does not outrank the Province in such matters and requested that the demolisher be instructed to stop work, which was done. Apparently the Johannesburg building inspector had issued a Dilapidation Notice, but he had warned Imperial that they needed a permit from the Heritage Authority (PHRAG) before they could proceed with demolition.
On Thursday 10th the demolition work started again, but this time with a difference. In Flo’s words “There was a mechanical grab smashing the buildings to pieces. Several large laundry buildings, two of the oldest on the site, already lay in small pieces. The grab hauled the masonry smashed it to the ground and then drove back and forwards crushing it. Any metal piece that survived that treatment was lifted in the air and crashed down until it crumpled. It was horrifying. Clearly the instruction was to destroy the buildings completely.”
At 3.30pm a stop order was delivered by PHRAG. At that stage there were still a number of heritage buildings left standing including the picturesque cottages at the corner of Napier and Barry Hertzog. Ignoring the stop orders from both PHRAG and the City, Imperial demolished the cottages on Sunday.
So what sanction can now be applied? I would think that there must be parts of the Companies Act that have been transgressed as well as all kinds of issues related to King 2 on Corporate Governance (can corporations take decisions that, knowingly, are against the law of the land for their own ends, as seems to be the case here?). But the main legislation would be the National Heritage Resources Act of 1999. Section 27(18) of the Act states ““no person may destroy, damage, deface, excavate, alter, remove from its original position, subdivide or change the planning status of any heritage site without a permit issued by the heritage authorities authority responsible for the protection of such site.”
Section 51 (1) (a) that any person who contravenes the above “is guilty of an offence and liable to a fine or imprisonment or both such fine and imprisonment as set out in Item 1 of the Schedule.” Item 1 of the Schedule states “a fine or imprisonment for a period not exceeding five years or to both such fine and imprisonment.” In a previous case, the fine was R300 000-00 with a five year suspended sentence!
However, the Act goes further – in terms of 51(8) a court may also order the guilty party to ‘put right’ the result of their actions or order the party “to pay a sum equivalent to the cost of making good” AND in terms of 51 (9) an order can be served on the party that no development should take place on the site for a period of ten years except for making good the damage and maintaining the cultural value of the place.
Seems to me that a seemingly deliberate and premeditated breaking of the law needs the whole book thrown at it. The previous heritage structures must be rebuilt and the story of Amawasha and the mining town they serviced must be told and portrayed so that “it may be bequeathed to future generations” – the cottages can once again house the craftshops and the site should be turned into an active place for the community. The story of the perfidy of Imperial and the punishment meted out to them in terms of legislation should also be encapsulated so that everyone becomes aware of the law and the consequences of arrogance in disregarding it. Anything less would be a travesty.
London has the Imperial War Museum, at least we could have the Imperial Rand Steam Laundry Museum!
Cheers, neil
PS. Want to help? I had this message from Flo Bird:
“Please support us in pressing for the perpretrators to be brought to justice, for the land to be frozen for development for 10 years and for the reinstatement of the heritage buildings on the Rand Steam Laundries site.
They were not marble palaces, but simple industrial buildings built of wood and iron, bricks and plaster. Even Imperial should be capable of rebuilding those.
Please go to our website: www.parktownheritage.co.za and press on the newsflash. If it doesn’t come up immediately you need to press the refresh button.
1. Please copy and paste the petition, filling in your name, and e-mail it back to us.
2. Please pass on to all people on your mailing list.
3.. If you are willing to stand on the edge of Barry Hertzog holding up a banner between 4 and 6pm on 31st January or 7th February please let Flo know – they need strong arms to support the banners.”
Friday, January 25, 2008
Friday, January 18, 2008
Streets; Walkability Citichat 18 January 2008
CITICHAT 2/2008 - 18 January 2008
‘Complete Streets’ and ‘Walkability’
Before dealing with the subject matter for this week’s Citichat, I want to voice my total disgust in regard to the wanton destruction of Rand Steam Laundries by the Imperial Group. There has already been coverage in some newspapers and on the air and I’ll provide more details when I’m in possession of all the info, but let me echo Flo Bird’s comment “What hope is there of stemming crime and violence when the people in the boardrooms flagrantly break the law, smashing heritage buildings to ensure they get what they want – a clear site?” This is one of the most flagrant cases of disregard of the law related to what was a provisionally proclaimed heritage site that I can remember and we must all ensure that the full force of the law descends on those responsible for their abhorrent actions.
As for me personally, I will never have any dealings in future with any company within this group.
I’m reproducing two more Neal Peirce articles on streets and walkability in the USA, not because I’ve run out of news on the inner city, but because I feel the messages are so apt for ourselves. Our pedestrian death figures are horrifying – in 2006 there were 15 393 road deaths of which 42% were pedestrian related, ie 6 465. This means that, in comparison to the figure Neal quotes below of a motorized vehicle hitting and killing a pedestrian or cyclist every 113 minutes in the US, it happens here every 78 minutes, and that’s just pedestrians!
‘Complete Streets’
”The cause has simmered for years-- and we’ve all felt some of it: Frustration with fast traffic that turns streets through our neighborhoods into corridors of fear. Resentment about narrow, rough or nonexistent sidewalks. A reluctance to have children cross high speed roadways walking to school. Bicyclists taking their lives into their hands when they venture onto major roads.
Now, finally, there’s an organized nationwide movement to fight the good fight for saner streets. It’s a coalition mounting a nationwide campaign for city and town roadways that include safe, quality space for pedestrians and cyclists and public transit users, accommodating their wishes just as seriously as those of car and truck drivers. It’s called, fittingly, the Complete Streets movement ( www.completestreets.org). Its members cover an amazing gambit -- from America Bikes and AARP, Smart Growth America and the American Society of Landscape Architects to Paralyzed Veterans of America. The Institute of Transportation Engineers is even on board, amazing for a profession long known as the “throughput crowd” for its pushing of maximum numbers of vehicles at maximum feasible speed through cities and villages alike.
Complete Streets “are about a right-of-way for everyone out there traveling, walking or biking,” says Barbara McCann, the movement coordinator. All users of all ages and abilities, she asserts, need to be able to move safely along and across a complete street. And, McCann adds, “safety is a huge reason.”
As well it should be: every 113 minutes across the United States, a motorized vehicle hits and kills a pedestrian or cyclist. Every eight minutes one is injured, sometimes paralyzed. Most of Europe, by contrast, has worked for years at expanding walkways and bikeways, making intersections safer and erecting physical barriers to fast city and town traffic. On a per-mile basis, a German pedestrian has only a third as much chance of being a traffic fatality as his American counterpart; a German cyclist, only half.
People tightly wed to the single passenger car concept are least likely to accept the complete streets idea. But 90 percent of us, according to a survey by the National Association of Realtors, believe that new communities should be designed so we can walk more and drive less, and that public transportation should be improved and accessible.
States and cities are getting the message. Illinois this fall passed a complete streets law requiring the state’s transportation department to include bicycling and walking facilities in all its urban-area projects. Five other states (Massachusetts, Florida, Maryland, Oregon, Rhode Island) now have some form of complete streets statute or rule on the books. More than 50 metro regions, counties or cities -- Charlotte to Johnson County (Kan.) Salt Lake City to Seattle -- have passed similar statutes. Many others are now considering them.
Chicago, for example, is moving to narrower traffic lanes, median “refuges” and curb extensions for pedestrians, as well as converting 4-lane roadways into 3 lanes with marked bike lanes.
But for “a really dramatic increase in cycling in cities,” says Tim Blumenthal, executive director of Bikes Belong, “painting stripes won’t make enough people feel safe.” Paris is creating and protecting new bike lanes with vertical 1.5-foot separation posts. On New York’s 9th Avenue, one of four lanes of traffic has been removed and parked cars moved out several feet from the sidewalk, creating a safe cycle-only corridor.
Project for Public Spaces has some of the right advice for cities: “Stop planning for speed.” “Right-size” road projects in cities and suburbs to “reconnect communities to their neighbors, a waterfront or park.” And “think of transportation as public space” -- roads, transit terminals, sidewalks, reconfigured to create pleasant environments, a true sense of place.
Finally, there’s health. News reports indicate America’s obesity epidemic “is levelling off” -- but at outrageously high and dangerous weights (and now, as we’ve just heard, diminishing the life expectancy of today’s overweight children). So what’s the best cure? Walking? An average person walking half an hour a day would lose about 13 pounds a year. Blumenthal would have us think about “two miles, two wheels” -- cycle or walk for the 41 percent of all our trips that are two miles or less.
Complete streets make the walking/cycling prospect sound far more attractive. And now the American Public Health Association is seeking to connect obesity with the increasingly worrisome climate change challenge. Trading miles behind the wheel for increased walking, cycling and public transit can trim pounds and cut greenhouse gases simultaneously. Not to mention reducing smog and car deaths and registering less heart disease, osteoporosis and depression.
“This may present the greatest public health opportunity that we’ve had in a century,” says the University of Wisconsin’s Jonathan Palz, president of the International Association for Ecology and Health.
He may be right. But we’re not likely to get there until we make our streets and public realm safer and more appealing -- the essence of the complete streets message.”
‘Walkability’
“Could it possibly be that Washington, for years bashed by politicians, its population shrinking and at one point almost bankrupt, has become a model of how the entire nation might smartly develop in the 21st century?
I never thought I’d see the day. But Christopher Leinberger, one of America’s top real estate analysts and now Brookings Institution fellow, makes a startling case for it in his just-published book, The Option of Urbanism - Investing in a New American Dream (Island Press).
Leinberger’s case isn’t about Washington’s radically improved politics and city management. Rather, it’s about walkability. It’s about dramatic reinvestment -- some $8.2 billion worth -- pouring in the city’s downtown since 1997. Complementing monumental Washington, there’s been a rush of new cinemas, theaters, quality restaurants and trendy retail stores and a wildly popular sports arena, all helped along by a downtown business district providing special security, marketing and planning.
But the success story’s not exclusively a downtown one -- the entire Washington citistate of 5.3 million people is now booming. And it’s starring especially in what Leinberger calls “walkable urbanism” -- places with the mix of destinations people want, from shops and parks and schools to pubs and entertainment, all accessible on foot.
In a sense walkable urbanism is nothing new; it was the way towns and cities were organized from the first urban settlements some 5,500 years ago into the 20th century.
But after World War II, with Americans’ rush to thousands of new suburban locations, a never-before-seen norm appeared. Leinberger calls it “drivable sub-urbanism.” And what a market smash it proved, offering Americans a sense of freedom, mobility, privacy, their own piece of turf and a yard for the kids to play. Plus plenty of jobs and profits, from autos to oil to real estate to fast food. The new form became virtually synonymous with the American Dream. Two generations of Americans knew practically nothing else.But in the 1990s the model began to lose some of its luster. Suburbia’s big parking lots and low-density zoning meant an auto for every trip. Walking and transit were impractical. Older suburbs began to decline, inducing families to drive farther and farther to new suburban rings. Thousands of malls and shopping strips were abandoned. Traffic congestion -- and Washington’s no exception -- became so severe many families were obliged to build their lives around it. Kids had to be driven everywhere. Vehicle miles driven in America shot up a stunning 226 percent from 1983 to 2001, while population increased just 22 percent.
So by the mid-1990s a significant number of Americans -- and not just the poor and minorities long-consigned to inner cities -- began to ask: Isn’t there a better way? Popular media began to shift its images of the city from crime and violence to the exciting, hip, place to be (such television shows as Seinfeld, Friends, and Sex in the City).
Urban crime rates took a deep dive. Most downtowns began a surprising revitalization, with more offices, entertainment, restaurants, and a leading edge of middle-class people (often youth and empty nesters) returning. And the ideas of walkable town and city life, spread with fervor by the architects and planners of the New Urbanism movement, gnawed at the decades-old supremacy of the suburban ideal.
None of this, Leinberger insists, means “drivable sub-urbia” will disappear any time soon: a huge weight of custom, continued consumer choice, zoning and the sheer vastness of today’s spread-out suburbia assure it will remain dominant for years to come. Nor will cities’ problems, from poverty to schools, disappear soon.
But walkable urbanism has demographics going for it. The share of U.S. families with children at home has been declining sharply; the largest household growth in the decades ahead will be empty nesters, never-nesters and singles, many likely to look to cities and their excitement. And cities, competing, will likely keep heeding advice to lure creative young professionals; in fact those that don’t offer true walkable urbanism, Leinberger suggests, are “probably destined” to lose out economically.
In the 1980s the Washington region had two highly walkable places-- Georgetown and Old Town Alexandria. Today, Leinberger calculates, it has 17 highly walkable, beckoning urban centers, with at least five more emerging -- the most of any U.S. metropolis.
Significantly, 16 of Washington’s walkable centers have subway stops; the modern Metro system, begin in the 1970s, has transformed the region as communities -- Arlington County, Va. is the star -- have consciously planned dense, multi-use development around the stops.
But Washington started its Metro when generous federal aid still flowed. Denver’s doing it the harder way, with a $4.7 billion light rail system that’s 80 percent financed by local taxpayers. But the Denver region will end up with 119 miles of track, many walkable centers, and a burnished reputation. In the process it, too, is setting a national model.”
As I said last week, we are standing at a point of time where our Joburg Inner City streets are about to undergo substantial change. That change must not be merely cosmetic – replacing old surfaces with new, old street furniture with new, old street sings with new - that will be a massive wasted opportunity. The urban designers must look at how every single street works (or doesn’t) and should have, at the forefront of their thinking, the concepts that are outlined in these articles.
Ciao, neil
‘Complete Streets’ and ‘Walkability’
Before dealing with the subject matter for this week’s Citichat, I want to voice my total disgust in regard to the wanton destruction of Rand Steam Laundries by the Imperial Group. There has already been coverage in some newspapers and on the air and I’ll provide more details when I’m in possession of all the info, but let me echo Flo Bird’s comment “What hope is there of stemming crime and violence when the people in the boardrooms flagrantly break the law, smashing heritage buildings to ensure they get what they want – a clear site?” This is one of the most flagrant cases of disregard of the law related to what was a provisionally proclaimed heritage site that I can remember and we must all ensure that the full force of the law descends on those responsible for their abhorrent actions.
As for me personally, I will never have any dealings in future with any company within this group.
I’m reproducing two more Neal Peirce articles on streets and walkability in the USA, not because I’ve run out of news on the inner city, but because I feel the messages are so apt for ourselves. Our pedestrian death figures are horrifying – in 2006 there were 15 393 road deaths of which 42% were pedestrian related, ie 6 465. This means that, in comparison to the figure Neal quotes below of a motorized vehicle hitting and killing a pedestrian or cyclist every 113 minutes in the US, it happens here every 78 minutes, and that’s just pedestrians!
‘Complete Streets’
”The cause has simmered for years-- and we’ve all felt some of it: Frustration with fast traffic that turns streets through our neighborhoods into corridors of fear. Resentment about narrow, rough or nonexistent sidewalks. A reluctance to have children cross high speed roadways walking to school. Bicyclists taking their lives into their hands when they venture onto major roads.
Now, finally, there’s an organized nationwide movement to fight the good fight for saner streets. It’s a coalition mounting a nationwide campaign for city and town roadways that include safe, quality space for pedestrians and cyclists and public transit users, accommodating their wishes just as seriously as those of car and truck drivers. It’s called, fittingly, the Complete Streets movement ( www.completestreets.org). Its members cover an amazing gambit -- from America Bikes and AARP, Smart Growth America and the American Society of Landscape Architects to Paralyzed Veterans of America. The Institute of Transportation Engineers is even on board, amazing for a profession long known as the “throughput crowd” for its pushing of maximum numbers of vehicles at maximum feasible speed through cities and villages alike.
Complete Streets “are about a right-of-way for everyone out there traveling, walking or biking,” says Barbara McCann, the movement coordinator. All users of all ages and abilities, she asserts, need to be able to move safely along and across a complete street. And, McCann adds, “safety is a huge reason.”
As well it should be: every 113 minutes across the United States, a motorized vehicle hits and kills a pedestrian or cyclist. Every eight minutes one is injured, sometimes paralyzed. Most of Europe, by contrast, has worked for years at expanding walkways and bikeways, making intersections safer and erecting physical barriers to fast city and town traffic. On a per-mile basis, a German pedestrian has only a third as much chance of being a traffic fatality as his American counterpart; a German cyclist, only half.
People tightly wed to the single passenger car concept are least likely to accept the complete streets idea. But 90 percent of us, according to a survey by the National Association of Realtors, believe that new communities should be designed so we can walk more and drive less, and that public transportation should be improved and accessible.
States and cities are getting the message. Illinois this fall passed a complete streets law requiring the state’s transportation department to include bicycling and walking facilities in all its urban-area projects. Five other states (Massachusetts, Florida, Maryland, Oregon, Rhode Island) now have some form of complete streets statute or rule on the books. More than 50 metro regions, counties or cities -- Charlotte to Johnson County (Kan.) Salt Lake City to Seattle -- have passed similar statutes. Many others are now considering them.
Chicago, for example, is moving to narrower traffic lanes, median “refuges” and curb extensions for pedestrians, as well as converting 4-lane roadways into 3 lanes with marked bike lanes.
But for “a really dramatic increase in cycling in cities,” says Tim Blumenthal, executive director of Bikes Belong, “painting stripes won’t make enough people feel safe.” Paris is creating and protecting new bike lanes with vertical 1.5-foot separation posts. On New York’s 9th Avenue, one of four lanes of traffic has been removed and parked cars moved out several feet from the sidewalk, creating a safe cycle-only corridor.
Project for Public Spaces has some of the right advice for cities: “Stop planning for speed.” “Right-size” road projects in cities and suburbs to “reconnect communities to their neighbors, a waterfront or park.” And “think of transportation as public space” -- roads, transit terminals, sidewalks, reconfigured to create pleasant environments, a true sense of place.
Finally, there’s health. News reports indicate America’s obesity epidemic “is levelling off” -- but at outrageously high and dangerous weights (and now, as we’ve just heard, diminishing the life expectancy of today’s overweight children). So what’s the best cure? Walking? An average person walking half an hour a day would lose about 13 pounds a year. Blumenthal would have us think about “two miles, two wheels” -- cycle or walk for the 41 percent of all our trips that are two miles or less.
Complete streets make the walking/cycling prospect sound far more attractive. And now the American Public Health Association is seeking to connect obesity with the increasingly worrisome climate change challenge. Trading miles behind the wheel for increased walking, cycling and public transit can trim pounds and cut greenhouse gases simultaneously. Not to mention reducing smog and car deaths and registering less heart disease, osteoporosis and depression.
“This may present the greatest public health opportunity that we’ve had in a century,” says the University of Wisconsin’s Jonathan Palz, president of the International Association for Ecology and Health.
He may be right. But we’re not likely to get there until we make our streets and public realm safer and more appealing -- the essence of the complete streets message.”
‘Walkability’
“Could it possibly be that Washington, for years bashed by politicians, its population shrinking and at one point almost bankrupt, has become a model of how the entire nation might smartly develop in the 21st century?
I never thought I’d see the day. But Christopher Leinberger, one of America’s top real estate analysts and now Brookings Institution fellow, makes a startling case for it in his just-published book, The Option of Urbanism - Investing in a New American Dream (Island Press).
Leinberger’s case isn’t about Washington’s radically improved politics and city management. Rather, it’s about walkability. It’s about dramatic reinvestment -- some $8.2 billion worth -- pouring in the city’s downtown since 1997. Complementing monumental Washington, there’s been a rush of new cinemas, theaters, quality restaurants and trendy retail stores and a wildly popular sports arena, all helped along by a downtown business district providing special security, marketing and planning.
But the success story’s not exclusively a downtown one -- the entire Washington citistate of 5.3 million people is now booming. And it’s starring especially in what Leinberger calls “walkable urbanism” -- places with the mix of destinations people want, from shops and parks and schools to pubs and entertainment, all accessible on foot.
In a sense walkable urbanism is nothing new; it was the way towns and cities were organized from the first urban settlements some 5,500 years ago into the 20th century.
But after World War II, with Americans’ rush to thousands of new suburban locations, a never-before-seen norm appeared. Leinberger calls it “drivable sub-urbanism.” And what a market smash it proved, offering Americans a sense of freedom, mobility, privacy, their own piece of turf and a yard for the kids to play. Plus plenty of jobs and profits, from autos to oil to real estate to fast food. The new form became virtually synonymous with the American Dream. Two generations of Americans knew practically nothing else.But in the 1990s the model began to lose some of its luster. Suburbia’s big parking lots and low-density zoning meant an auto for every trip. Walking and transit were impractical. Older suburbs began to decline, inducing families to drive farther and farther to new suburban rings. Thousands of malls and shopping strips were abandoned. Traffic congestion -- and Washington’s no exception -- became so severe many families were obliged to build their lives around it. Kids had to be driven everywhere. Vehicle miles driven in America shot up a stunning 226 percent from 1983 to 2001, while population increased just 22 percent.
So by the mid-1990s a significant number of Americans -- and not just the poor and minorities long-consigned to inner cities -- began to ask: Isn’t there a better way? Popular media began to shift its images of the city from crime and violence to the exciting, hip, place to be (such television shows as Seinfeld, Friends, and Sex in the City).
Urban crime rates took a deep dive. Most downtowns began a surprising revitalization, with more offices, entertainment, restaurants, and a leading edge of middle-class people (often youth and empty nesters) returning. And the ideas of walkable town and city life, spread with fervor by the architects and planners of the New Urbanism movement, gnawed at the decades-old supremacy of the suburban ideal.
None of this, Leinberger insists, means “drivable sub-urbia” will disappear any time soon: a huge weight of custom, continued consumer choice, zoning and the sheer vastness of today’s spread-out suburbia assure it will remain dominant for years to come. Nor will cities’ problems, from poverty to schools, disappear soon.
But walkable urbanism has demographics going for it. The share of U.S. families with children at home has been declining sharply; the largest household growth in the decades ahead will be empty nesters, never-nesters and singles, many likely to look to cities and their excitement. And cities, competing, will likely keep heeding advice to lure creative young professionals; in fact those that don’t offer true walkable urbanism, Leinberger suggests, are “probably destined” to lose out economically.
In the 1980s the Washington region had two highly walkable places-- Georgetown and Old Town Alexandria. Today, Leinberger calculates, it has 17 highly walkable, beckoning urban centers, with at least five more emerging -- the most of any U.S. metropolis.
Significantly, 16 of Washington’s walkable centers have subway stops; the modern Metro system, begin in the 1970s, has transformed the region as communities -- Arlington County, Va. is the star -- have consciously planned dense, multi-use development around the stops.
But Washington started its Metro when generous federal aid still flowed. Denver’s doing it the harder way, with a $4.7 billion light rail system that’s 80 percent financed by local taxpayers. But the Denver region will end up with 119 miles of track, many walkable centers, and a burnished reputation. In the process it, too, is setting a national model.”
As I said last week, we are standing at a point of time where our Joburg Inner City streets are about to undergo substantial change. That change must not be merely cosmetic – replacing old surfaces with new, old street furniture with new, old street sings with new - that will be a massive wasted opportunity. The urban designers must look at how every single street works (or doesn’t) and should have, at the forefront of their thinking, the concepts that are outlined in these articles.
Ciao, neil
Friday, January 11, 2008
Vision Zero; Traffic Safety Citichat 11 January 2008
CITICHAT 1/2008 - 11 January 2008
'Vision Zero’
Many years ago, an acquaintance who lived in Brussels was telling me that his wife, a senior employee in the international division of an American airline company (now closed down), was all excited about a special party the airline had planned. Turns out that the occasion was to celebrate the fact that the airline had reduced their annual baggage losses to an all-time low - only one million pieces! I was reminded of his story on seeing the Star’s headlines on Monday – “Take a bow, SA motorists”. Their effusive congratulations were due to the fact that in December “263 fewer people died on the nation’s roads compared to the same period last year…..the number of fatalities went down from 1 465 in December 2006 to 1 202… a decrease of 18%”.Without in any way derogating from the efforts of the authorities, some of whom clearly sacrificed a great deal of personal time over the Festive Season, 1 200 deaths in a month, any month, is 1 200 deaths too many. As someone subsequently wrote to the Star “Until police exercise a visible presence right through the year and the motoring public’s attitude changes to slower and more defensive driving, with no alcohol or substance abuse, we will never decrease our shameful statistics.” He went on to quote Australia as a model, “where no one dares exceed the speed limit due to affective policing and a saner, more responsible attitude by the public – Australia has a miniscule 300 deaths a year – and there is still consternation.”
Compared to Australia’s 300 deaths per annum in accidents amongst a population of 22 million; the USA has 42 000 per year with a population of 300 million; whilst we have 26 000 (2006 figures) and a population of 46 million!
So what’s this got to do with cities?
Towards the end of last year I received a number of articles from Neal Peirce whose writing I have quoted from or included previously from time to time in Citichat. He is one of the Washington Post Writers Group. Here is the first of two articles that I believe are just so appropriate for where we are at this point in time that I wanted to share them with you. Appropriate because the Inner City, and in the fact the whole Metro, will progressively be experiencing major changes to its roadways and footways through projects I outlined last year; ‘Rea Vaya’ (the Bus Rapid Transport System – BRT), the Gautrain and the upgrading of the inner city streets. These provide a once in a lifetime opportunity for roadways and footways to be seriously ‘re-invented’ and not just end up as cosmetic surgery. Please let’s not spend our money in merely changing bad pavement surfacing for good, but let’s seriously look at their design and use (especially where informal traders are permitted) and the public’s safety needs. Otherwise we are just throwing away our money!
‘Vision Zero’
“Now zeroing out all traffic fatalities must become an explicit U.S. and worldwide goal. Otherwise we have no prospect of taming the appalling roadway death toll -- 42,000 lives lost yearly in the United States, close to 1.2 million worldwide.
That’s the message of Dr. Mark Rosenberg, founder and former director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
My first reaction was skepticism when I heard Rosenberg make the case at a Global Urban Summit in Italy this summer. But he makes a compelling comparison to global eradication of smallpox -- a stunning public health success. The know-how for a cure -- the vaccine -- had been known for decades, but it took a world-wide commitment to finally control it.
Traffic deaths, Rosenberg insists, constitute an epidemic we can prevent. Sweden has succeeded, driving its yearly toll down to 440, lowest since World War II. Annual traffic-related deaths of children, once 118, sank to 11 at last count.
How did the Swedes do it? Tough seat belt and helmet laws, to be sure. But they’ve also begun to remake their roadways. Red lights at intersections (which encourage drivers to accelerate dangerously to “beat the light”) are being replaced with traffic circles. Four-foot high barriers of lightweight but tough mylar are being installed down the center of roadways to prevent head-on collisions, and as side barriers at critical locations. On local streets, narrowed roadways and speed bumps, plus raised pedestrian crosswalks, limit speeds to a generally non-lethal 20 miles an hour.
Britain, New Zealand and the Netherlands are also registering major success with safety redesign and tough roadway rules. New Zealand cut its death rate by 50 percent in 10 years. But in the United States, we’re “stuck,” notes Rosenberg, at 42,000 to 43,000 deaths a year, adding:
“If those 42,000 deaths came from air accidents, air traffic would come to a screaming halt, all airports closed until we fixed the problem. But because our staggering numbers of road deaths come in ones and twos, they don’t get attention. Fatalism is our biggest enemy.”
Across the world, says Rosenberg, road injuries are likely to double by 2020 and could well total 100 million by 2050. The big reason: rapid motorization of India and China, indeed the entire developing world (the capitalistic dream of every automaker from General Motors to Toyota).
Cars and trucks are especially lethal in developing countries as they accelerate on roadways filled with pedestrians, cyclists, jitneys and sometimes farm animals and hand-drawn wagons.
Without the protection of riding in one’s own vehicle (our “steel cages,” Rosenberg notes), vast majorities of children and adults in such countries face high danger of direct and deadly vehicle impact. In Vietnam, for example, there are almost 3,000 fatalities for every 10,000 crashes.
Indeed, the World Health Organization (WHO) projects that highway deaths may well pass global death tolls from HIV-AIDS in the next two decades. And the death toll doesn’t include serious injuries, which WHO estimates as high as 50 million annually, many resulting in lifelong paralysis and permanent disability.
I asked Rosenberg if Americans have any stake in the developing world’s traffic dangers. A “big one,” he replied, noting that U.S. business people (engineers and CEOs), soldiers, students, all travel there. Plus, he insists, we could play a huge humanitarian role with our resources and knowledge.
Some developing world cities -- Bogota, Colombia, for example -- have shown it’s possible to cut roadway accidents dramatically by rigorous crackdowns on reckless or drunk driving and improved street layouts.
But if developing nations were helped to build their new roads, and remade old ones using technologies like Sweden’s traffic dividers, literally millions of lives could be saved, tens of millions of frightening injuries avoided.
Rosenberg, a former U.S. assistant surgeon general and now executive director of the Task Force for Child Survival and Development, is making a life cause, helping create a world network to spread the “Vision Zero” concept.
And, he notes, there’s been lots of international action since the United Nations General Assembly first debated the issue in 2004. A UN Road Safety Collaboration was brought together by WHO. The World Bank is mobilizing resources to help developing countries in particular. George Robertson of Britain, a former Secretary General of NATO, chairs a new Commission on Global Road Safety (which Rosenberg leads). There’s now a push for a 2009 UN Ministerial Conference on road safety -- a first-ever meeting of cabinet level officials from both developing and developed countries to set a global strategy.
“A hundred million lives are at stake,” says Rosenberg. “With ‘Vision Zero” we have a chance to avoid an unimaginable disaster. It’s hard to walk away from it.”
All the very best for 2008, regards, neil
'Vision Zero’
Many years ago, an acquaintance who lived in Brussels was telling me that his wife, a senior employee in the international division of an American airline company (now closed down), was all excited about a special party the airline had planned. Turns out that the occasion was to celebrate the fact that the airline had reduced their annual baggage losses to an all-time low - only one million pieces! I was reminded of his story on seeing the Star’s headlines on Monday – “Take a bow, SA motorists”. Their effusive congratulations were due to the fact that in December “263 fewer people died on the nation’s roads compared to the same period last year…..the number of fatalities went down from 1 465 in December 2006 to 1 202… a decrease of 18%”.Without in any way derogating from the efforts of the authorities, some of whom clearly sacrificed a great deal of personal time over the Festive Season, 1 200 deaths in a month, any month, is 1 200 deaths too many. As someone subsequently wrote to the Star “Until police exercise a visible presence right through the year and the motoring public’s attitude changes to slower and more defensive driving, with no alcohol or substance abuse, we will never decrease our shameful statistics.” He went on to quote Australia as a model, “where no one dares exceed the speed limit due to affective policing and a saner, more responsible attitude by the public – Australia has a miniscule 300 deaths a year – and there is still consternation.”
Compared to Australia’s 300 deaths per annum in accidents amongst a population of 22 million; the USA has 42 000 per year with a population of 300 million; whilst we have 26 000 (2006 figures) and a population of 46 million!
So what’s this got to do with cities?
Towards the end of last year I received a number of articles from Neal Peirce whose writing I have quoted from or included previously from time to time in Citichat. He is one of the Washington Post Writers Group. Here is the first of two articles that I believe are just so appropriate for where we are at this point in time that I wanted to share them with you. Appropriate because the Inner City, and in the fact the whole Metro, will progressively be experiencing major changes to its roadways and footways through projects I outlined last year; ‘Rea Vaya’ (the Bus Rapid Transport System – BRT), the Gautrain and the upgrading of the inner city streets. These provide a once in a lifetime opportunity for roadways and footways to be seriously ‘re-invented’ and not just end up as cosmetic surgery. Please let’s not spend our money in merely changing bad pavement surfacing for good, but let’s seriously look at their design and use (especially where informal traders are permitted) and the public’s safety needs. Otherwise we are just throwing away our money!
‘Vision Zero’
“Now zeroing out all traffic fatalities must become an explicit U.S. and worldwide goal. Otherwise we have no prospect of taming the appalling roadway death toll -- 42,000 lives lost yearly in the United States, close to 1.2 million worldwide.
That’s the message of Dr. Mark Rosenberg, founder and former director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
My first reaction was skepticism when I heard Rosenberg make the case at a Global Urban Summit in Italy this summer. But he makes a compelling comparison to global eradication of smallpox -- a stunning public health success. The know-how for a cure -- the vaccine -- had been known for decades, but it took a world-wide commitment to finally control it.
Traffic deaths, Rosenberg insists, constitute an epidemic we can prevent. Sweden has succeeded, driving its yearly toll down to 440, lowest since World War II. Annual traffic-related deaths of children, once 118, sank to 11 at last count.
How did the Swedes do it? Tough seat belt and helmet laws, to be sure. But they’ve also begun to remake their roadways. Red lights at intersections (which encourage drivers to accelerate dangerously to “beat the light”) are being replaced with traffic circles. Four-foot high barriers of lightweight but tough mylar are being installed down the center of roadways to prevent head-on collisions, and as side barriers at critical locations. On local streets, narrowed roadways and speed bumps, plus raised pedestrian crosswalks, limit speeds to a generally non-lethal 20 miles an hour.
Britain, New Zealand and the Netherlands are also registering major success with safety redesign and tough roadway rules. New Zealand cut its death rate by 50 percent in 10 years. But in the United States, we’re “stuck,” notes Rosenberg, at 42,000 to 43,000 deaths a year, adding:
“If those 42,000 deaths came from air accidents, air traffic would come to a screaming halt, all airports closed until we fixed the problem. But because our staggering numbers of road deaths come in ones and twos, they don’t get attention. Fatalism is our biggest enemy.”
Across the world, says Rosenberg, road injuries are likely to double by 2020 and could well total 100 million by 2050. The big reason: rapid motorization of India and China, indeed the entire developing world (the capitalistic dream of every automaker from General Motors to Toyota).
Cars and trucks are especially lethal in developing countries as they accelerate on roadways filled with pedestrians, cyclists, jitneys and sometimes farm animals and hand-drawn wagons.
Without the protection of riding in one’s own vehicle (our “steel cages,” Rosenberg notes), vast majorities of children and adults in such countries face high danger of direct and deadly vehicle impact. In Vietnam, for example, there are almost 3,000 fatalities for every 10,000 crashes.
Indeed, the World Health Organization (WHO) projects that highway deaths may well pass global death tolls from HIV-AIDS in the next two decades. And the death toll doesn’t include serious injuries, which WHO estimates as high as 50 million annually, many resulting in lifelong paralysis and permanent disability.
I asked Rosenberg if Americans have any stake in the developing world’s traffic dangers. A “big one,” he replied, noting that U.S. business people (engineers and CEOs), soldiers, students, all travel there. Plus, he insists, we could play a huge humanitarian role with our resources and knowledge.
Some developing world cities -- Bogota, Colombia, for example -- have shown it’s possible to cut roadway accidents dramatically by rigorous crackdowns on reckless or drunk driving and improved street layouts.
But if developing nations were helped to build their new roads, and remade old ones using technologies like Sweden’s traffic dividers, literally millions of lives could be saved, tens of millions of frightening injuries avoided.
Rosenberg, a former U.S. assistant surgeon general and now executive director of the Task Force for Child Survival and Development, is making a life cause, helping create a world network to spread the “Vision Zero” concept.
And, he notes, there’s been lots of international action since the United Nations General Assembly first debated the issue in 2004. A UN Road Safety Collaboration was brought together by WHO. The World Bank is mobilizing resources to help developing countries in particular. George Robertson of Britain, a former Secretary General of NATO, chairs a new Commission on Global Road Safety (which Rosenberg leads). There’s now a push for a 2009 UN Ministerial Conference on road safety -- a first-ever meeting of cabinet level officials from both developing and developed countries to set a global strategy.
“A hundred million lives are at stake,” says Rosenberg. “With ‘Vision Zero” we have a chance to avoid an unimaginable disaster. It’s hard to walk away from it.”
All the very best for 2008, regards, neil
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
