Archinect - News

Oslo's city center goes (almost) car-free

2019-07-11T07:30:00-04:00

[Oslo] has just phased out the last on-street parking spaces in the city centre, giving an edge to transit, pedestrians and cyclists without banning cars. The initiative included incentives for cyclists such as new bike lanes, including better lighting and snow removal, along with subsidies for electric bikes and cargo cycles. Council also expanded transit services and lowered fares.

London, Berlin, Paris, Toronto, and an increasing number of cities are aiming to reduce traffic congestion, polluted air, and valuable urban space occupied by parked cars through policy changes that promote walkability, pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly (and in certain cases, car-light or even car-free) city centers, and an overall improved quality of life.

Oslo became a closely monitored model of a hybrid approach: after the proposal of a complete ban of cars in the capital's center was met with fierce opposition from business owners, who feared decreased commerce, the city decided to close off only certain streets to motor traffic but replace the more than 700 downtown parking spots with bike lanes, greenery, and pedestrian-oriented infrastructure.

"Cities, like Oslo, have been built for cars for several decades, and it’s about time we change it," Hanne Marcussen, Oslo’s vice mayor of urban development, told Fast Company. “I think it is important that we all think about what kind o...

John Margolies elevated roadside attractions to high art with his photography, now digitized through the Library of Congress

2019-05-28T13:47:00-04:00

There are many names associated with the documentation of American fringe culture during the transformative middle of the 20th century, among them Johnny Cash, Hunter S. Thompson and even architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. But one of its principal photographers - whose images may be significantly more well known than the name behind them - is John Margolies, the man behind nearly 11,000 photos of American roadside attractions taken throughout the 1970s, as well as several books on the subject.

Star Lite Outdoor Theater, Route 81-B, Fargo, North Dakota.

Without a touch of irony or derision, Margolies found inspiration in what other critics readily dismissed as "low-brow" and "tasteless." As the New York Times once profiled him, Margolies made a career out of "scouring back roads for those vanishing emblems of midcentury enterprise, which were already imperiled by air travel, interstates and big-box sprawl."

Christie's Restaurant sign, cowboy shrimp, Houston, Texas.

The...

America is building more for cars than people

2017-09-18T19:10:00-04:00

It’s hard to escape the irony that the U.S., which will need something like 43 million new housing units to keep up with population growth in the next 35 years, is using space to build apartment-size garages, even as trends in ride-sharing and self-driving cars cast a measure of uncertainty on American car culture.

Despite housing shortages and rent increases, 24% of the new homes completed in 2015 in the US included a garage for 3 or more vehicles. Since 1992, when the census started tracking this, more 3-car garages than 1-bedroom apartments have been built. With the ever-increasing need for housing, and uncertain future of car ownership, these large garages could be transformed into living or working spaces.

So-called "parking podiums" are aesthetically ruining downtown Los Angeles

2017-04-18T13:58:00-04:00

As L.A. pats itself on the back for its freshly angular skyline, a new architectural trend — enabled by another city ordinance — threatens to turn the beating heart of modern Los Angeles into a cold, lifeless and unwalkable place.

This excellent piece by the aptly named Steven Sharp delves into the uglification of downtown Los Angeles via the "parking podium," wherein large buildings dedicate their first few floors to a parking garage to meet code requirements for parking, thereby plunging the pedestrian realm back into an unwelcome "City of Quartz" vibe. Putting the parking in the first few floors is cheaper than digging underground or creating surface lots, but honestly: ugh!

Developing flexible parking garages for a rideshare-dependent LA

2017-04-18T13:37:00-04:00

The strategy reflects a consensus among some developers and planners that California’s vaunted car culture is inevitably going to run out of gas...[Andy] Cohen, co-chief executive of Gensler, predicts car ownership will peak around 2020 and then start to decline, with more Americans relying on some form of ride-sharing than their own vehicles by 2025. That means cars gradually would disappear from home garages, curbs and parking structures, freeing up acre upon acre of real estate for new uses.

Some developers are already planning for a not-so-far-off future Los Angeles where more people primarily rely on ridesharing (including from autonomous vehicles) than driving their own car, particularly in the form of parking garages that can be redesigned for other uses like commercial spaces or live/work units.

“...despite what some believe is the inevitability of a transportation revolution, many builders are reluctant to pay for flexibility until changes in driving habits are more pronounced, said Los Angeles real estate attorney Justin Thompson of Nixon Peabody. A lot of developers may think, ‘Well, that’s going to be on the back burner for a while,’ Thompson said, ‘but the progressive developers are going to factor this in.’”

No more personal cars will be allowed in Madrid's city center

2017-01-10T19:03:00-05:00

Madrid's mayor, Manuela Carmena, is serious about kicking personal cars off the road in the city center. On a November 5 show on Spanish radio networkCadena Ser, she confirmed that Madrid's main avenue, the Gran Vía, will only allow access to bikes, buses, and taxis before she leaves office in May 2019, as noted by CityLab.

Are people in love with not having to drive to dense urban locales? (Answer: for the most part, yes.) Following the lead of numerous cities that are seeking either to reduce car traffic or obliterate it altogether, Madrid's mayor actually outlawed personal vehicles from the city's main thoroughfare during the crucial days before Christmas (and later discovered that merchant profits were up over the previous year).

The latest updates in global car culture:

Driverless cars hit the streets of Milton Keynes

2016-10-11T20:49:00-04:00

Driverless cars will trundle around the UK in their first public trials today. The demonstration of the autonomous electric vehicles is going to take place on the pavements of Milton Keynes. These tests will be the culmination of an 18-month research project which involved virtually mapping the town and updating regulations for driverless vehicles.

For the latest on advances in self-driving cars:

The Netherlands moves closer to leaving gas and diesel cars in the dust

2016-04-19T18:47:00-04:00

The parliament of The Netherlands has passed a motion which would require that all new cars sold by 2025 will have to be electrified in some way [...] The Dutch government hasn't yet banned gas and diesel-powered cars, however, and the motion does allow for hybrid cars to be sold beyond 2025. [...] Although localized governments have sought to ban public cars from urban streets in a number of European cities, the Dutch Labor Party's motion is by far the most aggressive campaign

Related on Archinect:

Money, gas and death: the insanity of America's car worship

2016-04-13T20:24:00-04:00

Cars conquered the daily culture of American life back when top hats and child labor were in vogue, and well ahead of such other innovations as radio, plastic, refrigerators, the electrical grid, and women’s suffrage. A big part of why they’ve stuck around is that they are the epitome of convenience...Convenience (some might call it freedom) is not a selling point to be easily dismissed [...] In almost every way imaginable, the car, as it is deployed and used today, is insane.

Related on Archinect:

Is Tesla having its "iPhone moment" with the launch of the Model 3?

2016-04-13T12:50:00-04:00

On March 31, [Elon Musk's] Tesla Motors unveiled its long-promised Model 3, a $35,000 electric car that will go 215 miles per charge. The market response suggests to some the potential as a category killer, not just in electric vehicles, but mainstream cars in general: in the week since, more than 325,000 Model 3s have been pre-ordered by people putting down $1,000 per reservation, the company said April 7. Even deep Tesla skeptics call this demand unprecedented.

For more on the auto industry and car culture:

Lake Flato Architects splits reservation cost for Tesla Model 3 with employees

2016-03-23T12:39:00-04:00

San Antonio-based Architecture firm Lake Flato announced that it took upon itself to offer to its employees the opportunity split the $1,000 cost of the reservation deposit for the Tesla Model 3. "As our Teslas and TSLA have been very good to us for the last 3+ years, we felt that it would be a great time to contribute more broadly to the adoption of sustainable transport." -Lake Flato Partner

Health care, a decent salary, and a pretty good deal on one of the globe's most environmentally friendly (and svelte-looking) automobiles: Lake Flato Architects is setting itself apart in the benefits department by offering to go in on the deposit for a new Tesla with its employees. No word on who's called shotgun yet.

What else is happening with Tesla? Well, all of this:

Is America actually shifting away from its car obsession? Not entirely.

2015-10-23T18:45:00-04:00

The plateauing and decline in U.S. vehicle miles traveled per capita that occurred between [2005-2014] was described by some hopeful commentators as a dramatic shift that was indicative of the preferences of a new workforce...Marginal changes in the way a new generation behaves...cannot overcome the realities of a country where more than three-fourths of jobs are located more than three miles from downtowns and where only one-fourth of homes are in places that their residents refer to as urban.

More about car transit on Archinect:

Welcome to Evanston, Illinois: the carless suburbia

Dawn of the self-driving car: testing out Tesla's autopilot function

From California to Texas, car culture is losing its monopoly

Can a loss of driver autonomy save lives?

Designers imagine a world of self-driving, mobile offices

Paris pulls off an (almost) car-free day

2015-10-01T15:38:00-04:00

Paris’s car-free day was not without controversy, not least because it wasn’t a totally carless day and was limited to only around one-third of the city. After a standoff with police, authorities were only able to make car-free certain parts of the city centre, stretching between Bastille and the Champs Elysées, and the outer Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes, and only between 11am and 6pm. In the rest of the city, cars were allowed but at 20km an hour.

Paris, which had a mostly car-free day on Sunday, September 27th, experienced smog-free blue skies and a largely smiling populace, but it's not the first major metropolis to sort of go pedestrian. During a July weekend in 2011, famously car-centric Los Angeles shut down one of its main transit arteries, the 405 freeway, for infrastructural modification in what was nicknamed "Carmaggedon." The stay-off-the-roads frenzy leading up to the closure was so successful that most people took a staycation in their homes, leading city officials to play down the threat the next time the 405 needed to be shut down. (People still needed to spend money to stimulate the local economy, after all.)

Can a loss of driver autonomy save lives?

2015-10-01T13:20:00-04:00

Researchers estimate that driverless cars could, by midcentury, reduce traffic fatalities by up to 90 percent. Which means that, using the number of fatalities in 2013 as a baseline, self-driving cars could save 29,447 lives a year. In the United States alone, that's nearly 300,000 fatalities prevented over the course of a decade, and 1.5 million lives saved in a half-century.

Accidents happen. But do they have to? Researchers estimate that driverless cars could save up to $190 billion in health-care costs and 50 million lives worldwide over five decades.

For more of Archinect's coverage on changes in driving and car culture, check out these stories:

• Traffic Lights are Easy to Hack

• More roads won't ease traffic, but charging drivers more at peak hours will

• From California to Texas, car culture is losing its monopoly

A bicyclist's perspective on the dangers and joys of riding in L.A.

2015-09-23T15:49:00-04:00

While you’re hypertensive in traffic listening to NPR, I have seen dolphins frolicking (and homeless men fighting over a shopping cart); I’ve smelled the taco trucks and heard all the languages of kids playing at morning recess. I sweat and shiver; I feel elation and real fear. In short, I feel alive. And so I ride.

Despite its annoyances, difficulties, and outright dangers, Peter Flax's take on bicycle riding in L.A.—prompted in part by the city's recent decision "to create hundreds of miles of new protected bike lanes, shrinking some streets in the process"—combines a reporter's clear-eyed sensibility with an enthusiast's joy. In what is apparently an all-too typical encounter, he describes an incident with a dangerous driver: "Once, on Curson near Pico, a black Mercedes swerved into my path and the side mirror grazed my hip. I rolled up to the guy’s driver’s side window at a red light; he had his phone on his lap, watching a video. Without saying a word, I just rode away, bewildered and angry."

Want to read more on bicycling developments in L.A. and beyond? Click below:

• LA Gets its First Parking-Protected Bike Lanes

• From California to Texas, car culture is losing its monopoly

• Protected bike lanes strengthen city economy, report finds

...

Google Street View captures beautiful public space transformations

2015-09-02T20:02:00-04:00

A Brazilian urban planning collective called Urb-i...scoured Google Street View images to find the most stunning public space transformations from around the world. The results give us hope that our cities are becoming more beautiful places to live.

Cheer up: not everything is getting worse, at least not if you check out these comparison shots of real places from around the globe captured on Google Street View. Compiled by Urb-i, these 41 intersections and urban streets are studies in pedestrian-friendliness; as the years melt by, many of the municipalities and cities strip away traffic lanes and replace them with sidewalk planters, pavers, and other traffic-calming elements. In some cases, cars are removed entirely, letting people (and greenery) retake the streets. Here's a view of Hungary:

A street in Detroit:

Also in Montreal:

From California to Texas, car culture is losing its monopoly

2015-08-12T14:36:00-04:00

"You have generations of people under the age of 35 … who are choosing to live car free and car-lite." – Westside Councilman Mike Bonin

From the newly installed "protected" intersections in Austin, Texas and Davis, California to additional proposed bus lanes and bike paths in Los Angeles, car culture is becoming less of a given and more of an expensive, perhaps even less desirable, option. Cities across the U.S. are starting to rethink their approach to large scale transportation infrastructure projects (i.e., freeways) as driving per capita remains stagnant. Of course, this trend is somewhat complicated by the rise of cheap door-to-door transportation options such as Uber, which make it easier for the car-less to get around without having to own a vehicle. For its part, Los Angeles is considering approving an initiative known as Mobility Plan 2035, which would redesign major boulevards and avenues to encourage people to get out of their cars and into the mass-transit dreams of city planners.

Last week, Archinect highlighted Christopher Hawthorne's review of the additional lane on the 405 freeway, a project that bega...