Guest Post: Tale of two cities
This is a Guest Post by regular commenter Patrick Reynolds. It was published as an Opinion Piece in a recent Sunday Star Times (though not online).
William Bambridge, flautist ‘of some competence’, future photographer Royal to Queen Victoria, and sire of no fewer than three all-England international footballers, made this observation in 1844: ‘I suppose as a whole Auckland is a gradually thriving place, tho’ as a town it is miserably laid out and built.’…
22 Comments Auckland’s improving CBD
One of the pitfalls of looking at transport and urban planning matters on a daily basis is that you can sometimes lose sight of the bigger picture. For want of a better phrase, it definitely is possible to “lose sight of the forest for the trees”.…
Convention centre: catalyst for improving Hobson & Nelson?
I was initially disappointed by the decision that SkyCity had won the bid for a new international convention centre in downtown Auckland. I was more of a fan of “The Edge” proposal, largely because a key part of that proposal would have involved the restoration of the St James theatre.…
Traffic calming
I’m a huge fan of the video series being put together on Streetfilms at the moment – about “moving beyond automobiles”. One recent video looks at traffic calming techniques – innovative ways of slowing down vehicles to make the road safer for pedestrians: I really like narrow streets, as I have outlined in previous posts.…
The argument for lower speed limits
I am of the view that a 50 kph speed limit is too high for local (non-arterial) urban roads. Aucklanders have a nasty habit of generally driving at about 10 kph over the speed limit, so often vehicles are travelling at around 60 kph along local roads that may have kids along them, certainly have a lot of people living along them and in general will be much nicer places with slower traffic.…
The importance of road-width
In my opinion, perhaps the most important factor determining how a particular part of the city will feel are the road widths. The wider the road is, generally the faster people will be encouraged to drive – the opposite is obviously true too.…
Design ideas for CBD Tunnel stations
One thing I really like about rail systems, particularly underground rail systems, is the ability of the stations to become key parts of the urban fabric – key public spaces that help define a city. Some systems around the world have used this potential with spectacular results.…
How do you actually integrate land-use and transport?
It seems these days that just about every transport policy document and every land-use planning document talks about the need to integrate the two. I have discussed the importance of integrating land-use planning and transport on many occasions before myself, but I do worry that we are starting to bandy about this integration in a somewhat meaningless way.…
Should we “prettify” our motorways?
An interesting discussion on my post about turning Nelson and Hobson streets into two-way boulevards probably needs a post of its own I think, and that is the issue of whether it’s a good idea or not to try to “prettify” our motorways through various sculptures, patterns in the concrete and so forth.…
Transport CCO must do urban design
Reading today’s article about Jan Gehl got me thinking about how all the cool things he proposes might actually happen in the brave new world that is the Auckland super city. While a lot of people call Mr Gehl an architect, urban planner and so forth (inspired genius is what I tend to call him), what I think is probably the most appropriate job title for him is “public space urban designer”.…
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