Table of Contents
Contributors
Joel Warren Barna; Stephen Fox; Lisa Gray; Susie Kalil; John Kaliski; Keith Krumwiede; Barry Moore; Christof Spieler; William F. Stern; and Bruce C. Webb.
Cite 53 as guest edited by William F. Stern. While the issue does not include an editor's note, the focus on planning by the numbers is captured by the following excerpt from John Kaliski's contribution "Measure Your Urbanism":
The quantification of cities is limited only by individuals' capacity to invent new criteria to gauge. Thus urban intensity and quality is measured in many ways: people per square mile, dwelling units per acre, vehicle trips per hour, sales tax per square foot of retail space, water runoff per minute, percentage of sidewalks shaded, and so on. Such measurements lead inevitably to comparisons between settled areas. These comparisons in stimulate discourse regarding the ideology and shape of contending urban models. For instance, it recently was reported that daily one-way commute times in Los Angeles (28.1 minutes) are lower than those of comparable big cities. Does this mean that Los Angeles has a more logical form and higher quality of life than New York (59 minutes), San Francisco (29.6 minutes), or Washington, D.C. (28.5 minutes)? Perhaps yes. Does the availability of such information lead inevitably to changes in urban policy that in turn affect urban form? Indeed yes.
Joel Warren Barna; Stephen Fox; Lisa Gray; Susie Kalil; John Kaliski; Keith Krumwiede; Barry Moore; Christof Spieler; William F. Stern; and Bruce C. Webb.