Ted Talk: 7 Principles for Building Better Cities
Peter Calthorpe is a San Francisco based architect, urban
designer and urban planner. He developed the concept of Transit Oriented
Development in the early 1990’s. His clients include China which has some city
blocks with 5,000 residents each and also the State of California which
anticipates a population growth of 10 million more by 2050.
(Someday soon, Petaluma will
have a population of 100,000 people. The “town” we are building today will be a
city tomorrow.)
Summary of the TedTalk:
1) Preserve the natural environment, the history and the
agriculture.
2) Mixed use. Create mixed use and mixed-income neighborhoods.
Mixed incomes, mixed age groups, as well as mixed land use.
3) Walk. Design walkable streets and human scale neighborhoods.
4) Bike. Prioritize bicycle networks and auto-free streets.
5) Connect. Build street networks that provide many routes and
many kinds of routes. Many kinds of streets instead of just one.
6) Ride. We have to invest more in transit.
7) Focus. Match density and mix to the transit capacity.
Build the hierarchy of the city based on transit rather than on freeways. It’s
a big paradigm shift.
“Walking, biking and transit are the way cities and
communities thrive.”
