Sprawling from Grace

is another documentary I watched recently. It's a US-American production which was very different from The Nature of Things. It hardly dealt with the suburb itself but went straight onto automobiles and petroleum because suburbs only exist due to the car and cars need gas. Here a few bites and pieces:    

Cars suggest freedom, safety, and achievement, cars are the icon of the American dream and every little boy dreams of driving a car one day. We actually define ourselves by the name of our cars - Explorer, Venturer, ... and whatever they are called. If you build a highway system you get congestion & pollution. With the growing population there’s not space to accommodate all the cars & have places with character (suburbs have none). Commuting times keep increasing with more cars on the road & people living further away from work. Automobiles cause 1/3 of all US greenhouse gases. 

"Suburbia" is a car-depended living arrangement, where you have to drive to work, to shop, to get services, to run simple errands, to take the kids to school & other activities. It's also the greatest mis-allocation of resources in the history of the world because we know that it is the living arrangement that does not have a future. As we are trying to get out of this "stuckness" we keep putting more resources into trying to solve the problem by doing the same thing ... growing outwards. Besides, upkeeping the ageing infrastructure costs society a lot of money and adds on to the federal debt. If you had to commute by foot, public transit, or bike ... you would not live in the suburbs. Generally, living in suburbia requires trade-offs, so why not rethink city design, car efficiency, and public transit – and find other arrangements for daily life in America? 

Every year 30 billion barrels of oil are consumed worldwide. Experts predict an increase to 45 billion barrels in 2020 – but consumption will outpace production. Peak oil is about the rate of delivery not the resource availability. With most of the easy-to-reach conventional oil gone, most of the oil that’s left will be expensive and difficult to get too – currently we don’t have the ability to increase supply as fast as demand. Consequences of the great gas shortage in the 1970s were cuts in the speed limit, car pooling, and switching factories from oil to natural gas and coal. But this happened when the US had lots of time and money which now they don’t have any more.

China plans 65,000 miles of expressways as more and more Chinese own a car. Even a marginal increase in cars will be devastating. The car culture in US is a near-disaster, it’s a guaranteed disaster in a populous country like China but China still tries to copy the US living structure. China has 4 times more people than the US but today the US still uses 3 times more oil. China takes the money that it gets from producing Walmart merchandise and spends it on oil from Alberta, Venezuela and Libya.

Each US American consumes 5 times more oil (20 lbs) per day than oxygen (4 lbs). US Americans spend an average of 25% (another expert said 19%) of their income on automobiles – the most expensive transportation system in the world. Rich people spend about 5% of their income on their car, poor people about 40%. Consequently poor people often have to give up something that they could have spend the money on but decided to invest their limited financial resources into a car, for whatever reason. 

Americans think, thanks to advertisement, everything is choice instead of circumstances of reality! Peak oil climate change and a few other big issues aren't choice though. One wonders what are they willing to scarifies? In the film some interviewed Americans still said they didn't believe that the US will run out of oil.  

There is the temptation to maintain oil resources through military actions but it will not work – it's too expensive and too intense. Venezuela is already past its oil peak and quality of oil is bad, the US itself has nearly no oil left, Canada has the tar sands but it’s expensive to produce. The US needs a new energy policy since heavy unconventional oil can not take the place of light conventional oil. There’s still lots of coal (I wished there wasn't), hydro, sun, wind to generate energy from. But there’s no single solution/ energy source that could keep up the level of oil usage. There's the dillusional thinking that the unmaintainable can be maintained for example through technological advancement. In the meantime, resources will be wasted to prop up our current comfortable living until the last one realises that when you have a shortage of energy you can't simply replace it with technology. Technology requires energy.

It takes political will to break the concept that cars are more important than pedestrian. Americans have to figure out what kind of life to they want to have, what kind of activities they want to pursue, what kind of spaces they need. Then they have to fit the buildings in. Ideas include giving a suburban city a centre, that city planners need to be walking planners, that public transit must be a "first class" alternative to get people out of cars. The city & transit planning need to go hand in hand to create "living local" that benefits people & environment. The good quality of life needs to be there for everyone not only for certain (rich) parts of city. Poorer people will be better off with public transit because they save the cost of having a car & spend it on something more valuable to them like health, education, travel.

Finally there's the option to wait until the pain arrives and change then but it will be awefully expensive. Or you can change now while the US still has the strength and energy to do it without facing so much pain and it will work better - unfortunately it's harder to sell to people too. If politicians started change now it would prepare cities better for the future and make them more competitive. The knowledge, information, and expertise is there already. But there's a lack of vision, a lack of realisation how psychologically rewarding and economically sustainable a life without car & oil dependence could be. 

www.sprawlingfromgrace.com  www.earthnowfilms.com

Lost in the suburbs

is another episode of The Nature of Things from 2008. It visits Los Angeles, Vancouver, Toronto, Mexico City and hey, Portland, Oregon!   


In order to facilitate Toronto's expansion some of the most fertile soil in North America had been covered with concrete and asphalt. Suburban residents cover 4 times more space than those living in the city.


L.A. is the "ultimate suburban wasteland" according to David Suzuki. The Fresno valley nearby that's threatened to be built up too provides more than 200 commodity crops and is one of the biggest food providers in the U.S. Farmers start to become the minority though and the urban population does not understand their lifestyle. Farmers work earlier, they also work later, and some of their duties are noisy and dusty. Although the soil and the climate are great the water for irrigation comes via pipeline from far away and required a huge financially investment by the federal government. Unfortunately, the municipalities decide what to do with the land and sacrifices it for construction that creates jobs. In one place in California "extravagant" people can even live in a suburb made for small air planes! The garage, the street, the parking in the front of the house are all designed to accommodate the wing span.      

Vancouver has apparently an even higher car use than L.A. and an additional 30,000 cars enter the roads every year. But the city barely builds any new roads. Vancouver is so unaffordable for most people that they move into the suburbs which are designed for cars, or "extensions of highway intersections". "The  sound of sprawl is the freeway roar," it was said but it has turned into ever growing congestion. Widening the roads and adding more highways has not and will not solve the problem. Maintaining 1 km of road costs $10,000 per year, and new roads cost more. This does not include the costs for police, accident services like health care, and air pollution. Presumably, there will be road tolls soon which will increase the cost of living in suburbs! Together with demographic changes the demand for large houses in distant suburbs will disappear over the next couple of decades.   
 
Mexico City with more than 20 million people is an urban nightmare, sprawling tremendously. There's no more natural beauty & tranquillity, just cars & too much traffic, air and other pollution, and water shortage. The city is not human any more. 

Portland Oregon has not stopped the sprawl but has made room for nature in the city. It started 25 years ago that the city tore up a freeway and put in a waterfront park, tore up a parking house and create a public space in the centre of the city, diverted money from road construction to public transport and built a light railway instead. City neighbourhoods revived and the growth was directed into more dense, already existing areas instead of adding on to the city boundary. A model suburb is denser, the houses closer to the sidewalk, a front porch faces the road instead of a garage, school and shops are in walking distance.In Portland people want to live there and don't feel forced to live there - that should be the goal of city planning. Some critics said that Portland's moves were a socialist conspiracy to get people out of their cars but in fact in was a conspiracy that brought people into cars in the first place.        


Generally suburbs provide more affordable housing than the city centre, get you more space for less money. People think it is easier to start a family, it feels safer to raise children, suburbs have a perceived higher quality of living. But it's not actually that comfortable: commuting means sacrificing time and well-being, expose oneself to accidents, fuel & maintain the car, pay insurances. It's not affordable to the individual or the community. 
Generally, cars have driven the sprawl. The deal has been that the private sector provides the vehicles -without any limits - and the government provides the pathways. But huge amounts of money (subsidies) go into supporting the car and even only a 10% of it would better be invested in public transit. 
An initial problem is that wilderness and natural areas are often considered as land to be developed, as something that needs to change. Another problem is that the costs for infrastructure (water, sewage, roads, community services) are only partially accounted for in the price of suburban houses. The municipality that provides the infrastructure usually ends up with a debt that can't be recovered from taxes from the new residents. So they keep building hoping it pays off next time ... but it does not. Suburbs won't work forever.

Plastering the world in concrete and calling it liveable

We went to see Rutherford House the other day, it was home to Alberta's first premier, Alexander Rutherford. It has been decorated the way it was in 1915 - but only the interior. Photos show that it used to stand right in the middle of a field, overlooking the river. Back then Rutherford who initiated the University of Alberta knew  that the campus would be built around the house but I doubt he ever could have imagined that 100 years later his house stands right in the middle of Edmonton, surrounded by 25 km of concrete in any direction, tendency to further expand. 
Edmontonians like to ask people like me (I'm obviously not local with my accent) how I like the city and I always hesitate and say, well, it's not quite the right place for me. I think they don't like the answer. They are somewhat provincial here. My 19-year-old colleague can't imagine ever living any where else. Really? A friend just told me about a list of the most liveable cities in the world, featuring Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary as well as several Australian cities in the Top 10, New York in 57th place and as best European city Helsinki. Amongst other facts "low density, little strain on infrastructure" was one of the aspects they looked at (traffic pulled NY down obviously ). Right, that's like saying "there's not much strain on our public transit system because we don't have any!" The UN index for the quality of living is such a scam to me as well. It lists the USA, Australia and Canada on top of the list or very close to the top. It does not say though that you need a car to survive and that you breathe a lot of dirty air, that your cosmetics are full of toxins, your foods full of drugs and chemicals, ... you get my point. Those indexes are too shallow. No consideration for environmental aspects.

I hate urban sprawl, once and forever

Walking around our new neighbourhood today we thought once more about the wasteful way Edmonton has been built over many years. Edmonton has the second largest urban sprawl in North America which is obviously due to large residential lots, one-storey houses (bungalows), wide streets and roads as well as back alleys, and of course malls with lots of big box stores and huge parking lots. 

Back alleys seem a convenient thing for the city to pick up garbage and residents to park their vehicles instead of using the already spacious street in front of their houses but they sometimes more resemble a landfill, depending on the neighbourhood. I'd love to see Edmonton shrink in a computer simulation that cuts out all those back alleys - must make a huge difference. In my opinion it's a lot of public land that's being used poorly and that keeps neighbours separate. With everyone going out the back door where the car's parked the front streets tend to look deserted and if you were lost you'd have trouble asking for directions ... maybe that's why everybody has a GPS here.  

In the newer suburbs city planners learned from the past - there are no more back alleys. Instead there are often walkways now, especially when the neighbourhood borders one of the many ravines in town. But the streets are not logical any more. There are crescents, dead-ends, curves and bends, a far cry from the simply grid system that once started off the city. I guess they try to prevent through-traffic but in the end they get people lost, driving around searching, wasting gas in the meantime.  

Urban sprawl is fine when it's for the sake of parks. I, and hopefully nobody else, would ever complain about the river valley being park land instead of residential lots because the river valley is for Edmontonians the biggest recreational space. We just moved away from it but come summer I know I will miss it. Get the bikes out, honey!           

I know we chose to live close to a mall for the convenience of shopping with baby by foot. From our new home I have to walk further but we can't see the mall which is very nice. The layout of malls always bothers me, not much space for pedestrians but instead car drivers can stop right outside the shop they are aiming for. Worst of all, there might even be a drive-through to the shop. When I first came to Edmonton I noticed drive-thrus that until then I had no idea they existed, a drive-through for  ATMs and pharmacies for example. Excuse my language but for me that's for lazy fat-asses. Your car is not your home, get out of it once in a while.

A Bylaw in Edmonton requires parking space for any facility. Right next to the apartment buildings in Terrace Heights where we used to live is a little park. The South East Edmonton Community League Association would like to build a Skateboard park there. Great idea. But the fact that they have to put a parking lot in where there is terrible road access already kind of screws up the layout. When they had an Open House on the proposed park we let the city know it's a stupid idea. There's lots of parking space already due to shops, more shops and a mall across the road. For the proposal SECLA was not required to have a bus stop, a bike lane or a pedestrian walkway included in the project. Since the skating area will be incorporated in a park with new trees and benches the architect put a walkway in but that's about it. A fine example showing how stiff some of Edmonton's regulations are, harming progress more than helping it.