Category: Cities

A map of buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in Oak Park

November 9, 2009 / / 0 Comments

I would like to hear feedback on the design of this map I made for school. It shows the location of buildings in Oak Park, Illinois, by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

The map is accurate; the building listing is from Oak Park Tourist. Feel free to print out the map and go on your own walking tour!

I created this map based on data provided to me by my GIS for Planners class instructors. Also in the assignment they gave limited background on who is commissioning the map, who will use the map, and the information it should describe and display. As the class has progressed, the assignments have become more open ended.

However, in making maps, there are always certain elements you cannot do without. Map makers include a scale bar, north arrow, and source information so that their map appears trustworthy. A legend is most often required, but many times maps can be designed intuitively so that users do not require a legend. I have attempted to design this map like that: I excluded a legend. Map users should be able to discern that the black and gray lines represent streets and also that the larger map with the gray background is a zoomed in portion of the smaller map.

I have posted other maps to my Flickr that you can also browse, some I made because of assignments, and others for personal interest and practice.

Bike friendly neighborhoods, in Chicago and beyond

November 4, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Local professional bike commuter and amateur racer Brian Morrissey has written a series of guides to Chicago neighborhoods with a particular bicycle friendliness.

Think of these great neighborhoods to visit on your bicycle (they have bike facilities, bike shops, and they’re especially easy to get to) and spend some time there eating good food. I consulted Brian on one of the neighborhoods, where I lived for two years. I’ve written about Pilsen on my blog several times (and here). Even without all the wonderful burritos and the friendliest bike shop, I’d still call it my favorite Chicago neighborhood.

Here’s the list of Brian’s guides to Chicago’s bike friendly neighborhoods:

What neighborhood should he write about next?

What makes a neighborhood bike friendly? Let’s find out!

First, we’ll ask the League of American Bicyclists. The LAB uses a rating system akin to LEED certification of green buildings. And cities want to achieve bike friendly status just as much as developers want to achieve “green” status. Bicycle friendly communities must be able to demonstrate achievement in the five “E” categories.

  • Engineering – Infrastructure, facilities, bikeways, bikeway network, and accommodation of cyclists on roads.
  • Education – Programs to teach bicyclists, motorists; availability of information and guides.
  • Encouragement – How the community promotes bicyclist; BMX track, velodrome, Bike to Work Week, wayfinding signs.
  • Enforcement – Connecting law enforcement, safety, and bicycling.
  • Evaluation & Planning – Data collection, program evaluation, bike plan, and how to improve.

Next we visit Bicycling magazine to learn how they consider the Best Cities for Cycling (full list). The editors’ criteria is not as transparent as LAB, but I’ll take a crack at decoding their articles.

  • Visibility – Bicycling wrote this about Portland, Oregon: Just hang out in a coffee shop and look out the window: Bikes and riders of all stripes are everywhere.
  • Facilities – Chicago made the list, “Still The Best:” Richard Daley…has ushered in a bicycle renaissance, with a growing network of bike lanes, a bike station with valet bike parking, showers and indoor bike racks.
  • Ambition – Bicycling commended Seattle for having the goal to “unseat Portland as the best U.S. city for cycling.” Their bike plan calls for expanding the bikeway network to 450 miles.
  • Culture – In San Francisco, a lawsuit brought bikeway construction to a halt, but Bicycling says “[t]he local bike culture has stood strong, and the number of cyclists increased by 15 percent last year alone.”
  • Education – Because of Boulder’s Safe Routes to School Program, at least “one school reports that 75 percent of its students now bike or walk to school.”

Finally, on our journey to find out what makes a community or neighborhood “bike friendly,” we come to me. I’ll tell you it’s a combination of the built environment (infrastructure) and its wider connections (bikeway network), as well as the residents who bike and don’t bike (like motorists).

  • Infrastructure – A city must build on-street and off-street bikeways that increase the perception of safety. (I was unable to find any conclusive studies that attribute the presence of bikeways to lower fatality and injury rates, but I didn’t find anything that reported the contrary is true, so that’s good.) Secondly, when you arrive to your destination, you should find secure bike parking.
  • Network – When you built on-street and off-street bikeways, you must ensure they connect to each other. It’s discouraging to come to the end of a bike lane when it doesn’t reach your destination or another segment of the bikeway network. A good network leads to important and popular destinations, like major work centers and schools. Bicycling is more prevalent in areas with colleges and universities, see Baltes report (PDF). Almost as important as creating a network is publishing information about your network – where does it go and what should I expect to see or find on my route? A paper bike map showing the locations of local bike shops, parks, and schools goes a long way to assuage nervous bicyclists.
  • People – Lick your finger and put it up to the air to test the attitudes of those around you and how they feel about bicyclists sharing the streets with pedestrians and motorists. Residents supporting or hampering positive change to make bicycling a common activity or transportation and improve the safety of bicyclists is the most important way to determine how “friendly” a community is to bicycles and their riders.

If you’re familiar with those neighborhoods in Brian’s guides, try to apply the criteria sets from League of American Bicyclists, Bicycling magazine, and myself and do your own analysis of the bike friendliness in those neighborhoods.

What do you think makes a community bicycle friendly?

Making cycling normal: Cycle chic movement

November 1, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Making Cycling Normal is a three-part series about how to increase the rates of people riding their bikes for everyday trips. Increasing this rate, also called the “modal split” or bicycle’s “mode share,” is a common goal amongst bike plans in major cities around the United States. No city in the United States has a bike mode share higher than 5% of all trips, or even all trips to work, where the rate reaches 40% in some European cities.

Cycle chic is an internet-based movement to promote “normal” cycling. At the root of normal cycling is riding your bike in your everyday work, school, or wherever clothes. No lycra, spandex, or bringing a change of clothes. Some may say it’s bicycling in fashionable or elegant clothes, but the dress up concept is open to individual interpretation.

Cycle chic began with photographer Mikael Colville-Andersen’s website called Copenhagen Cycle Chic, a blog where he posts photos of bicyclists in the capital city of Denmark. The photos tend to be of women dressed in trendy and fashionable clothing. The goals are promoting the city of Copenhagen, and riding one’s bicycle is a completely normal activity and mode of transportation for any trip no matter its purpose (and the Danes ride their bikes in all weather, with the cycling rate apparently only dropping 20% through winter – see Mikael’s photo below).

Mikael travels around the world promoting cycling culture as part of a company called Copenhagenize Consulting and also as Danish individual. He also writes a blog called Copenhagenize where he discusses the issues prevalent to bicycle and motorist cultures.

The cycle chic blog model has been imitated by bicycling bloggers around the world. Amsterdamize does the job for that Netherlands city. There’s also Los Angeles, Chicago, London, and Moscow. Visit Los Angeles to find a list of plenty more cities. If you find your city, get to know your local Cycle Chic Ambassador. Check out this blog’s author (me) test riding a Dutch bike from a local retailer in some fashionable clothing at a party. A former coworker, Christy, inspired me to start adopting cycle chic.

I don’t think there’s a cycle chic blogger for Milwaukee, Wisconsin, yet, but I think this guy could start it up (sorry for the blur):

How will these blogs increase cycling rates?

The blogs and their authors promote cycling as something you can do without gear, special clothes, or a significant lifestyle change. In their own ways, and targeted to readers in their own cities, they discuss how people can incorporate bicycling into their lives where normally a bus, train, or car would transport them. They show that bicycling can be fashionable, popular, and not something that “other” people do.

However, this stylish promotion of cycling will only go so far. Bicycle trip rates will also increase when cycling is safer (part two of the Making Cycling Normal series) or when we educate people about bicycling (part three).

UPDATE: Dottie from Let’s Go Ride a Bike (Chicago’s local cycle chic blogger) has picked up on a similar topic, how to promote cycling (and part two), and Cyclelicious has reblogged the topic and Dottie’s article.

Pollution fighting bike lane, coming soon to Pilsen

October 27, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Rendering of the project by CDOT. See all photos about this project.

A planner from the Streetscape and Sustainable Design Program in the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) came to speak to my Sustainable Development Techniques class at UIC about adding “green” to urban design.

Among other topics, he talked about CDOT’s streetscape project for Cermak and Blue Island in Pilsen, a near southwest side neighborhood a couple miles outside of downtown Chicago. The project, like all streetscapes, is one of economic development. But this project is unique in that the goal was to look at every element and make each as green and sustainable as possible.

You can read about the project through the Program’s presentation here (Flash slideshow). Please note there are many versions of the same presentation on the web and each my be different depending on their intended audience.

I will be discussing a single showcase element from the project: A bike lane on Blue Island between Ashland and Western where currently one does not exist. The bike lane and the adjacent parking lane (on the bike lane’s right side, as normal in Chicago) will be constructed with permeable pavers mixed with smog eating concrete. Wait? Smog eating concrete? Keep reading!

The bike lane will begin at Ashland/Cermak/Blue Island, a well-traveled intersection for heavy trucks, three bus routes, and many passenger cars. The bike lane will connect Pilsen to Little Village and extend the existing bike lane on Blue Island in Pilsen’s central shopping area. This segment is also a designated truck route and to safely accommodate the parking lane, bike lane, and travel lane, the road will be widened by reducing the width of the sidewalks. The sidewalks here are 20 feet wide, double the standard width, and four times wider than sidewalks in many parts of Chicago. There’s very low pedestrian volume here and very little residential use so the plan is to have 8 foot wide sidewalks, and a 5.5 foot planter, breaking occasionally for bus stop shelters.

The bike lane will be 5 feet wide (including striping) and the parking lane will be 8 feet wide. The novel part of the two lanes is that they will be made with permeable pavers.

This will be the first paver bike lane in the City of Chicago. The blocks will be oriented so that bicyclists feel the least amount of bumps and won’t get their tire stuck in a groove that could harm.

The smog eating concrete’s trade name is TX Active, invented by Italcementi Group, a large, multinational corporation founded and based in Italy. Since the original installation of TX Active cement on the Dives in Misericordia Church in Rome (designed by Richard Meier), Italcementi has developed two lines of photocatalytic cement, only one of which reduces pollutants in the area (TX Arca). The other cement is for architectural uses helps keep the concrete surface clean from dirt and particulate matter.

CDOT will use the second line, TX Aria, in the top half inch of the pavers. The company has tested the product to demonstrate its effectiveness at reducing the presence of Nitrogen Oxides (commonly written as NOx, a family of toxic substances emitted by internal combustion engines) and published its laboratory results in an easy to follow report on its website (PDF). The technical report goes into more details and explains how the process works (through photocatalysis) and what substances their product can be designed to diminish. The technical report is unclear on whether or not all forms of the TX Active product abate all substances. It may be that the maker only tested its effects on Nitrogen Oxides levels.

I look forward to watching the construction progress and to breathing the cleaner air while bicycling to a new destination in Pilsen.

A LEED-related homework assignment and my response

October 7, 2009 / / 0 Comments

The assignment: Write a mock letter to the editor responding to this New York Times article: Some Buildings Not Living Up to Green Label (published August 31, 2009).

The class: Sustainable Development Techniques

How the class works: The professors invite working professionals to speak to the class each week. After the lecture from these guests, a short discussion ensues. The guests design the homework questions. The following week, the class discusses their responses with each other and the professors.

Dear Editor,

Buildings, as a category, consume more energy than any other category in the United States. The USGBC: U.S. Green Building Council (GBC) took the right steps by mandating an energy efficiency minimum to receive LEED certification. As it increases the standard building designers and owners need to reach to achieve the image of “green” or environmental responsibility, we should look for ways to make green building design cheaper and easier.

I have a few suggestions for how we can make that happen, but first I want to encourage your newspaper and its readers to send a message to their Congresspersons: They should pay attention to the fact that buildings consume the most energy of any category of energy use and include a section in climate change legislation that reduces buildings’ impact on the environment and their contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. Climate change legislation will not be effective unless it mandates and encourages changes in buildings and how they use energy.

So how can we make LEED certification (or other similar certification programs) easier to achieve? First of all, do not reduce the ease of certification. This will have an ill effect on climate change and reverse the positive advances LEED and its certified buildings make.

  1. Certify buildings who meet the minimum energy efficiency requirements with a new label. Some building owners or developers may not care to receive full certification or medal, or create green roofs or offer alternative transportation to building workers, but would rather be recognized for making bona fide improvements to their energy systems and use. Hold the buildings to the same reporting standards as all other certification levels.
  2. Support and fund research that will be used to continually refine the certification process and identify the best and worst energy system changes and upgrades. The Center for Neighborhood Technology and the New Buildings Institute have researched LEED-certified buildings to gauge their energy use and determine how effective the buildings are in reducing energy use (not all buildings were able to reduce energy use).
  3. Offer short-term rewards when people make long-term changes that provide long-term benefits. Provide instant or near-instant tax rebates when residents who live in or own “energy poor” buildings and make upgrades that are proven to increase the building’s energy efficiency by a minimum amount. When people can see immediate benefits, they may be more likely to make the changes. Make the rebate requirements easy to understand – consult with retailers like CVS and Walgreens who provide some rebates immediately to their customers after a purchase is made. However, consult the best universities and researchers to ensure the program managing this system will not allow rebates for window installation when home insulation negates any positive effect the new windows would provide.
  4. Continue to provide support and funding for “green jobs” that will further these legislated programs. Jobs like researchers, product development, engineering; also, new jobs like “energy efficiency inspector” and consultant.
  5. Mandate programs that reduce the Top 10 energy wasters in offices so that individual workers must play a part in their building’s energy reduction. This might mean automatic computer suspension overnight and on the weekends, or eliminating paper intensive processes, or installing automatic hand dryers and lights. These programs should apply to every building with at least 10 workers. Be imaginative, though, to work around corporate resistance; perhaps a cap & trade element would satisfy some building lessees.

Please continue writing about this issue. I want all workers to be aware of how they use energy and contribute to their building’s energy use and how it relates to carbon emissions.

-Steven Vance

I believe that most letters to the editor are written in mind for the newspaper’s other readers. Many letters to the editor are indeed directed at the editor, the article author, or the newspaper as a company. I chose to write my letter in the former style because if I was going to be published where 800,000 people might read what I wrote, I want it to be something they will find interesting and can have a personal response.

Why did I write what I did? Two LEED experts at Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago, Illinois, came to speak to my class about their research project that analyzes energy and water usage for 27 LEED-certified buildings in Illinois (find buildings on the USGBC’s website). The twofold purpose is to provide a report back to the study participants about their consumption, but also point out exactly what the NYT article mentioned: there’s a disparity between LEED certification and energy efficiency. Should LEED standards be more stringent about energy reduction (for existing buildings) or efficiency (for new buildings compared to other buildings in its class)?

It turns out that U.S. Green Buildings Council will soon require that new buildings must meet a certain minimum number of points in the Energy Efficiency category. I agree with this change, and my suggestions in my letter to the editor complement that change and encourage making energy efficiency easier and something that individual homeowners and workers will take part in.