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Transit and walkable spaces seen as top O.C. needs
May 1st, 2008, 6:01 pm · 4 Comments · posted by Jeff Collins
Two speakers from the American Planning Association said redeveloping older shopping centers and more innovative bus lines may be keys to turning Orange County into a more livable, less car-dependent place. The APA, which is holding its national conference this week in Las Vegas, offered up two Bay Area planning consultants who spoke on ways to breathe new life into conventional suburbs.
The first, Stephen Coyle, principal for the “green urbanist” firm, Town Green of Oakland, said communities need to follow what he called the “Five R’s” for suburban redesign:
- Recompact, increasing intensity of uses, integrating housing and jobs in one area;
- Reconnect, designing roads and pathways for increased mobility;
- Recode, updating zoning for mixed use;
- Redesign, creating public spaces, and
- Recolor green, making suburbs less reliant on non-renewable resources.
Dena Belzer, president of the Berkeley-based planning and consulting firm, Strategic Economics, noted that rising gasoline prices, an aging baby boomer population and an increasing desire to live in mixed-use housing will increase demand for more walkable communities. Surveys show that 30% to 55% of Americans want to live in mixed- use, mixed-density places, she said. In the 1950’s and 60s, half of U.S. households had children. Now, only one-third do.
So how can Orange County adapt?
Walkable places can be created by clustering new retail in old shopping centers, Belzer said.
“Redevelop underutilized parcels.”
And since light rail still is years off here, Orange County will have to rely more on buses on existing streets, which in turn, creates more walkable areas along the routes, Coyle said. Buses have to link housing to where people want to go, like job centers.
“We’re going to have to be creative,” he added. “Brand it. It can’t be like the same old smelly bus.”
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May 1st, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Now this is something I do know about. I recently did a research paper on the effects of an ever decreasing supply of oil will increase the need for more urban living. The goal of most cities these days is to create a community where the residents will be able to live, work and shop all in the same City if not the same block.
Additonally, overtime older broken down residential stock will be replaced with high rise buildings, manufacturing and possibly agriculture. The concept being is that if we can grow, process and create the things we need locally we can keep costs down and keep people employeed.
There is much more to it of course, but it will require a complete change of mindset which will take the residents a very long time to achieve.
May 2nd, 2008 at 6:24 am
I love visiting Orange County - the beaches are wonderful and I love the open green spaces and the shopping malls, but it drives me crazy how you have to drive everywhere you want to go in the OC.
I live in Pasadena, one block from Lake Avenue, and I walk almost everywhere I need to go - supermarkets, drug stores, movie theaters, bookstores, restaurants, Target, even work. It’s a wonderful place to live and work - but it’s a long way from the beach and it gets very hot in the summer.
May 2nd, 2008 at 9:37 am
As a surgeon his opinion and he is likely to recommend surgery. Ask an urban planner for solutions and he will undoubtably recommend more urban planning. Nothingburger.
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:37 pm
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