Solarpunk Urbanism

I changed the title to be a little less clickbaity.

I debated posting this, since, while it says guerilla urbanizing is useful, there are expensive solutions to making cities more friendly to public transit and bicycles that simply require the city itself getting onboard with to fix, and the solution he proposes is to become more involved in your local city council, which on the face of it doesn't sound super Anarchist.

I believe Murray Bookchin advocated for something along these lines, and that got him a lot of flak from the Anarchist community at in the 80's, Though I'm struggling to find where he said that now (please post it if you happen to know!),

I'd like to know your thoughts on the proposal in the video. It does seem like since so few people participate in these areas, it would be possible to overwhelm the NIMBY's if you got enough people involved in your local city council, or ran in local elections for positions that could influence your city's urbanization.

See, here's why I think the Parramatta light rail should be extended from Sydney Olympic Park to Strathfield.

It's not just that it would allow it to connect directly to many of the train lines serving the western and northern suburbs, including the T1, T2, T3, and T9. Or intercity trains to the Blue Mountains, Central Coast, and Newcastle.

It's not just that Strathfield is a major bus hub with many services across the western suburbs.

It's not just that DFO Homebush (between Strathfield and Olympic Park) is a busy shopping centre that generates a lot of traffic.

No, the big reason I say it's a good idea is because these photos were taken on the 526 bus, between Strathfield and Olympic Park, on a Sunday afternoon.

#bus #tram #LightRail #nsw #nswpol #planning #Urbanism #UrbanPlanning #transport #transit #MassTransit @urbanism

Climate resilience: Has the time come to start demanding lighter-coloured streets in hotter climates?

At this stage, the challenge with climate change is not just preventing it from happening by cutting emissions. We also need to make our cities resilient to the climate change we've already locked in.

That's where lighter coloured paving for streets, rather than dark asphalt, can help:

"Sebastian Pfautsch doesn't hesitate when asked what he would change first to cool Australian cities in summer.

"And it's not what you might expect. It's not the seemingly endless expanse of black roofs, soaking up the sun beneath a shimmering haze.

"It's the roads. About a third of any outer suburb is thermally dense black asphalt that can reach 75 degrees Celsius, according to Professor Pfautsch, an expert on urban heat at the University of Western Sydney.

...

"Lighter-coloured roads may make intuitive sense, like wearing a white shirt on a hot day, but how effectively do they reduce surface and ambient air temperature?

"In 2020, two separate cool roads trials in Sydney and Adelaide set out to conclusively answer these questions.

"The Sydney trial, which took place at about 10 sites in the Western Sydney suburbs of Blacktown, Campbelltown and Parramatta, recorded an average surface temperature reduction of 5.6C and 2C for day and night respectively.

"For context, tree shade reduced the surface temperatures of roads by 16C."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-01-24/why-australia-builds-dark-roads-despite-heatwaves-climate-change/103375122

@urbanism #urbanism #UrbanPlanning #transport #cities #environment #ClimateChange

Quick tip for anyone who wants more urbanism/urban planning/cycling/public transport posts in their Mastodon feed.

Thanks to the wonders of the Fediverse, you can follow and post to Lemmy groups from Mastodon.

Here are some transport/planning/cycling groups to get you started:

@urbanism

@fuck_cars

@trains@lemmy.ml

@ukpublictransport

@trains@midwest.social

@melbournetrains

@sydneytrains

@brisbanetrains

@bicycling@lemmy.ml

@bicycling@lemmy.world

@utilitycycling

For those unfamiliar with it, Lemmy is basically a federated version of Reddit, distributed across multiple servers like Mastodon. (For anyone who wants to delve further, lemmy.ml, beehaw.org, and aussie.zone are three popular Lemmy instances.)

From Mastodon, you can follow any Lemmy group by following its handle, exactly the same way that you would follow a Mastodon account. Any new posts to that group will then begin appearing in your Mastodon feed.

Even better, if you start a thread on Mastodon, you can also post it to a relevant Lemmy group just by including its handle in your post. (Please note this only seems to work with the first post of a thread.)

#urbanism #planning #UrbanPlanning #urbanist #cities #transport #PublicTransport #train #trains #tram #trams #cycling #bikes #cycle #walking #walkability #walkable #politics #LightRail #urbanists #FediTips #FediTip #FediHelp #MastoHelp @feditips @FediFollows

Not sure I completely agree with their takeaways but I thought this was an interesting case study on the unintended consequences of housing policies designed to encourage home ownership.

I'm in two minds about this one.

Yes, above shopfronts is generally a good place for housing, and densification is generally a good thing.

But.

Why are we putting more suburban subdivisions and density in towns like Gisborne, instead of having more density in the inner suburbs of Melbourne?

Wouldn't it be better to have more apartments in inner-suburbs like Camberwell, where there are multiple train and tram lines, than have more sprawl on the fringes?

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/in-a-flap-over-shop-top-flats-how-population-pressure-is-rattling-one-country-town-20231115-p5ek90.html

#urbanism #UrbanPlanning #cities @urbanism #Melbourne #vicpol #auspol

Via Raddle.me

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