Li Rui, 60, scavenged his former village for building materials in Liaocheng. photo by Justin Jin 

Across China, bulldozers are leveling villages that date to long-ago dynasties. Towers now sprout skyward from dusty plains and verdant hillsides. New urban schools and hospitals offer modern services, but often at the expense of the torn-down temples and open-air theaters of the countryside.

“It’s a new world for us in the city,” said Tian Wei, 43, a former wheat farmer in the northern province of Hebei, who now works as a night watchman at a factory. “All my life I’ve worked with my hands in the fields; do I have the educational level to keep us with the city people?”

“For old people like us, there’s nothing to do anymore,” said He Shifang, 45, a farmer from the city of Ankang in Shaanxi Province who was relocated from her family’s farm in the mountains. “Up in the mountains we worked all the time. We had pigs and chickens. Here we just sit around and people play mah-jong.”

nytimes, 15.06.13.

this is so major. government buying up farmland, upending village life and pushing consumerism.. soon china will have super industrial “farming” like in the US. and then later grassroots groups will try to convert urban land back into pocket parks and gardens like what’s happening now in the US.

in the meantime, here’s copenhagenize’s 2013 index of the world’s top 20 bike-friendly cities, that’s been circulating widely, but just in case you missed it.

summary on businessinsider, 29.04.13.

“There are no cities in the U.S. who can compete with a Bordeaux, Seville, Antwerp, etc,” Colville-Andersen writes in an email. “That said, a number of usual American suspects are lingering in the wings, in the Top 35.”

“The cities that are moving fast are the ones who are keeping bicycle users safe and encouraging them to ride,” says Colville-Andersen. “Political will is important, but it’s the planners and engineers who need to google ‘Cycle Track Best Practice’ and start presenting these ideas at meetings.”

atlanticcities, 30.04.13.

and Here’s What Americans Don’t Get About Cycling — And Why It’s A Problem. businessinsider, 29.04.13.

in europe, most people don’t consider themselves cyclists. they are just normal people using bikes to get around. “pedestrians on wheels”.

San Diego’s massive size makes it impossible for the general plan to hash out zoning on a neighborhood level, let alone the property-by-property level needed to give residents and businesses a clear blueprint for the future they envision.

For that, the city turns to community plans…

San Diego Community Plan Update Process. (click to enlarge)

voice of san diego, 09.04.13.

stroadtoboulevard:

George Anderson, Chair of the Nanaimo Transportation Committee, has kindly asked me to share my thoughts on the Transportation Plan.

Here are some rules-of-thumb to help judge any Transportation Plan.

1. Modal choice is induced by the built environment; it is not an intrinsic personal trait.
2. The best transportation plan is a land use plan.
3. Make sure roads are roads, and streets are streets.
4. Focus on intersections.
5. Safer streets do not require expensive infrastructure.
6. In transit, frequency is freedom.
7. Think of cyclists as pedestrians with wheels

Modal choice is induced by the built environment; it is not an intrinsic personal trait.

You might hear that ‘people like to drive’. We all like to drive: on the open road, in a fun car. This doesn’t mean you should design your city around driving. When you design a city around driving, most people aren’t cruising a sportscar around empty streets: they’re sitting in congestion in station wagons or cheap sedans.

Those same people will happily park their cars and walk or cycle around when they visit Victoria or Vancouver, or Paris or Amsterdam. And on the flipside, when a French or Dutch tourist visits Nanaimo, he rents a car: there’s nothing about being Dutch that makes you cycle, it’s simply the natural reaction to the built environment they live in.

Note one very important consequence of this: induced demand. Your engineers should not measure today’s car traffic and speeds, and design streets primarily to accommodate them, or some linear forecast of volumes from today. Instead, you will get the traffic that you design for: the more car space you provide, the more cars you will get. The more bike, pedestrian and transit space you provide, the more of those you’ll get.

The built environment is set by public policy: streets are a state monopoly; and development on private lots is strictly regulated. Your transportation plan is about the former (but the latter is also just as important).

EXCELLENT post! continued here.

citiesandurbanism:

This episode of The Simpsons raises a number of serious points about modern planning, from the disposal of radioactive waste, city council meetings, public transit and planning priorities.

After Mr. Burns is fined $3 Million by the City of Springfield for dumping radioactive waste in the environment, Mayor Quimby holds a public consultation to discuss what the Springfield should so with the money…