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I think my city of Pasadena is a good example. It has an urban form, is highly walkable, and has excellent transit service, but is lower density and slightly more car accommodating than a truly urban place.
There are quite a few areas like this in the Los Angeles area, such as Burbank, Glendale, Santa Monica, North Hollywood, with varying degrees of urban form and walkability/pedestrian friendliness. Pasadena is probably among the leaders in those areas along with Santa Monica.
If a semi-urban area can function as a center, of sorts, then LA must be even more polycentric than I realized (with emphasis on "poly").
It's all about the degree that a car is necessary. The built environment follows auto usage. In hyper urban environments (Manhattan), private cars are involved in a small fraction of all trips and the vast majority of trips involve walking, biking, transit, or taxis. In rural and exurban areas, private autos are involved in near 100% of trips. In older, streetcar burbs, transit and walking has a higher share than newer auto-centric burbs.
You could define some arbitrary number, say 50%, as the cut-off between auto-centric burbs and non-auto-centric burbs (or what I would call people-centric burbs). Or your could use shades of gray:
1. Auto-hell, where car ownership is more a burden than a benefit.
2. Auto-tolerant, where having a car is useful, but not necessary.
3. Auto-dominant, where most trips require a car, but non-auto lifestyle is possible with difficulty.
4. Auto-supremacy, where car ownership is absolutely necessary (and the carless are considered poor, underclass, "losers").
I think there would be intermediate densities in which walking would be somewhat useful, and cycling could be quite useful.
As transportation, out among the cul de sacs, the bicycle will be impractical, and walking almost useless.
Indeed it is. In fact, some Los Angeles city neighborhoods almost function as suburbs of downtown Pasadena - like Highland Park and Eagle Rock.
And there are the TODs (Transit Orientated Developments). I don't know how this will play out, but an implication is that LA may become even more "poly".
Well, there are also different types of "semi-urban" environments.
One of the more common types in the US is something I think of as the "enhanced office-park" environment. Instead of a completely suburban office park environment, this type of area tends to have office buildings with more floors (some may even be skyscrapers), but they are still separated from one another by wide, car-friendly roads, surface parking lots (in some cases), and generally don't have a lot of pedestrian activity. These are basically "compressed" versions of the suburban office park.
Another would be semi-urban areas where the housing stock includes multistory apartment buildings, or houses on denser lots than you would see in the suburbs, sometimes along with a greater concentration of corner stores, or street-level businesses. However, due to wide roads and the way that these areas tend to taper off only a block or two away from the denser core of the avenues in question, they are not really "urban," either.
One of the most interesting is the phenomenon of the non-urban skyscraper field. This happens when a bunch of skyscrapers are constructed near one another, but the ground below lacks much other activity, due to separation by freeways or roads, huge plazas, fields, and a general lack of denser street-level structures.
This is the model that currently exists in parts of Dubai (rows of towers strung out in single-file lines alongside 14-lane freeways like Sheikh Zayed Road).
This is also the model you'll see in the Santa Fe area of Mexico City - malls and skyscrapers, but not much else.
I think the second item listed would likely qualify as "urban light". The others listed are variations on Edge City.
I can imagine the Millennial generation turning the Inner Ring Suburbs into urban light. This could be done on a piece meal basis.
In some Seattle neighborhoods this can be seen along the main drag. A peppering of stores and apartment buildings, sometimes a small strip mall, sometimes a church, mixed in among detached single family homes. This at most is only a block deep on either side of the main drag.
Perhaps it could be described as a semi-urban strip.
Based my description on [Moderator cut: link removed, linking to competitor sites is not allowedBroadview neighborhood, Greenwood Ave. (extreme right edge of map). I used to live in that neighborhood.
TheModerator cut: link removed, linking to competitor sites is not alloweddemographics lists the population density as 3,297 people per square mile.
The strip I described might better be described as a diluted or watered down semi-urbanism.
I now live in the Moderator cut: link removed, linking to competitor sites is not allowedFremont neighborhood of Seattle. Definitely does not feel suburban, but not fully urban either. In between.
Last edited by Yac; 05-27-2015 at 06:08 AM..
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