09: On Lost Opportunities

Livable Low-carbon City

Our cities are full of ghost projects. Lost opportunities. Potentialities that could have prioritized safe streets or public health. Transit station with homes for cars, instead of a neighborhood for people. Streets that prioritize speeding cars, instead of safety and sustainable mobility.

But the reality of our cities, at least in the U.S. – is that we don’t realize those opportunities.

Often, these ghost projects were eliminated or watered down to preserve single family zoning or parking.

We waste these opportunities - opportunities to make our cities better, more equitable, healthier... And we do it largely to preserve a deeply unsustainable and inequitable status quo.

And so…
I see ghost projects.
I see dead districts.
They haunt my dreams.
They’re… everywhere.
Further reading...

Schumacher Quartier - the mass timber, social housing ecodistrict underway outside Berlin's Tegel Airport and the Urban Tech Republic.
Fort Lawton Redevelopment Plan (pdf), via the City of Seattle.
The Case for Guerilla Crosswalks, by David Zipper, via Bloomberg.
Envisioning a Car-Free Aurora Avenue, Mike Eliason's piece on a visionary transformation of a local highway, via the Urbanist.
Mercer Island and Bellevue Squander Housing Opportunities Near East Link, Stephven Fesler's piece on lost opportunities to address our regional housing shortage around transit stations in wealthy areas.
Tactical Urbanism Guides.
Ein Masterplan fuer Hamburgs Magistralen, the city of Hamburg's Bauforum on re-envisioning its arterials (Magistralen) as urban living rooms.
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