087 - VIRTUAL WORLD : The New Suburb???

........Gambaran The New Suburb : Adakah ianya sesuai untuk Malaysian Cities?????

(Sila klik di sini)>> http://www.nationalgeographic.com/features/00/earthpulse/sprawl/index_flash-feature.html


Mass transit—light-rail, buses, subways—is within walking distance of most homes and businesses.
The goals:
- fewer car trips.
- fewer highways.
- shorter commutes.
- more time for family and community life.
- less car-exhaust pollution.

Mass transit can also bring city-based low-income workers into job-rich suburbs—“no car” doesn’t have to mean “no job.”

An interconnected street network distributes traffic evenly and makes walking easy by offering direct routes between points.
- Connected streets ease traffic by providing drivers with alternate routes.
- With many alternate routes, streets can be narrower, making them safer to cross and less land intensive.
- Sharp street corners, narrow streets, and frequent intersections naturally induce drivers to go more slowly and be more alert.
- Each street follows one general direction—north-south for example—allowing for easier navigation and better orientation.

Mixed-use zoning allows for shops, restaurants, offices, and homes all to be within walking distance of each other—or even in the same building.
- With most of life’s necessities within walking distance, fewer car trips are made, easing pollution and encouraging community interaction.
- The young and the very old—those carless millions—enjoy a measure of independence, bicycling to the soccer field, say, or walking to the movies.
- Allowing for apartments and offices above stores provides patronage for the shops, living space for lower-income residents, and activity for the sidewalk—and a busy sidewalk is generally a safer sidewalk.

Different housing types—apartments, row houses, detached homes—occupy the same neighborhood, sometimes the same block.
- People of different income levels mingle and may come to better understand each other.
- A family can “move up” without moving away—say, from a row house to a single-family home.
-Property values don’t necessarily suffer when housing types are mixed. New-urbanist neighborhoods are generally outselling neighboring subdivisions, and some of the United States’ most expensive older neighborhoods—Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown, Boston’s Beacon Hill, for example—are marvels of mixed housing.

Parking is concentrated alongside curbs, in lots behind shops, and in garages off rear alleys.
- Parking behind, rather than in front of, shops allows buildings to be at or near the sidewalk’s edge—more welcoming and pedestrian friendly than a store in a sea of asphalt.
- Placing garages and driveways behind houses allows the houses to be brought closer to the sidewalk, enlarging backyards and adding interest and a feeling of enclosure to the street—a feeling that new urbanists believe adds to a walker’s sense of comfort.
- On-street parking insulates pedestrians from traffic, encourages street life by requiring drivers to walk the final steps to their destination, and lessens the need for parking lots and garages.