In case the idea of gateways seems too closed, we remark at once that the boundary zone—and especially those parts of it around the gateways—must also form a kind of public meeting ground, where neighborhoods come together. If each neighborhood is a self-contained entity, then the community of 7000 which the neighborhoods belong to will not control any of the land internal to the neighborhoods. But it will control all of the land between the neighborhoods—the boundary land—because this boundary land is just where functions common to all 7000 people must find space. In this sense the boundaries not only serve to protect individual neighborhoods, but simultaneously function to unite them in their larger processes.
Therefore:
Encourage the formation of a boundary around each neighborhood, to separate it from the next door neighborhoods. Form this boundary by closing down streets and limiting access to the neighborhood—cut the normal number of streets at least in half. Place gateways at those points where the restricted access paths cross the boundary; and
TOWNS
make the boundary zone wide enough to contain meeting places for the common functions shared by several neighborhoods.
The easiest way of all to form a boundary around a neighborhood is by turning buildings inward, and by cutting off the paths which cross the boundary, except for one or two at special points which become gateways—main gateways (53); the public land of the boundary may include a park, collector roads, small parking lots, and work communities—anything which forms a natural edge—parallel roads (23), work community (41), QUIET BACKS (59), ACCESSIBLE GREEN (60), SHIELDED PARKING
(97), small parking lots (103). As for the meeting places in the boundary, they can be any of those neighborhood functions which invite gathering: a park, a shared garage, an outdoor room, a shopping street, a playground—shopping street (32), pools
AND STREAMS (64), PUBLIC OUTDOOR ROOM (69), GRAVE SITES (70), LOCAL SPORTS (72), ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND (73). . . .
90
connect communities to one another by encouraging the growth of the following networks:
16. WEB OF PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION
17. RINGROADS
18. NETWORK OF LEARNING
19. WEB OF SHOPPING
20. MINI-BUSES
16 WEB OF PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION*
. . . the city, as defined by city country pincers (3), spreads out in ribbon fashion, throughout the countryside, and is broken into local transport areas (ii). To connect the transport areas, and to maintain the flow of people and goods along the fingers of the cities, it is now necessary to create a web of public tranportation.
The system of public transportation—the entire web of airplanes, helicopters, hovercraft, trains, boats, ferries, buses, taxis, mini-trains, carts, ski-lifts, moving sidewalks —can only work if all the parts are well connected. But they usually aren’t, because the different agencies in charge of various forms of public transportation have no incentives to connect to one another.
Here, in brief, is the general public transportation problem. A city contains a great number of places, distributed rather evenly across a two-dimensional sheet. The trips people want to make are typically between two points at random in this sheet. No one linear system (like a train system), can give direct connections between the vast possible number of point pairs in the city.
It is therefore only possible for systems of public transportation to work, if there are rich connections between a great variety of different systems. But these connections are not workable, unless they are genuine fast, short, connections. The waiting time for a connection must be short. And the walking distance between the two connecting systems must be very short.
This much is obvious; and everyone who has thought about public transportation recognizes its importance. However, obvious though it is, it is extremely hard to implement.
I 6 WEB OF PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION
There are two practical difficulties, both of which stem from the fact that different kinds of public transportation are usually in the hands of different agencies who are reluctant to cooperate. They are reluctant to cooperate, partly because they are actually in competition, and partly just because cooperation makes life harder for them.
This is particularly true along commuting corridors. Trains, buses, mini-buses, rapid transit, ferries, and maybe even planes and helicopters compete for the same passenger market along these corridors. When each mode is operated by an independent agency there is no particular incentive to provide feeder services to the more inflexible modes. Many services are even reluctant to provide good feeder connections to rapid transit, trains, and ferries, because their commuter lines are their most lucrative lines. Similarly, in many cities of the developing world, minibuses and collectivos provide public transportation along the main commuting corridors, pulling passengers away from buses. This leaves the mainlines served by small vehicles, while almost empty buses reach the peripheral lines, usually because the public bus company is required to serve these areas, even at a loss.
The solution to the web of public transportation, then, hinges on the possibility of solving the coordination problem of the different systems. This is the nut of the matter. We shall now propose a way of solving it. The traditional way of looking at public transportation assumes that lines are primary and that the interchanges needed to connect the lines to one another are secondary. We propose the opposite: namely, that interchanges are primary and that the transport lines are secondary elements which connect the interchanges.
Imagine the following organization: each interchange is run by the community that uses it. The community appoints an interchange chief for every interchange, and gives him a budget, and a directive on service. The interchange chief coordinates the service at his interchange; he charters service from any number of transport companies—the companies, themselves, are in free competition with one another to create service.
In this scheme, responsibility for public transportation shifts from lines to interchanges. The interchanges are responsible for connecting themselves to each other, and the community which
uses the interchange decides what kinds of service they want to have passing through it. It is then up to the interchange chief to persuade these transport modes to pass through it.
Slowly, a service connecting interchanges will build up. One example which closely follows our model, and shows that this model is capable of producing a higher level of service than any centralized agency can produce, is the famous Swiss Railway System.
The Swiss railway system ... is the densest network in the world. At great cost and with great trouble, it has been made to serve the needs of the smallest localities and most remote valleys, not as a paying proposition but because such was the will of the people. It is the outcome of fierce political struggles. In the 19th century, the “democratic railway movement’’ brought the small Swiss communities into conflict with the big towns, which had plans for centralisation. . . . And if we compare the Swiss system with the French which, with admirable geometrical regularity, is entirely centered on Paris so that the prosperities or the decline, the life or death of whole regions has depended on the quality of the link with the capital, we see the difference between a centralised state and a federal alliance. The railway map is the easiest to read at a glance, but let us now superimpose on it another showing economic activity and the movement of population. The distribution of industrial activity all over Switzerland, even in the outlying areas, accounts for the strength and stability of the social structure of the country and prevented those horrible 19th century concentrations of industry, with their slums and rootless proletariat. (Colin Ward, “The Organization of Anarchy,” in Patterns of Anarchy, by Leonard I. Krimerman and Lewis Perry, New York, 1966.)