“What is the optimal relationship between land use and transit,” asks Patrick Condon, “and what transit mode would best support this optimum state?” He concludes that cities should invest more in “trams” (streetcars) rather than in long-distance, higher-speed rail systems.
Flickr photo by NeiTech.
Condon is a professor of landscape architecture at the University of British Columbia, where he is also involved in Sustainability by Design, which is trying to create a sustainable “vision” for the Vancouver region.
Condon’s answers to the above questions differ greatly from from the Antiplanner’s. This is partly because Condon bases many of his calculations on hypothetical numbers rather than actual data, and partly because his definition of “optimal” seems to transmogrify from paragraph to paragraph so that, in the end, it means whatever he wants it to mean.
