Figure 1: An Impression of a Multi-Level Transit City by W.H. Corbett, 1913 drawing “City of the Future”
by Patricia Woo [1]
Higher-density living has been long explored as a means to contain urban sprawl. Past research has found many environmental benefits with this strategy – reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, using less land and reducing air pollution and water usage. However, high-density cities pose two major problems for transport planning: one relates to planning for facilities necessary for ease of movement of a large number of commuters within the city, and the other to the task of addressing pedestrian-vehicular conflicts that could arise in the competition for space in the constrained spaces in cities.
Planners and architects in various cities have been pre-occupied with these two problems for a long time. Visionary architects and planners have come up with imaginative pictures like the “multi-transit city” (Figure 1), where several skywalk systems criss-cross at different levels, and working in concert with each other. Continue reading
