The social, environmental, health and urban benefits of cycling have been well researched internationally. However, our built environment is having a hard time adapting, delivering and maximising these benefits that have been outlined academically. The recovery work in Christchurch created a unique opportunity where, as designers, we could rethink how a city can function and fast-track some of these adaptations.

People often ask me “why is cycling important for a contemporary city?”

I think urban cycling or utilitarian cycling, when designed right, can bring the most cost-effective benefits to a community among transport infrastructure options, and complement a city’s existing transport system. For example, cycleways are physically cheaper to build and maintain, they require less space, and they have higher capacity than roads for cars. While the cost, space and capacity arguments for cycling are great when compared to traditional roading, that is not why I’m motivated to work in the cycling space.

I’m motivated by the ideas of connect, control and happiness. They are the distillation of decades of my riding for fitness, commute, errands and most importantly, for fun. These three ideas guided me through my post-graduate studies, years of professional work, and they stay true to this day.

Connect refers to connections with your environment and the social aspect of human behaviour. Riding a bicycle in the city creates an environment where you are immersed within your surroundings through all your senses. You see the faces of people walking or riding bicycles, you feel the wind on your face and the potholes on the road, and you interact with the person next to you on your daily commute.

Riding a bicycle gave me a sense of control of my life. The feeling of me physically controlling my destiny through a bicycle is a psychologically satisfying emotion that is difficult to experience in our unpredictable world. Also, there is something special about the simplistic mechanics required to achieve this feeling – just go for bike ride!

Happiness is an underrated aspect of cycling. The smile of a kid who just learnt how to ride a bicycle says a thousand words; it is one of the purest expressions of “happiness”. Our increased responsibilities once grown-up mean that this sense of pure enjoyment is harder to come by. An academic colleague who is doing a PHD on happiness and cycling said that, “there is a mentality that commuting has to be miserable, and I’m doing it wrong if I’m having fun while doing it.” He went on to identify that the medical field argues that the inclusion of physical exercise within transit is one of the main reasons why the cycling transit environment is enjoyable. The writer Darrin Nordahl even published a book Making Transit Fun! in 2012 exploring some of these ideas.

My three motivations all contain an element of looking after our mental health, which I think is important when discussing riding bicycles. Medical research has shown that for the first time in history, the current generation is able to make ourselves feel unwell despite good physical health. This can be the result of the lack of social and physical interaction with other human beings as a result of our digitally connected world.

It’s relatively easy to provide physical cycling infrastructure. But how can we create better social capital through cycling in order to capitalise on the great benefits that are presented in academia?

One way to start triggering these benefits is through bike-share, where the community is given easy access to bicycles throughout Christchurch. ArchTam was the first corporate backer for the Christchurch BikeShare program. I would like to thank the senior leadership in New Zealand for sharing the vision I have for the Christchurch community, and I hope our role continues to go beyond simply providing infrastructure, and contributes to the social wellbeing of the community around us.

Now, how about a bike ride?

Jack Jiang (jack.jiang@archtam.com) is an architecturally trained urban designer who specialises in cycling infrastructure. Beside his internationally recognised research work and daily architectural work, he works with the ArchTam Transport team on active transport projects to bring a holistic approach to cycle network design. Outside of work, Jack initiated the community projects Lazy Sunday Cycle Christchurch and worked with the local council to deliver Back on Bikes Adult Cycle Safety Training.

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We opened our doors to 60 international conference delegates, including a wide range of landscape architects, students, policy makers, clients, and those from other disciplines and allied areas of practice. We also welcomed a glass box full of bees! Morning tea consisted of fresh and organic locally-sourced food, fresh bread and – thanks to local collective ‘Bee One Third’ – honey from hives placed on a rooftop across the street from our office.

We are passionate about urban food and particularly the compelling co-benefits not only for food security, but also for health and well-being, community participation and future economic diversity.

The title of the event was chosen carefully. The infrastructure reference captures the value of understanding a bigger picture and connected systems. ‘Small bites’ represent the many small-scale changes and evolutionary steps already being taken all over the place – to make clear the collaborative nature of urban food. ‘Big places’ remind us of the potential, and of the transformative potential of big picture thinking. We were interested in scale and particularly the scale-ability of collaborative urban food production.

The first thing that struck us as we prepared for the event was the huge value in drawing together different ArchTam activity related to food. For the first time we assembled a passionate international group of people working around the edges of these themes to foster a dialogue, understand synergies and imagine potential. This process yielded the framework for the first half of the session.

We set the scene with some big picture headlines. These all provide compelling motivation to address some very real and pressing challenges.

We then gave a concise overview of a number of ArchTam projects, conference papers, activities and emerging initiatives. These included an understanding of the significant value (economically and socially) of small-scale urban food production, the emerging policy context through Gold Coast Local Food Feasibility and Redlands Rural Futures strategies and physical input into urban food production in Brooklyn, New York and Christchurch, New Zealand. To bring this back to a local context, Brisbane City Council provided a snapshot of community gardens within the city.

We explored concepts of the near-future, such as the Urban Food Jungle, the integrated potential flowing from a strategic infrastructure approach to climate adaptation (Townsville example) and the power of statistics relating to land area, productive potential, water consumption and employment creation (Jeddah Plan Food Strategy). We demonstrated the simple steps required to turn existing places into productive urban places.

The second session began with morning tea and was an informal and energetic honey-fuelled discussion about ideas, innovations, priorities and opinions related to ‘what next’? We captured the different views and have committed to producing a paper to explore the role of the profession in defining a step change in urban food production, in what will be a tangible step towards creating a transformative moment.

The collaboration has yielded great potential. We now need to hold ourselves to account for taking the next steps. The carrot? That has to be the truly compelling and tangible benefits to be harvested from big picture edible infrastructure within our towns and cities.

My simple conclusion from this is that urban food production just requires intentional steps, but these need to influence the process at different stages, through a determined approach. Most of our cities adopt a strategic, finely-tuned and well-funded approach to transport infrastructure. We largely take for granted the benefits and value of good transportation. Our provocative question for our audience: using the example of transport, why don’t we create a ministry of urban food infrastructure as the next step towards harvesting the benefits of local food production?

Alastair Leighton (alastair.leighton@archtam.com) is an associate director with ArchTam’s Design + Planning practice in Queensland.

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I recently had the opportunity to present at the “Meeting the Urban Challenge – Smart Cities” conference. In attendance were H.E. Hans Peter Manz (Austrian Ambassador to the United States), Matt Peterson (Chief Sustainability Officer of the City of Los Angeles), Michael LoGrande (Director of Planning Department for the City of Los Angeles) and many others.

This one-day conference focused on the challenges of urbanization. City planning experts from California and Austria joined together with policy makers, architects, building professionals and researchers from academia to share their experiences and ideas on how to create an urban habitat that caters to the diverse needs of its inhabitants while being resource-efficient and protective of the environment.

As part of the panel titled “Innovative Policies for Smart Cities,” I presented a city information modeling approach that allows users to visualize complex city data from typically disparate sources, and encodes design principles taken from multiple disciplines into a unified urban design strategy.

As part of this approach, ArchTam’s sustainable systems integration modeling (SSIM) software, specifically the SSIMd module, was used to calculate a range of quantitative indicators to help clients determine the most cost-effective, smart and sustainable measures. Key metrics visualized include cooling/heating demand, peak energy/water demand, annual energy/water consumption and carbon emissions.

Peak electricity demand visualization for Christchurch, New Zealand.

Annual gas consumption visualization for Christchurch, New Zealand.

Carbon footprint visualization for Christchurch, New Zealand.

This approach offers an alternative to a more traditional urban design approach, allowing for streamlined, connected planning and design that integrates land and building, ecology and economy. This capability allows ArchTam to quickly and accurately evaluate varying urban design, engineering and planning scenarios early in the process. By structuring our knowledge of cities across diverse disciplines we are able to advise clients on the impact of decisions on buildings, precincts and cities.

German Aparicio (german.aparicio@archtam.com) is a computational design specialist with ArchTam’s High-Performance Building group.

The post Meeting the urban challenge appeared first on Blog.

I recently had the opportunity to present at the “Meeting the Urban Challenge – Smart Cities” conference. In attendance were H.E. Hans Peter Manz (Austrian Ambassador to the United States), Matt Peterson (Chief Sustainability Officer of the City of Los Angeles), Michael LoGrande (Director of Planning Department for the City of Los Angeles) and many others.

This one-day conference focused on the challenges of urbanization. City planning experts from California and Austria joined together with policy makers, architects, building professionals and researchers from academia to share their experiences and ideas on how to create an urban habitat that caters to the diverse needs of its inhabitants while being resource-efficient and protective of the environment.

As part of the panel titled “Innovative Policies for Smart Cities,” I presented a city information modeling approach that allows users to visualize complex city data from typically disparate sources, and encodes design principles taken from multiple disciplines into a unified urban design strategy.

As part of this approach, ArchTam’s sustainable systems integration modeling (SSIM) software, specifically the SSIMd module, was used to calculate a range of quantitative indicators to help clients determine the most cost-effective, smart and sustainable measures. Key metrics visualized include cooling/heating demand, peak energy/water demand, annual energy/water consumption and carbon emissions.

Peak electricity demand visualization for Christchurch, New Zealand.

Annual gas consumption visualization for Christchurch, New Zealand.

Carbon footprint visualization for Christchurch, New Zealand.

This approach offers an alternative to a more traditional urban design approach, allowing for streamlined, connected planning and design that integrates land and building, ecology and economy. This capability allows ArchTam to quickly and accurately evaluate varying urban design, engineering and planning scenarios early in the process. By structuring our knowledge of cities across diverse disciplines we are able to advise clients on the impact of decisions on buildings, precincts and cities.

German Aparicio (german.aparicio@archtam.com) is a computational design specialist with ArchTam’s High-Performance Building group.

The post Meeting the urban challenge appeared first on Blog.

I learned to ride a bike at age 7. The sense of freedom and curiosity it engendered pushed me to explore my city – GuangZhou in south China – where my family lived for nine years. My fondest memory of the city wasn’t the big skyscraper or the massive shopping centres, but the time I spent cycling through the city with my family. Mum used to plan weekend day trips for the family, where we would ride to the Pearl River 20 km away. We would ride down the wide modern boulevards, find alleyway short cuts where we would stop for Hotpot lunch, and walk through the pedestrian mall to do our weekend shopping.

We could have bussed or taxied, but the trip wasn’t about that. To me, those trips were about a family spending time together, having fun, learning, exploring and, perhaps most importantly, about a mother showing a little boy a new way of engaging with his city.

I often stop and ponder how, years later, I engage with my city. Unfortunately, I find myself answering “through the windscreen of my car” too often. Cars are convenient and I love driving, but I can’t help but feel they lead to a sensorial disconnection with my environment.

Architecture and cycling are terms you don’t often find together, and people often ask me how they are related. I view cycling as a catalyst for engaging with our cities. The transportation and the mobility aspects of cycling in our dense urban spaces are certainly important, but the opportunity it provides for a truly human experience in our cities is, arguably, even more important. Architecture can be that melting pot, where the human sensory engagement and technical skills can work together to provide an urban environment with deeper emotional connections.

We don’t necessarily need a “cycling city”; no city can operate with a singular mode of transport. However, cycling does encourage a more human experience of cities that cars or other forms of public transport don’t. That said, I question the traditional method of “engineering solution” to cycling infrastructure, where cycling and its users are determined by equations and spreadsheets. Does such a solution utilise the full potential of cycling as a mode of transport? I would like to see an “architectural approach” to cycling infrastructure where we first consider the human scale – a concept by the Danish architect and Professor Jan Gehl – then mobility. Perhaps only then can we start to consider engaging with the wider benefits of cycling into our urban surroundings.

Thinking back to those fun, exploratory and exciting bike rides around GuangZhou, I find I feel the same sense of excitement every time I ride in Christchurch, where I currently live. It is one way I can truly feel connected with this beautiful city.

What do you think?

Jack Jiang is an architectural graduate with ArchTam in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The post Cities on two wheels appeared first on Blog.

I learned to ride a bike at age 7. The sense of freedom and curiosity it engendered pushed me to explore my city – GuangZhou in south China – where my family lived for nine years. My fondest memory of the city wasn’t the big skyscraper or the massive shopping centres, but the time I spent cycling through the city with my family. Mum used to plan weekend day trips for the family, where we would ride to the Pearl River 20 km away. We would ride down the wide modern boulevards, find alleyway short cuts where we would stop for Hotpot lunch, and walk through the pedestrian mall to do our weekend shopping.

We could have bussed or taxied, but the trip wasn’t about that. To me, those trips were about a family spending time together, having fun, learning, exploring and, perhaps most importantly, about a mother showing a little boy a new way of engaging with his city.

I often stop and ponder how, years later, I engage with my city. Unfortunately, I find myself answering “through the windscreen of my car” too often. Cars are convenient and I love driving, but I can’t help but feel they lead to a sensorial disconnection with my environment.

Architecture and cycling are terms you don’t often find together, and people often ask me how they are related. I view cycling as a catalyst for engaging with our cities. The transportation and the mobility aspects of cycling in our dense urban spaces are certainly important, but the opportunity it provides for a truly human experience in our cities is, arguably, even more important. Architecture can be that melting pot, where the human sensory engagement and technical skills can work together to provide an urban environment with deeper emotional connections.

We don’t necessarily need a “cycling city”; no city can operate with a singular mode of transport. However, cycling does encourage a more human experience of cities that cars or other forms of public transport don’t. That said, I question the traditional method of “engineering solution” to cycling infrastructure, where cycling and its users are determined by equations and spreadsheets. Does such a solution utilise the full potential of cycling as a mode of transport? I would like to see an “architectural approach” to cycling infrastructure where we first consider the human scale – a concept by the Danish architect and Professor Jan Gehl – then mobility. Perhaps only then can we start to consider engaging with the wider benefits of cycling into our urban surroundings.

Thinking back to those fun, exploratory and exciting bike rides around GuangZhou, I find I feel the same sense of excitement every time I ride in Christchurch, where I currently live. It is one way I can truly feel connected with this beautiful city.

What do you think?

Jack Jiang is an architectural graduate with ArchTam in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The post Cities on two wheels appeared first on Blog.