Please watch the following Ted Talk video on modern urbanization and city planning, relating to our discussions on the historic urbanization transformation at the turn of the century. Video is around 19 minutes long.
Answer the following questions after watching the following video. Answers may be short and to the point, no long paragraphs necessary for this assignment.
https://youtu.be/GXn2Iu8mSWY
1) What impact occurred in Chinese cities when they shut down factories and asked people to not drive for 12 days?
2) What factor “ruled” the streets in American cities during the late 1800s and early 1900s? Was it cars on freeways or something else more personable?
3) How did the Federal Highway Act impact American cities? Think in terms of people migrating away from city centers and moving into suburbia.
4) Using Detroit as an example, during one of the Great Migrations of the African American population, how did highways impact black-owned businesses and community interaction?
5) What impact did the destruction of city trolleys and streetcars have on city populations? The speaker utilizes a term called “white flight” in relation to this trend.
6) Currently in the U.S., even in Los Angeles as a close-to-home example, is there a significant price impact when new housing is required to build parking spaces?
7) In what ways did the slow transition from walking/biking everywhere to now driving everywhere impact Americans personally with their health?
8) What counter-intuitive assessment does the speaker give in terms of giving or taking away “capacity” for driving in cities? What demand is created from this?
9) Especially in terms of offering more sustainable housing in America, very useful in California for the growing homeless populations, what recommendation does the speaker give for repurposing large parking garages?
10) Personal Commentary Question: Although the turn of the last century saw urbanization change in a number of ways for the average American, typically in terms of growing slums/poverty/disease-spreading population, it paved the way for our current model of cities. Now that we are a century into our current city design structure, some glaring problems are now occurring as a result of the last few decades of policy. If you were in charge of city-planning and engineering/design of U.S. cities in the 21st century, what implementations would you make to benefit people in this new-age urbanization transformation? Discuss freely.