Linear Cities

I think about city design frequently when I’m out running. A while ago I wrote some thoughts on the benefits of longer blocks, or the potential of stringing multiple blocks together to reduce the amount of automobile intersections that pedestrians (and runners) have to deal with.

Sometimes I’ll stretch this out further, and think of cities that are just designed with this as a starting point. Transit lines are an obvious reason for following a more linear development pattern — rail of course works well in a line. In my mind, I like to pair this with green/wild space, perhaps where anything three or four blocks away from the transit line is designated wild space, allowing for wildlife corridors, recreation space, and just place for city inhabitants to peer into. But within those few blocks adjacent to the transit line (and of course the necessary streets that accompany them) is high density housing and commercial space. And perhaps wherever there is a transit stop the city buldges out a bit more to fully utilize adjacency to a transit stop since it’s easy to walk a half mile or so to get there.

But imagine a city built in this way — the citizens always having quick access to nature, or all of the amenities of a city. And it would be extremely connected, since everything would lie along the same transit line. It would of course take amounts of forethought, along with the desire to protect large swaths of valuable real estate for nature and greenspace. Forethought that we don’t seem to have as a society, but a fun thought nonetheless.