重塑城市

United States

Redesigning cities 重塑城市

Tackling the hydra 解决顽症

Mar 27th 2008 | LOS ANGELES

From The Economist print edition

Its politicians are determined to turn Los Angeles into a normal city

政客们决心将洛杉矶变成一个“正常城市”

THIS week J. H. Snyder, a developer, broke ground for a new building in North Hollywood—a district in the San Fernando Valley where people shop for car batteries. Antonio Villaraigosa, Los Angeles' mayor, turned up to declare it a model for future development. The event made the evening news. There can be few cities the size of Los Angeles where the prospect of a nine-storey office complex would cause such a fuss. But this one comes with a weighty expectation. At least some people are expected to get to it by public transport, or even on foot.

本周，开发商J. H.施耐德在北好莱坞为一座新建筑举行破土动工仪式。北好莱坞区位于圣费尔南多峡谷，那里是人们购买汽车电池的地方。洛杉矶市市长安东尼奥·维拉莱戈萨到场并宣布这座新建筑是未来建筑的榜样。该事件在晚间新闻受到广泛报道。一座九层办公楼的前景很少能在像洛杉矶这样规模的城市引起轰动。这座楼可非比寻常。至少，有些人打算坐公交甚至走路去看它（译者注：看完就知道问什么这样说了）。

Los Angeles has long epitomised car-oriented sprawl. As early as 1946 the historian Carey McWilliams judged it “a collection of suburbs in search of a city”. So rare are neighbourhoods where basic needs can be met without hopping into a car or bus that estate agents tout the few where they can as “walkable”. Urban planners elsewhere routinely invoke the city as an example of what to avoid. Yet even as they struggle to avoid becoming like Los Angeles, cities such as Atlanta, Phoenix and San Jose are copying it by spreading out and, hydra-like, growing new centres.

洛杉矶是城市长期“汽车化”的缩影。早在1946年，历史学家凯瑞·麦克威廉姆斯评价洛杉矶是“一些寻求城市化的乡下的集合”。房产经纪人们把洛杉矶吹捧为“适合散步的”地方，因为很少有临近的城市能像这里一样——人的基本需求不必乘车旅行在适合步行的范围内即可得到满足。一般情况下，城市规划者们将洛杉矶作为力求避免的例子。然而不管他们怎样逃避成为洛杉矶似的城市，亚特兰大、凤凰城和圣何塞都在扩大城区范围的时候模仿了洛杉矶——水螅式的发展多个城市中心。

The original metropolitan miscreant is now trying to reform itself so fundamentally that Joel Kotkin, an urbanist at Chapman University, compares it to rewriting a DNA code. Last summer the city council changed zoning rules to allow tiny apartments to be built in and around downtown Los Angeles. On March 19th it rejected a plan to put 5,600 homes on the city's northern frontier, signalling that the metropolis must now grow up, not out. From next month developers will be allowed to build blocks of flats up to 35% bigger than previously, so long as they include some cheap housing.

早先的城市规划异教徒现在正尝试从根本上革新自身理论。查普曼大学城市规划专家约尔·考特金将其喻为“重写DNA序列”。去年夏天，市议会改变了分区规划条例，允许在洛杉矶市中心及其周边建设小面积公寓。三月十九日，市议会否决了一项关于将5600个家庭安置在城市的北部郊区的计划。这意味着，洛城应该变“高”，而非变“大”。从下月起，开发商可以比以前大35%的公寓楼群，只要他们将平价住宅包括在内。

Other sprawling western cities are doing the same. Anaheim, in Orange county, changed its zoning rules in December to allow the construction of nearly 20,000 flats near a baseball stadium. Phoenix, Las Vegas and San Jose have built light-rail systems and have tried to concentrate housing and offices along their routes. Urban planners intone phrases like “transport-oriented development” and “elegant density”. Yet nowhere has the dream of a house and a sun-drenched garden been so central to a city's identity for so long as in Los Angeles. So nowhere does the change come as such a shock.

其他正在发展中的西海岸城市也在做类似的事情。去年十二月，橘子郡的阿纳海姆修改其分区规划条例，允许在一座棒球体育馆旁建设将近20000套公寓。凤凰城、拉斯维加斯和圣何塞建设了轻轨交通，并试图将商业和住宅集中在轻轨沿线。城市规划者们反复强调着“交通导向的开发”和“宜居密度”之类的概念。没有一个地方能像洛杉矶一样把花园“阳”房作为城市身份的主要特征，因此，上述变化给洛城带来的震动也比其他地方大。

Not without a fight并非没有反抗

Six miles (10km) west of North Hollywood, a four-storey building is rising next to a car-wash on Ventura Boulevard. When finished, it will contain about 130 apartments and an underground car park. To an outsider it seems innocuous. To local residents, schooled by almost a century of strict zoning to believe that bedrooms must be separated from shops, it is anathema. Gerald Silver, a local homeowner, predicts epic traffic jams from this and similar developments nearby. He complains that, without consultation, the neighbourhood is being turned into a version of Manhattan. He is not alone.

北好莱坞区向西6英里（10公里），一座四层楼房正在文图拉大道的一间洗车行旁崛起。竣工后，它将提供约130间公寓和地下车库。这对于外人来说无伤大雅。但对那些近一个世纪以来将“卧室与商店应当分开”的分区制奉为圭臬的当地居民来说，这无疑是一场噩梦。当地住户杰拉尔德·谢尔预期这座楼盘及周边的开发项目将带来大规模的交通阻塞。他抱怨道，在缺乏磋商的情况下，这里将变成曼哈顿式的地方。有这种想法的还不止他一个。

“You're beginning to see a neighbourhood revolution,” says Zev Yaroslavsky, one of Los Angeles' shrewdest and most powerful politicians. He gives warning that outraged citizens may add an initiative to the ballot next year that would block dense housing projects, “smart” or not. Mr Yaroslavsky knows about the power of ballot initiatives. He sponsored one in 1986 that cut the size of most new office buildings in half, and another in 1998 that virtually halted subway construction.

“你将会看到一场邻里革命，”泽夫雅罗斯拉夫斯基说。他是洛杉矶最精明和最有权势的政客之一。他警告说，愤怒的市民会在明年的选举中将此列为一个议题并阻止高密度的住宅工程，不论这工程是不是“智能化的”。

Planners retort that Los Angeles will continue to grow, and it is better to build new apartments on run-down commercial streets than plonk them next to bungalows or bulldoze virgin land. They are particularly keen to put people next to express bus lines or subway stops. At present few use Los Angeles' skeletal rail system—259,000 journeys are made each day, compared with 1.2m bus journeys—and the network is growing painfully slowly. If the subway cannot reach the people, the thinking goes, the people must be brought to the subway.

作为回击，规划者们称，洛杉矶必然不断发展，把新住宅建在快让人踏平了的商业街旁肯定比把他们扔在城乡结合部和荒郊野外强。他们尤其希望把住宅建在快速公交线和地铁站旁。现在较少的人愿意搭乘洛杉矶的地铁主干线——每天乘坐地铁的只有25.9万人次，乘坐公交车的却有120万人次——这又导致地铁网络只能痛苦地缓慢发展（译者注：使用者少赢利就少）。如果人们不能方便的乘坐地铁的话，他们认为，那就必须想办法把他们带到地铁站。

This theory is the bedrock on which the new North Hollywood is being built. Near the office construction site a 14-storey block of flats (it seems enormous in the San Fernando Valley) has already appeared, and others will follow. The hope is that residents will both live and work there, or walk a few hundred yards to the local subway stop. But Cary Adams, a local resident, notes the developers are hedging their bets: two giant car parks are also scheduled for construction. This is, indeed, the genetic flaw in Los Angeles' new DNA.

以上就是北好莱坞未来发展方向的理论依据。在那座办公楼的工地附近，一座14层的公寓楼（在圣费尔南多峡谷里确实显得很庞大）已经建成，而且还会有类似的项目开展。居民可以工作和生活在同一个地方，走几百码就可以到地铁站。但一位当地居民凯利·亚当斯怀疑这只是开发商混淆视听的说法：两个大型停车场已经列入规划。这确实是洛杉矶新“DNA”的先天基因缺陷。

A big reason Angelenos drive everywhere is that they can park everywhere, generally free. Businesses must provide parking spaces according to a strict schedule. This raises the cost of doing business and hugely lowers the cost of driving. Free parking is, as Donald Shoup of UCLA put it in a recent book, “a fertility drug for cars”.

洛杉矶人之所以去哪都要开车的一大原因是他们基本上可以免费停车。企业单位必须根据规定提供停车场。这大大提高了商业成本和开车的成本。“免费停车，”加州大学洛杉矶分校的唐纳德·苏普在其新书中称，“是汽车泛滥的助长剂。”

Consider the roughly 29,000 people who live in Los Angeles' historic downtown. In the past few years a mixture of childless professionals and students have moved into new lofts. They have access to southern California's best public-transport network, and are the sort of people you would expect to take advantage of it. Yet last year a consortium of local property owners revealed that just 11% normally did so, while another 17% generally walked. Almost everybody else drove.

让我们想想2万9千多生活在洛杉矶那充满历史风味的市中心的人们吧。在过去几年里，没有子女的工作者和学生搬进了新型复式住宅。他们能方便的使用南加州最好的公交网络，而且是那种你渴望与之交往的人。然而，去年据当地一个业主协会称：只有11%的人习惯使用公交，17%的人习惯于走路，剩下的人都开车。

The politicians and planners are gambling that, by arranging Angelenos in a more conventional pattern, they can change their behaviour. Perhaps it will work. But if they are wrong, an already crowded city will simply gum up.

政客和城市规划者们正在冒险尝试。他们觉得用“常规的”方式重新安置洛城人民，就可以改变其行为习惯。也许这能行。但如果他们错了的话，这个已经拥挤的城市肯定会更糟糕。