Peter Calthorpe breaks down some scenarios for growth using as examples California and Chongqing, China in this TED talk from April. Calthorpe argues sprawl isolates–and counter to prevailing wisdom, it can be high density, citing gated high-rise superblocks in China as an example. He highlights seven principles the Chinese government is implementing to reduce sprawl and produce higher quality urban places. Calthorpe’s firm, Urban Footprint, helped formulate these seven principles:
- “Preserve natural ecologies, agrarian landscapes, and cultural heritage sites.”
- Mix – “Create mixed-use and mixed-income neighborhoods.”
- Walk – “Design walkable streets and human scale neighborhoods.”
- Bike – “Prioritize bicycle networks and auto-free streets.”
- Connect – “Increase density of road network, limit block size.”
- Ride – “Develop high quality transit and affordable BRT.”
- Focus – “Match density and mix to transit capacity.”
