Urban Corridors

Economic corridors—ambitious infrastructural development projects that newly liberalizing countries in Asia and Africa are undertaking—are dramatically redefining the shape of urbanization. Spanning multiple cities and croplands, these corridors connect metropolises via high-speed superhighways in an effort to make certain strategic regions attractive destinations for private investment. As policy makers search for decentralized and market-oriented means for the transfer of land from agrarian constituencies to infrastructural promoters and urban developers, the reallocation of property control is erupting into volatile land-based social conflicts. In Shareholder Cities, Sai Balakrishnan argues that some of India's most decisive conflicts over its urban future will unfold in the regions along the new economic corridors where electorally strong agrarian propertied classes directly encounter financially powerful incoming urban firms. Balakrishnan focuses on the first economic corridor, the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, and the construction of three new cities along it. The book derives its title from a current mode of resolving agrarian-urban conflicts in which agrarian landowners are being transformed into shareholders in the corridor cities, and the distributional implications of these new land transformations. Shifting the focus of the study of India's contemporary urbanization away from megacities to these in-between corridor regions, Balakrishnan explores the production of uneven urban development that unsettles older histories of agrarian capitalism and the emergence of agrarian propertied classes as protagonists in the making of urban real estate markets. Shareholder Cities highlights the possibilities for a democratic politics of inclusion in which agrarian-urban encounters can create opportunities for previously excluded groups to stake new claims for themselves in the corridor regions.

Corridor redevelopment is not a new topic. Various planning and design approaches--such as complete streets, living streets, and livable streets--aim to redevelop commercial corridors to meet more of their users' needs, including their need for walking and biking rather than just traveling by car. A marked difference between a healthy corridors approach and other approaches is that the former looks beyond just the street and considers how the street supports the daily needs of all who live, work, and travel along it. Building Healthy Corridors: Transforming Urban and Suburban Arterials into Thriving Places takes a comprehensive view and considers how the corridor contributes to the overall health of the surrounding community, including community members' opportunities to be physically active. It also considers safety, housing affordability, transportation options, environmental sustainability, and social cohesion as well as modifications that would link residents to the corridor and improve connections to jobs and adjacent parts of the community.

Some communities have begun to demand more attractive and functional roadside development. This report shows how to use corridor-specific plans to create a sense of order and place in an increasingly cluttered landscape. These plans integrate well-known regulatory techniques to improve the function, safety, and appearance of corridors. The report includes strategies to improve unsightly and unsafe commercial roadway corridors and techniques to identify and protect scenic corridors. Includes sample corridor development standards from three communities.

TRB's Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Report 145: Reinventing the Urban Interstate: A New Paradigm for Multimodal Corridors presents strategies for planning, designing, building, and operating multimodal corridors?freeways and high-capacity transit lines running parallel in the same travel corridors.

Emerging Paradigms in Urban Mobility: Planning, Finance and Implementation explains the types of new urban mobility planning paradigms that are emerging throughout the world, along with their potential to transform the transportation landscape. As half of the world’s 7 billion people now live in cities, thus causing severe road congestion, increased air pollution, energy insecurity and sustainability problems in cities and the planet itself, this book presents new paradigms that are emerging to address these problems, along with other topics of note, including economic efficiency, health, the well-being of cities and their residents, urban mobility transformations, and the role of social media. In addition, the book looks at Integrated Corridor Management and how it improves the people-moving performance of multi-modal transport systems in high demand urban corridors and how countries balance the mobility benefits of motorcycles with the environmental and safety threats they pose. Provides previously unpublished research on new approaches to integrating governance, the changing role of IT, and shared mobility initiatives Links transportation and land use, climate change, and poverty reduction and gender, going well beyond the technical issues of transport planning Highlights successful factors that have worked and how they can be tailored to different contexts Includes learning aids, such as case studies, text boxes and chapter openers and summaries

With the continual growth of the world's urban population, biodiversity in towns and cities will play a critical role in global biodiversity. This is the first book to provide an overview of international developments in urban biodiversity and sustainable design. It brings together the views, experiences and expertise of leading scientists and designers from the industrialised and pre-industrialised countries from around the world. The contributors explore the biological, cultural and social values of urban biodiversity, including methods for assessing and evaluating urban biodiversity, social and educational issues, and practical measures for restoring and maintaining biodiversity in urban areas. Contributions come from presenters at an international scientific conference held in Erfurt, Germany 2008 during the 9th Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biodiversity. This is also Part of our Conservation Science and Practice book series (with Zoological Society of London).

Trees and vegetation in cities aren’t just there to make the place look pretty. They have an important ecological function. This book contains studies and perspectives on urban forests from a broad array of basic and applied scientific disciplines including ecosystem ecology, biogeochemistry, landscape ecology, plant community ecology, geography, and social science. The book includes contributions from experts around the world, allowing the reader to evaluate methods and management that are appropriate for particular geographic, environmental, and socio-political contexts.