Jake Bayer | Dismantling the Automobile

Dismantling the Automobile: Reconsidering American ideology & Cities

By Jake Bayer

01

Introduction

American twentieth century culture defined by individualism and consumption drove people away from cities and into a new age of urban sprawl. The introduction and emphasis of the automobile in the early 20th century bound it to American development.

It gave people the freedom to move away from cities, buy their own homes, and achieve their version of the American Dream. The infrastructure that supported the automobile shaped and defined the extents of the city. The infrastructure associated with the automobile, highways and subdivisions, continue to push the extents of American cities. Redistributing the American people and industries away from cities causing their decline. Expanding cities consume agricultural land that has sustained America’s growing population. Cities cannot continue to sprawl.

The pandemic acted as a hard reset to the stagnate trends of American cities and lifestyle. A society on the go was told to stay, as lock downs and quarantines were imposed to stop the spread of the virus. The car dependent society parked their cars as new technologies and methods emerged to help people stay in place. Businesses and schools shifted to virtual platforms while shipping industries grew rapidly. While reduced travel and commuting caused emission levels and pollution to drop and some of the most polluted cities around the world saw an increase in air quality. Some cities around the globe started to take advantage of reduced auto use and reinvest in more sustainable methods of public transportation even eliminating cars from city centers entirely.

The pandemic broke the patterns that had been routine for decades and now as the world emerges from the pandemic the world will never be as it was.

This proposal considers growing trends to speculate on the urban form and infrastructure of the city of tomorrow.

02

The City of Tomorrow

The pandemic acted as a hard reset to the stagnate trends of American cities and lifestyle. A society on the go was told to stay, as lock downs and quarantines were imposed to stop the spread of the virus. The car dependent society parked their cars as new technologies and methods emerged to help people stay in place. Businesses and schools shifted to virtual platforms while shipping industries grew rapidly. While reduced travel and commuting caused emission levels and pollution to drop and some of the most polluted cities around the world saw an increase in air quality. Some cities around the globe started to take advantage of reduced auto use and reinvest in more sustainable methods of public transportation even eliminating cars from city centers entirely. The pandemic broke the patterns that had been routine for decades and now as the world emerges from the pandemic the world will never be as it was. This proposal considers growing trends to speculate on the urban form and infrastructure of the city of tomorrow.

03

Site

In order to arrive at the site, the project begins to speculate through a series of sketches that look at the entire city of Cincinnati, identifying critical sites that can be used as a case study to examine an incremental city of tomorrow. The aim of these initial sketches is to quickly reimagine the urban form and infrastructure of the city of Cincinnati and to start to understand design issues that the project would look to solve. These sketches create a diagram for the potential urban form of the city of tomorrow and look to consider issues of the current infrastructure system as well as speculating on how urban sprawl and resulting car dependence could be resolved.

In order to combat the horizontal sprawl of the city many different factors would have to be put in place. Firstly, we would have to alter our methods of transportation. The car creates problems by allowing people to move freely and travel greater distances beyond that of city limits. We would have to sever the connection between the American ideology and its attachment to the car. By centralizing the means of transportation and shifting it toward public transportation rather than individual transportation there will not only be environmental benefits but will allow for the extent of the city's borders to be more easily controlled. The extent of the city would have to be defined and a hard stop would have to be put in place to stop the city from sprawling any further. This boundary would be the I-275 loop, a highway that currently encircles the city of Cincinnati and its surrounding suburbs. Everything beyond that loop would remain untouched by urban development to be utilized for agriculture

With cars eliminated within the city limits and public transportation, in the form of trains and streetcar, the highway could be converted into a linear housing megastructure that would engulf the I-275 loop. This megastructure would act as the suburb of the new city and would contain many housing units within.

This could also potentially house those who oversee agricultural production.

There would be some parking garages embedded within the megastructure to accommodate those living and working in the rural outer rings around the city who might still be using cars. Inside the urban center dwellings could be reorganized into dense towers to conserve the building footprint. Minimizing the footprint and consolidating the urban area would make public transportation more effective as density would develop along major traffic routes. Like many of the precedents a more densely packed scheme could result in more open public space.

are not important as the inhabitents do not need to leave the dwelling and therefore do not look at or pay attention to the exterior facades.

Cellular City Cities can be densely packed and easily organized to conserve as much space possible while eliminating a need for car traffic. The rooftops of the city can provide public and green spaces for physical interaction. Public transit can take people with manufactoring jobs their required facilities.

With density situated toward the center of the city public transportation would need a station at a site that has access to the city center. Currently Cincinnati has the I-71 highway system passing right through the heart of the city. This site could become a major transit hub with housing to service the surrounding areas. The automobile could be phased out over time as this central piece of infrastructure could be converted into a high-speed rail and streetcar station.

This diagrammatic study of the Cincinnati highlighted this critical site at the heart of the city. This site has the potential of becoming a major transit and social hub making it an important site to study throughout the project portion of the proposal.

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The site for the proposal is Ft. Washington Way a portion of highway that cuts right through the heart of downtown Cincinnati separating the central business district from the city’s riverfront. Ft. Washington Way is below the grade of the city with bridges over it allowing the city’s streets to flow over it into the city’s riverfront area to the south. This underpass is currently a very important strip of highway that allows through traffic to move north and south through the city’s center. To the north of the site is the city’s central business district that is situated around Fountain Square, a very important public space in the city’s center that has been recently redeveloped in the last two decades. To the south of the site is a river front area, known as the Banks, that has been undergoing development for the last decade and has become an event and commercial hub due to its proximity to the riverfront and the two sports stadiums in Cincinnati. This site is a critical site to explore as it is located right in the heart of the downtown near many of the amenities the city has to offer with a potential connection to the transit route passing through it. This site offers the potential to mend the separation between the city’s core and its riverfront while creating a dense urban development that can incorporate the growing trends outlined within this document.

04

Proposal

With the site situated in the heart of the downtown of Cincinnati along a major transit hub the program of the development would need to accommodate dense populations of people living and moving though the site. Residential towers would minimize the buildings footprint while maximizing the number of units it could accommodate. This would increase the density of the development that would provide a larger population to engage with the cities center and surrounding amenities.

By reconsolidating back into dense urban areas people would not longer need to drive to city centers for events or entertainment. They would live within proximity to these event and commercial areas and would provide a large enough population to sustain these public amenity areas more consistently rather than only getting costumers on weekends when people have time to drive to downtown areas.

The development would also contain a highspeed rail station that would allow for people to quickly get to the city center to interact with the new development. This would connect the city of Cincinnati to other surrounding cities and would expand the range of people traveling to the city. While the revival of the streetcar system would allow for people coming to Cincinnati from other cities to arrive at the transit station from other cities and then quickly be distributed through city of Cincinnati via streetcar. The train station itself could contain public amenities and commercial program to service people traveling and provide a public space for people living within the development.

With the use of the internet and digital forms of media growing and becoming more accessible on a variety of platforms there is less need to commute to work, stores, or to other people. We can simply use technologies to communicate or make purchases.

With the use of the internet and digital forms of media growing and becoming more accessible on a variety of platforms there is less need to commute to work, stores, or to other people. We can simply use technologies to communicate or make purchases. A reduced need for office spaces means people can work from wherever they want, and businesses don’t have to provide physical space for employees. This eliminates the constrain of living near a physical workspace allowing the city of tomorrow to be much more flexible in planning. Public space could not only be used for recreation but could provide areas for people to work during business hours. While at a city scale strict divisions between work and living can be blurred, meaning that dedicated office space can be assimilated or redistributed across the city at varying scales rather than being focused and isolated to specific business districts. While the ability to work remotely gives people the option to stay within their homes to work and play if they chose and delivery methods can help reduce their need to travel.

The project looks at a portion of the site at a higher level of detail. This portion of the site contains the train station and hotel programs. The train station serves as a central transit hub within the city that acts as the vessel connecting the high speed rail and street car systems while providing public space for pedestrain traffic. The building is very open and has cuts through the exterior and the ground surface to reveal the transit systems operating at the street level and below.