From Super Block to Small Block: Urban Form Transformation and Its Impact on Road Network-A Quantitative Evaluation on Chenggong Core Area

摘要

Super block and giant road network have been a dominant form of China’s newtown development. This directly leads to numerous urban problems, such as high autodependency, serious traffic congestion, and unlivable communities. Transforming to anew urban form with human-scale blocks and fine-grain grid road network is drawingmuch attention recently. The transformation needs to answer a series of questions: whatwill be its impact on road capacity? How can cities deal with the cost re-arrangementbetween different players of road construction, maintenance, and management? Followinga general discussion on related factors and approaches for a solution, these issues arefurther analyzed using a case study of the core area of Chenggong new town in Kunming,China. The study shows that the concern about a negative impact on road networkcapacity is unfounded, and through reasonable cost restructuring and management, awin-win situation is possible for all players of road construction, maintenance, andmanagement hence an optimized societal cost-benefit arrangement can be reached in thetransformation.