Urban oases: dealing with densities, and a role for affordable APM shuttles and loops

摘要

This paper reviews the spacial, financial, and environmental costs of car parking, and the forcing effect of these factors on urban sprawl. As a means of containing sprawl, it projects the conentration of new growth within compact new residentially-based, pedestrian-zoned and landscaped communities, based upon infrastructures of short-range automated guideway transit, or peoplemovers (APMs). The advantages of this localized approach to AMP deployment are seen as technical simplicity, economy, and the advancement of the more compact use of land. Further simplification of APM technologies is urged, in order that their wider affordability and urban dpeloyment may be realized.