ABSTRACT
In his classic, The Accessible City , Wilfred Owen likens contemporary urban areas to badly designed buildings. If a hospital were designed so that food had to be wheeled through the operating room, it would lead to excess traffic and loss of efficiency. Instead, a well-designed hospital has its activities arranged so as to reduce unnecessary movement and avoid through-traffic where it has no reason to be. Many destinations fall within walking distance, the commute trip to downtown can be well-served by transit, and auto use is constrained by parking and congestion in the center. When the automobile is used, trips are relatively short and may be efficiently linked in tours. In Florida, the metropolitan planning organization for the Tallahassee area compared three future land use alternatives: one with continued sprawl toward the east and northeast, another with concentrated urban infill, and the third with new mixed-use communities in the underutilized southeast.
