Twin Cities Streets for People

Recently some members of the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals had a list-serve discussion about the common practice of using Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth as an indicator of a community's success.  Using GDP as a measure is a very narrow lense through wich to look in evaluating quality of life and a group of peoples' level of happiness. 

From a land use and transportation perspective, using GDP alone as a success indicator may encourage auto-oriented planning and design because automobilism leads to a lot of economic activity through car crashes, repairs, hostpital bills, insurance claims, lawyer fees, etcetera.  What would it mean to the GDP if we had fewer trips taken by car, fewer crashes, fewer injuries, fewer fatalities, etcetera?  

This video news report takes a look at China, where an entire new city was recently built as part of the effort to keep national GDP growing at a rate of 8% annually.  This city currently stands empty and at least for the moment makes a very good case for broadening our econonomic measures beyond the narrow GDP measure.