Pedestrianization - Before & After

Check out this awesome gallery collaboration from archdaily.com and urb-i of 30 different streets successfully redesigned with people in mind. Here's an example, Ford Street, from Auckland:

(much much better, isn't it?)

h/t to @thisbigcity and @SteveDombek for tweeting

Narrow Isn't Enough (Kill the Curb!)

(this is how to do it)

In this addition to his Traditional City series, Nathan Lewis elaborates on how simply having a narrow street isn't enough to create a successful place designed for people. The existence of significant curbs on many narrow streets around the world delegates a separate place for cars and a separate place for people, even inadvertently. Read on!

Narrow Streets for People 4: Organizing the Street

Read about alley redevelopment

Here's a really good article ("Cities Give Alleys New Life") on some recent alley redevelopment projects, including several in San Francisco. This type of development is a successful way to encourage people-sized streets and places by utilizing unused/rundown spaces that already exist in our cities.

Related:
2 American Alleyways Repurposed as Narrow Streets

New from Nathan Lewis

Life Without Cars 2014

Once a year, we take a little time to imagine Life Without Cars. Many people live without cars today, and also without bicycles (at least for daily transport use), mostly in urban areas with good public transportation. In the developing world also, most people don't own cars, and live in urban areas with good public transportation. Before 1900, nobody used cars. ...

Continue reading at the link!

A short opinion piece from Scotland that you should read

Car-free city centres a must by Norman Armstrong

"REPORTS in The Herald as I write (November 20) tragically illustrate points I made (Letters, November 15), that our addiction to oil and cars constitutes the overwhelming problem facing western society, a problem disproportionally concentrated in Glasgow."

Required reading for today!

Here's an article that's a must-read for anyone interested in building better places in our communities. Density is not the answer, Place to Non-Place ratio is.

Places and Non-Places

Recommended reading: The "narrow" street: narrow for whom?

This is a fantastic post over at Urban kchoze that goes deep into the topic of optimal street width. I especially liked this little bit:

"... [a] human being is about half a meter wide ... a car on the other hand is on average 1,8-meter wide. Compacts are a bit narrower and SUVs are larger.  So when we call [these types of streets] a "narrow" street, we still judge the street from the point of view of car drivers, not of pedestrians. So I think we ought to find a better name for them: a right-sized street, or an human-scale street, or some other term."

Let's think of some ideas for a better way to describe a human-centric street!