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

A Look at Boone (Part 2: King Street)

King Street is Boone's primary commercial strip, and is one of the top "main streets" in North Carolina. For a half-mile the street is lined with numerous shops and restaurants. Even though it attracts a good amount of foot traffic, the sidewalk is wide enough that there is never a feeling of being jammed between the buildings and the parking lane. At times the sidewalk is arcaded, which is a plus on wet days.


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However (there's always a "however," isn't there?)... King Street's bipolar personality of walkable main street and major thoroughfare is detrimental. For example, the vehicular right-of-way is wide to the point that crossing is rather uncomfortable. Though the speed limit is low enough that you don't have to play human Frogger while trying to cross (like too many streets), King Street gets enough traffic to act as a barrier to businesses on the other side. The number of parking areas on the southern side (the right side in the picture) also kills the streetwall effect and most people prefer to walk on the other side.
Overall, King Street is solid by North Carolina standards but possesses way too many characteristics of modernistic, post-car urban design.

Appalachian Urbanity? A Look at Boone (Part 1: The Campus)

I recently visited Boone, North Carolina. This will be the first in a short series of posts inspired by and/or about the town (considered by some the best in the state).

Boone is well known for its natural beauty and being the home of Appalachian State University. We will get to the rest of the town some other time, but today I'll be focused specifically on ASU and its campus layout.

Like many universities, Appalachian State is laid out in a format that is somewhat reminiscent of a traditional city. A cluster of buildings connected by narrow pathways surrounds a central open space. App State's central meeting area is known as Sanford Mall. Of course, being a fairly new campus, a lot of design features are influenced by mistakes that modern cities have made in the last century.

Here is what the campus looks like from above...

The main part of the campus is framed by Hardin Street on the east side, Rivers Street on the south and King Street (Boone's main street) on the north. These major roadways (marked in purple) are essentially barriers to foot traffic and are a pain to cross, so I used them as a border separating the main part of campus from the rest of App State and Boone. The area we are looking at is 0.5 mile by 0.3 mile in size. Durham Park is outlined in green, and building footprints are marked in red.

The most prominent difference between the campus and a true traditional city layout is the huge amount of "green space." No, I'm not talking about the beautiful geographic features the Boone area is blessed with... I'm talking about stuff like this:


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Pointless green space is everywhere. We're not talking about a park. We're sitting here talking about green space, not a park... "green space."
Of course, pointless green space like this is merely a symptom of a larger design mistake. Why do we need all this green space? The architecture of the campus is mammothly scaled, and unfriendly at human eye level. (It's kind of ugly, too.) Green space makes the scene at least a little more visually appealing to people walking around.


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The huge amount of green space needed to neutralise the massive buildings also hurts the walkability of the campus. Desire lines like this are all over the place:


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Don't get me wrong, App State has a pretty nice campus. But as a result of some of these mistakes in scale and basic layout, the area is much more spread out and walking-unfriendly than it needs to be. Appalachian State is (yet another) example of a centrally designed carfree place that unfortunately retains a variety of mistakes that originate in car-centric planning.

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!

Article: "How the car industry outlawed crossing the road"

Very informative piece from the BBC! Here are some teasers...

How did America's anti-'jay'walking atmosphere get its start?

[C]ar lobby groups ... started taking over school safety education, stressing that "streets are for cars and children need to stay out of them". Anti-jaywalking laws were adopted in many cities in the late 1920s, and became the norm by the 1930s. 

[T]he cultural ascendancy of the car was secured as the auto industry promoted "America's love affair with the automobile". Car makers portrayed them as the ultimate expression of personal freedom, an essential element of the "American dream".

Some interesting statistics:

The UK is among those countries where jaywalking is not an offence. But the rate of pedestrian deaths is half that of the US, at 0.736 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2011 compared to 1.422 per 100,000 in America.

Read this article to get a good understanding of at least some of the background to the U.S.'s, *ahem*, uncomfortable walking environment...

Transportation disaster in Atlanta: how the region's car-centric urbanism is at fault

As a winter storm moves across the South (including here in normally sunny North Carolina) the worst-case-scenario gridlock event that is unfolding in Atlanta this evening shows off a major problem of Atlanta's sprawly urban form. Reports are pouring in of commuters stuck on the icy highways without a place to go, many of them miles upon miles from home. Some have resorted to walking for many hours just to get off the highway.

(Note: Although car-centric cities always have difficulty with adjusting to major winter events, the fact that this is taking place in the deep South adds to the craziness: Atlanta just isn't used to these types of events.)

Now, would Atlanta be having this same level of commuter chaos if the metro area was designed in a more organic, people-focused way? Would this amount of gridlock even take place if the Atlanta region had an effective rail and transit system? (MARTA ain't enough, folks).

I mean, really. Should a couple of inches of snow really be enough to shut down a metropolitan area of 6 million people, and even place some poor souls into life-threatening situations? No, it shouldn't. And yes, I definitely believe that the DOT down there has done a particularly awful job at handling this storm... but I think it's stupid to deny that Atlanta's sprawltacular "urban" form plays a key role in all of this.

Hundreds of thousands of people commute to and from work by the Atlanta highway system. Most of these commutes are at least 30 minutes without traffic. Of course this isn't breaking news; people across the country live far from work (at distances that would be unimaginable before the advent of the automobile). This isn't inherently wrong, either. But the Atlanta area is so car-centric that people are literally stranded without it. Tonight is just more proof of that.

True sustainability

UniverCity is a sustainable-development community located at the top of Burnaby Mountain (adjacent to Simon Fraser University) outside of Vancouver. Here is what the area looks like from above:


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Two things are apparent from the satellite view: an abundance of green space, and an abundance of parking space.

The German town that scrapped all traffic lights and signs

Excellent little story (complete with pictures) on the success of "shared space" in Bohmte, Germany. 

Here's a snippet:

"Four weeks ago, Bohmte banned traffic lights and warning signs, including those instructing drivers to give way or stop.
Only two rules remain – drivers cannot go above 30 mph, the German speed limit for city driving, and everyone has to yield to the right, regardless of whether it is a car, a bike or a mother with a pushchair.
Officials revealed there have been no shunts, bumps or pedestrian injuries in the month since the scheme started.
Previously, there was at least one serious crash every week and scores of lesser 'fender-benders'."
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1028740/Accident-free-zone-The-German-town-scrapped-traffic-lights-road-signs.html#ixzz2l33llJaD 

Taxco, Guerrero

The relatively hidden gem of Taxco lies approximately 100 miles southwest of Mexico City. The town is known for its silver trade and irregular, winding streets.

The beautiful church of Santa Prisca is in the center of town. And, for the record, you are looking at pretty much the widest stretch of pavement in the city.


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Ciudad tradicional: A Look at San Luis Potosí

Mexico, unlike its neighbors to the north, is filled to the brim with traditional-style cities. Most of these cities were founded during the brutal Spanish conquest, but some pre-Columbian sites remain from previous inhabitants. This is the first post in a series showing some of the wonderful pre-automobile towns that Mexico has to offer.

San Luis Potosí was founded in 1592 by miners. The city was named after the famous mining town of Potosí in modern-day Bolivia. SLP's center is home to some of the finest colonial architecture in all of Mexico.

For example...

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A Brief Tour of Wilmington, N.C.'s Historic Water Street

Recently I enjoyed a short visit to the oldest section of Wilmington, NC: Water Street. Wilmington was founded in the 1730s and Water Street is the best remaining memory of the town's original pre-automobile and people-focused layout. 

Here is a portion of the architecturally-lovely Alton Lennon Federal Building at the corner of Water and Market. At this point, Water Street is about 20-25 feet wide, paved in brick, and quite pedestrian-friendly.

This picture was taken from where the riverfront boardwalk meets the sidewalk in a plaza-like space. The tree-lined street with the parked cars is Market. The public art is a couple of giant Venus flytraps, I think. The river itself is less than ninety feet away from that (gorgeous) blue building, to give an idea of how close to the water Water Street really is.

The brick part of the street narrows to about 13 feet as you walk southward. From what I saw, most cars tried to avoid this section of the street. The speed limit, I would guess, is about 10 mph. Walking in the middle of the street was quite comfortable with traffic being so limited, but most people stuck to the ample sidewalk space. The building to the left (built in 1857) is a popular restaurant.

Looking back to where we started. (I'm also just a huge fan of those two buildings!)

A bit further down the street.

By this point, the riverfront boardwalk is separated from Water Street by buildings. Most of the foot-traffic (i.e. tourists) stuck to the boardwalk. Very little car traffic...

...until this tour bus drove by (although "crawled by" would be more accurate.) Why someone would rather drive than walk down this street, I have no idea. Also, a neat little pocket park is to the right.

Overall, Water Street is easily the nicest-looking and most walkable section of Wilmington. It seemed a bit lacking in the people department (most stayed closer to the river) but I visited at noon on a weekday so maybe it gets hopping at nighttime. This street is definitely one of North Carolina's best.
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Here is a map of the area (click to enlarge) from Google Earth with the approximate locations of where the pictures were taken. The distance from picture 1 to picture 6 is less than a quarter of a mile.

2 American Alleyways Repurposed as Narrow Streets

Tight streets (or "Really Narrow Streets" as Nathan Lewis calls them) are KEY in any successful urban area from the smallest village to a Tokyo-size megalopolis. I would say they are the most important part of what makes a great city (a city for people, not cars). Unfortunately, American cities have a noticeable lack of them outside of places founded in the colonial era like Boston and New Orleans. However, there are numerous examples of American cities sprucing up their alleyways, and the finished result is very similar to a Really Narrow Street. Here are two of those examples.

1. Will Dodge Way, Ashland, Oregon


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Will Dodge Way runs on the backside of the streetwall of buildings on East Main Street in Ashland. The width between each side of the alley (building-to-building) varies from ~15-25 feet.

2. Pedestrian Alley, Holland, Michigan (photo by me)

Google Earth says that this charming spot is called "Pedestrian Alley." Kind of generic, but it does a good job of describing what I would call a narrow street. The alleyway runs between two of Holland's major downtown streets, Central and River, and behind buildings facing the always-popular 8th Street. Several businesses have entrances opening onto the alley. Most of the actual pedestrian traffic sticks to the 8th Street-facing side, though. The width of the pictured section of the alley is about ~16 feet.

Now of course an alley like this is just a tiny pedestrian oasis in what is still a car-focused town... but I thought it would be cool to point out a couple of people-sized spaces that have been developed recently.

Related links:

Here's a Curbed article on a similar plan in a fashionable neighbourhood of San Francisco.

Welcome to Apex Urbanism!

Welcome. My plan for this blog is not really structured- I'll post pictures, articles, etc. related to urbanism that I find interesting. Occasionally I will post original articles of my own about urbanity in my hometown and other places I encounter in my travels.

The kinds of topics that will be posted about on this blog include (but are not limited to):

Cities (this one should be pretty obvious.)

Transportation

Walking as a means of transportation

Buildings & architecture

Traditional cities vs. modern cities

Enjoy!