Urban Gardening: You Can Grow Food, No Matter Where You Live

Jacobs’ top ten list by Michael Mehaffy

Author: Michael Mehaffy

“Let me close with a list of what I for one believe to be Jane Jacobs’ Top Ten most important – and most misunderstood – lessons for our profession:

1. The city needs to maintain a continuous walkable fabric that promotes “thoroughgoing city mobility and fluidity of use.” This is a key to promoting diversity, and unlocking the capacity of cities as engines of mobility. This alone does not guarantee diversity, but it is a prerequisite for it. This means, among other things, that alternatives need to be found to disruptive uses, such as freeways, large parks and the various “campuses” that might interrupt this fabric.

2. The antithesis of this approach is to create isolated “projects” or project neighborhoods – large, disruptive superblocks of monocultures, featuring artfully designed, unchangeable buildings, surrounded by amorphous no-man’s landscapes that she dismissively termed “project land oozings.” A particularly destructive example is the Clarence Perry “Neighborhood Unit”, a standardized planner model of inward-turning neighborhoods surrounded by fast car sewers. But other examples include large shopping centers surrounded by oceans of parking; large industrial users (also surrounded by parking); large hospitals; large university campuses; and other variations of the destructive “campus” model. Examples like Portland, Oregon show that it IS possible to integrate these uses into a modern city.

3. The best way to fight gentrification is not to demolish old buildings and build high rises, but to go into other depressed areas and regenerate them. Jacobs did not say don’t do new buildings, but she said keep a mix. What about Manhattan, which is almost fully gentrified? Well, how about Brooklyn, The Bronx, Queens? There is far more that can and should be repaired, before we resort to colonies of massive new buildings.

4. The city must not be treated as a work of art, or a sculpture gallery. This silver-bullet sensibility – encouraged by many architects and developers – has favored scraping away all existing context, in exchange for new, untested, and out of scale “projects.” These projects are often supposed to be “sustainable”, but they rely on almost no evidence of what has actually been sustained anywhere. (Indeed, they often explicitly reject it.) As Jacobs said in her characteristically pithy tone, “the method fails.”

5. Zoning is not inherently bad, but should be liberal with regard to use, and prescriptive with regard to the way buildings address the street. (To a remarkable degree she pre-figured form-based coding)

6. Density is a valuable urban ingredient in context, but is not an end in itself. Again, we must be wary of single variables and single-variable solutions, like “skyscraper cities.” What we value is not sheer aggregations of people massed together – or separated by “open space” – but the web of connections and ordinary encounters between people. This is what compact, walkable urbanism can give us, in a range of conditions, including big cities and smaller towns.

7. Cities are engines of knowledge synergy that create economic prosperity (economists now call this phenomenon “Jacobs Spillovers”). There is a physical web of relationships that starts at the pedestrian scale. “Sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a city’s wealth of public life may grow,” she said. Very hopefully, there also appears to be a corollary in the conservation of resources, that does not come only from reduced driving and from compact buildings, but in fact, comes from the “metabolic efficiency” of dense networks of connection within cities.

8. Diversity does not by itself guarantee avoidance of economic stratification. But lack of diversity does guarantee more stratification. Again, we should not be looking for single-variable solutions, but for an interplay of relationships. In human affairs, that interplay is best facilitated through strategies of diversification.

9. “It’s the economics, stupid.” We need to recognize that economic systems are feedback mechanisms for the values we seek, and we must treat economics as such – recognizing that there is as much danger in “money floods” as in “money droughts.” Our job is to select the right tool for the job, and make sure that things are working optimally. They do not do so by themselves, but only with an active citizenry and a lively culture.

10. The capacity to solve our problems rests with the informal web of creative and regulatory relationships we have – our culture – and not with specialized “experts.” To rely too much on experts in silos is to reinforce their siloed condition, which threatens us all. Certainly this does not mean that there is no role for experts, or for government. It does mean that this role must be more catalytic, more “bottom-up” – more with the grain of culture, than against it.

In the end, Jacobs’ message was a hopeful one. We broke cities – we broke our built environment – and we can fix it. We do have the power to make walkable, thriving cities and towns, and to erase the disastrous course of suburban fragmentation we set ourselves on several generations ago. The kind of problem a city is, is one that can, in fact, be solved – if we understand it, and learn from it.”

http://www.planetizen.com/node/53128

Jan Gehl about Urban Planning

Downtown is for People (Fortune Classic, 1958) – Jane Jacobs

“Editor’s note: Every week, Fortune.com publishes a favorite story from our magazine archives. In honor of  the 50th anniversary edition of Jane Jacobs’ influential book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, we’re republishing one of Jacobs’ earlier articles in which the urban activist laid out the case against modernist planners.

If the downtown of tomorrow looks like most of the redevelopment projects being planned for it today, it will end up a monumental bore. But downtown could be made lively and exciting — and it’s not too hard to find out how.

By Jane Jacobs

This year is going to be a critical one for the future of the city. All over the country civic leaders and planners are preparing a series of redevelopment projects that will set the character of the center of our cities for generations to come. Great tracts, many blocks wide, are being razed; only a few cities have their new downtown projects already under construction; but almost every big city is getting ready to build, and the plans will soon be set.

What will the projects look like? They will be spacious, parklike, and uncrowded. They will feature long green vistas. They will be stable and symmetrical and orderly. They will be clean, impressive, and monumental. They will have all the attributes of a well-kept, dignified cemetery. And each project will look very much like the next one: the Golden Gateway office and apartment center planned for San Francisco; the Civic Center for New Orleans; the Lower Hill auditorium and apartment project for Pittsburgh; the Convention Center for Cleveland; the Quality Hill offices and apartments for Kansas City; the downtown scheme for Little Rock; the Capitol Hill project for Nashville. From city to city the architects’ sketches conjure up the same dreary scene; here is no hint of individuality or whim or surprise, no hint that here is a city with a tradition and flavor all its own.

These projects will not revitalize downtown; they will deaden it. For they work at cross-purposes to the city. They banish the street. They banish its function. They banish its variety. There is one notable exception, the Gruen plan for Fort Worth; ironically, the main point of it has been missed by the many cities that plan to imitate it. Almost without exception the projects have one standard solution for every need: commerce, medicine, culture, government—whatever the activity, they take a part of the city’s life, abstract it from the hustle and bustle of downtown, and set it, like a self-sufficient island, in majestic isolation.

There are, certainly, ample reasons for redoing downtown–falling retail sales, tax bases in jeopardy, stagnant real-estate values, impossible traffic and parking conditions, failing mass transit, encirclement by slums. But with no intent to minimize these serious matters, it is more to the point to consider what makes a city center magnetic, what can inject the gaiety, the wonder, the cheerful hurly-burly that make people want to come into the city and to linger there. For magnetism is the crux of the problem. All downtown’s values are its byproducts. To create in it an atmosphere of urbanity and exuberance is not a frivolous aim.

We are becoming too solemn about downtown. The architects, planners—and businessmen–are seized with dreams of order, and they have become fascinated with scale models and bird’s-eye views. This is a vicarious way to deal with reality, and it is, unhappily, symptomatic of a design philosophy now dominant: buildings come first, for the goal is to remake the city to fit an abstract concept of what, logically, it should be. But whose logic? The logic of the projects is the logic egocentric children, playing with pretty blocks and shouting “See what I made!”–a viewpoint much cultivated in our schools of architecture and design. And citizens who should know better are so fascinated by the sheer process of rebuilding that the end results are secondary to them.

With such an approach, the end results will be about as helpful to the city as the dated relics of the City Beautiful movement, which in the early years of this century was going to rejuvenate the city by making it parklike, spacious, and monumental. For the underlying intricacy, and the life that makes downtown worth fixing at all, can never be fostered synthetically. No one can find what will work for our cities by looking at the boulevards of Paris, as the City Beautiful people did; and they can’t find it by looking at suburban garden cities, manipulating scale models, or inventing dream cities.

You’ve got to get out and walk. Walk, and you will see that many of the assumptions on which the projects depend are visibly wrong. You will see, for example; that a worthy and well-kept institutional center does not necessarily upgrade its surroundings. (Look at the blight-engulfed urban universities, or the petered-out environs of such ambitious landmarks as the civic auditorium in St. Louis and the downtown mall in Cleveland.) You will see that suburban amenity is not what people seek downtown. (Look at Pittsburghers by the thousands climbing forty-two steps to enter the very urban Mellon Square, but balking at crossing the street into the ersatz suburb of Gateway Center.)

You will see that it is not the nature of downtown to decentralize. Notice how astonishingly small a place it is; how abruptly it gives way, outside the small, high-powered core, to underused area. Its tendency is not to fly apart but to become denser, more compact. Nor is this tendency some leftover from the past; the number of people working within the cores has been on the increase, and given the long-term growth in white-collar work it will continue so. The tendency to become denser is a fundamental quality of downtown and it persists for good and sensible reasons.

If you get out and walk, you see all sorts of other clues. Why is the hub of downtown such a mixture of things? Why do office workers on New York’s handsome Park Avenue turn off to Lexington or Madison Avenue at the first corner they reach? Why is a good steak house usually in an old building? Why are short blocks apt to be busier than long ones?

It is the premise of this article that the best way to plan for downtown is to see how people use it today; to look for its strengths and to exploit and reinforce them. There is no logic that can be superimposed on the city; people make it, and it is to them, not buildings, that we must fit our plans. This does not mean accepting the present; downtown does need an overhaul, it is dirty, it is congested. But there are things that are right about it too, and by simple old-fashioned observation we can see what they are. We can see what people like.

How hard can a street work?

The best place to look at first is the street. One had better look quickly too; not only are the projects making away with the noisy automobile traffic of the street, they are making away with the street itself. In its stead will be open spaces with long vistas and lots and lots of elbowroom.

But the street works harder than any other part of downtown. It is the nervous system; it communicates the flavor, the feel, the sights. It is the major point of transaction and communication. Users of downtown know very well that downtown needs not fewer streets, but more, especially for pedestrians. They are constantly making new, extra paths for themselves, through mid-block lobbies of buildings, block-through stores and banks, even parking lots and alleys. Some of the builders of downtown know this too, and rent space along their hidden streets.

Rockefeller Center, frequently cited to prove that projects are good for downtown, differs in a very fundamental way from the projects being designed today. It respects the street. Rockefeller Center knits tightly into every street that intersects it. One of its most brilliant features is the full-fledged extra street with which it cuts across blocks that elsewhere are too long. Its open spaces are eddies of the streets, small and sharp and lively, not large, empty, and boring. Most important, it is so dense and concentrated that the uniformity it does possess is a relatively small episode in the area.

As one result of its extreme density, Rockefeller Center had to put the overflow of its street activity underground, and as is so often the case with successful projects, planners have drawn the wrong moral: to keep the ground level more open, they are sending the people into underground streets although the theoretical purpose of the open space is to endow people with more air and sky, not less. It would be hard to think of a more expeditious way to dampen downtown than to shove its liveliest activities and brightest lights underground, yet this is what Philadelphia’s Penn Center and Pittsburgh’s Gateway Center do. Any department-store management that followed such a policy with its vital ground-floor space, instead of using it as a village of streets, would go out of business.

The animated alley

The real potential is in the street, and there are far more opportunities for exploiting it than are realized. Consider, for example, Maiden Lane, an odd two-block-long, narrow, back-door alley in San Francisco. Starting with nothing more remarkable than the dirty, neglected back sides of department stores and nondescript buildings, a group of merchants made this alley into one of the finest shopping streets in America. Maiden Lane has trees along its sidewalks, redwood benches to invite the sightseer or window shopper or buyer to linger, sidewalks of colored paving, sidewalk umbrellas when the sun gets hot. All the merchants do things differently: some put out tables with their wares, some hang out window boxes and grow vines. All the buildings, old and new, look individual; the most celebrated is an expanse of tan brick with a curved doorway, by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The pedestrian’s welfare is supreme; during the rush of the day, he has the street. Maiden Lane is an oasis with an irresistible sense of intimacy, cheerfulness, and spontaneity. It is one of San Francisco’s most powerful downtown magnets.

Downtown can’t be remade into a bunch of Maiden Lanes; and it would be insufferably quaint if it were. But the potential illustrated can be realized by any city and in its own particular way. The plan by Victor Gruen Associates for Fort Worth is an outstanding example. It has been publicized chiefly for its arrangements to provide enormous perimeter parking garages and convert the downtown into a pedestrian island, but its main purpose is to enliven the streets with variety and detail. This is a point being overlooked by most of the eighty-odd cities that, at last count, were seriously considering emulation of the Gruen plan’s traffic principles.

There is no magic in simply removing cars from downtown, and certainly none in stressing peace, quiet, and dead space. The removal of the cars is important only because of the great opportunities it opens to make the streets work harder and to keep downtown activities compact and concentrated. To these ends, the excellent Gruen plan includes, in its street treatment, sidewalk arcades, poster columns, flags, vending kiosks, display stands, outdoor cafes, bandstands, flower beds, and special lighting effects. Street concerts, dances, and exhibits are to be fostered. The whole point is to make the streets more surprising, more compact, more variegated, and busier than before-not less so.

One of the beauties of the Fort Worth plan is that it works with existing buildings, and this is a positive virtue not just a cost-saving expedient. Think of any city street that people enjoy and you will see that characteristically it has old buildings mixed with the new. This mixture is one of downtown’s greatest advantages, for downtown streets need high-yield, middling-yield, low-yield, and no-yield enterprises. The intimate restaurant or good steak house, the art store, the university club, the fine tailor, even the bookstores and antique stores–it is these kinds of enterprises for which old buildings are so congenial. Downtown streets should play up their mixture of buildings with all its unspoken–but well understood–implications of choice.

The smallness of big cities

It is not only for amenity but for economics that choice is so vital. Without a mixture on the streets, our downtowns would be superficially standardized, and functionally standardized as well. New construction is necessary, but it is not an unmixed blessing: its inexorable economy is fatal to hundreds of enterprises able to make out successfully in old buildings. Notice that when a new building goes up, the kind of ground-floor tenants it gets are usually the chain store and the chain restaurant. Lack of variety in age and overhead is an unavoidable defect in large new shopping centers and is one reason why even the most successful cannot incubate the unusual–a point overlooked by planners of downtown shopping-center projects.

We are apt to think of big cities as equaling big enterprises, little towns as equaling little enterprises. Nothing could be less true. Big enterprises do locate in big cities, but they find small towns as congenial. Big enterprises have great self-sufficiency, are capable of maintaining most of the specialized skills and equipment they need, and they have no trouble reaching a broad market.

But for the small, specialized enterprise, everything is reversed; it must draw on supplies and skills outside itself; its market is so selective it needs exposure to hundreds of thousands of people. Without the centralized city it could not exist; the larger the city, the greater not only the number, but the proportion, of small enterprises. A metropolitan center comes across to people as a center largely by virtue of its enormous collection of small elements, where people can see them, at street level.

The pedestrian’s level

Let’s look for a moment at the physical dimensions of the street. The user of downtown is mostly on foot, and to enjoy himself he needs to see plenty of contrast on the streets. He needs assurance that the street is neither interminable nor boring, so he does not get weary just looking down it. Thus streets that have an end in sight are often pleasing; so are streets that have the punctuation of contrast at frequent intervals. Georgy Kepes and Kevin Lynch, two faculty members of M.I.T., have made a study of what walkers in downtown Boston notice. While the feature that drew the most comment was the proportion of open space, the walkers showed a great interest in punctuations of all kinds appearing a little way ahead of them–spaces, or greenery, or windows set forward, or churches, or clocks. Anything really different, whether large or a detail, interested them.

Narrow streets, if they are not too narrow (like many of Boston’s) and are not choked with cars, can also cheer a walker by giving him a continual choice of this side of the street or that, and twice as much to see. The differences are something anyone can try out for himself by walking a selection of downtown streets.

This does not mean all downtown streets should be narrow and short. Variety is wanted in this respect too. But it does mean that narrow streets or reasonably wide alleys have a unique value that revitalizers of downtown ought to use to the hilt instead of wasting. It also means that if pedestrian and automobile traffic is separated out on different streets, planners would do better to choose the narrower streets for pedestrians, rather than the most wide and impressive. Where monotonously wide and long streets are turned over to exclusive pedestrian use, they are going to be a problem. They will come much more alive and persuasive if they are broken into varying parts. The Gruen plan, for example, will interrupt the long, wide gridiron vistas of Fort Worth by narrowing them at some points, widening them into plazas at others. It is also the best possible showmanship to play up the streets’ variety, contrast, and activity by means of display windows, street furniture, imagination, and paint, and it is excellent drama to exploit the contrast between the street’s small elements and its big banks, big stores, big lobbies, or solid walls.

Most redevelopment projects cannot do this. They are designed as blocks: self-contained, separate elements in the city. The streets that border them are conceived of as just that–borders, and relatively unimportant in their own right. Look at the bird’s-eye views published of forthcoming projects: if they bother to indicate the surrounding streets, all too likely an airbrush has softened the streets into an innocuous blur.

Maps and reality

But the street, not the block, is the significant unit. When a merchant takes a lease he ponders what is across and up and down the street, rather than what is on the other side of the block. When blight or improvement spreads, it comes along the street. Entire complexes of city life take their names, not from blocks, but from streets–Wall Street, Fifth Avenue, State Street, Canal Street, Beacon Street.

Why do planners fix on the block and ignore the street? The answer lies in a short cut in their analytical techniques. After planners have mapped building conditions, uses, vacancies, and assessed valuations, block by block, they combine the data for each block, because this is the simplest way to summarize it, and characterize the block by appropriate legends. No matter how individual the street, the data for each side of the street in each block is combined with data for the other three sides of its block. The street is statistically sunk without a trace. The planner has a graphic picture of downtown that tells him little of significance and much that is misleading.

Believing their block maps instead of their eyes, developers think of downtown streets as dividers of areas, not as the unifiers they are. Weighty decisions about redevelopment are made on the basis of what is a “good” or “poor” block, and this leads to worse incongruities than the most unenlightened laissez faire.

The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York is a case in point. This cultural superblock is intended to be very grand and the focus of the whole music and dance world of New York. But its streets will be able to give it no support whatever. Its eastern street is a major trucking artery where the cargo trailers, on their way to the industrial districts and tunnels, roar so loudly that sidewalk conversation must be shouted. To the north, the street will be shared with a huge, and grim, high school. To the south will be another superblock institution, a campus for Fordham.

And what of the new Metropolitan Opera, to be the crowning glory of the project? The old opera has long suffered from the fact that it has been out of context amid the garment district streets, with their overpowering loft buildings and huge cafeterias. There was a lesson here for the project planners. If the published plans are followed, however, the opera will again have neighbor trouble. Its back will be its effective entrance; for this is the only place where the building will be convenient to the street and here is where opera-goers will disembark from taxis and cars. Lining the other side of the street are the towers of one of New York’s bleakest public-housing projects. Out of the frying pan into the fire.

If redevelopers of downtown must depend so heavily on maps instead of simple observation, they should draw a map that looks like a network, and then analyze their data strand by strand of the net, not by the boles in the net. This would give a picture of downtown that would show Fifth Avenue or State Street or Skid Row quite clearly. In the rare cases where a downtown street actually is a divider, this can be shown too, but there is no way to find this out except by walking and looking.

The customer is right

In this dependence on maps as some sort of higher reality, project planners and urban designers assume they can create a promenade simply by mapping one in where they want it, then having it built. But a promenade needs promenaders. People have very concrete reasons for where they walk downtown, and whoever would beguile them had better provide those reasons.

The handsome, glittering stretch of newly rebuilt Park Avenue in New York is an illustration of this stubborn point. People simply do not walk there in the crowds they should to justify this elegant asset to the city with its extraordinary crown jewels, Lever House and the new bronze Seagram Building. The office workers and visitors who pour from these buildings turn off, far more often than not, to Lexington Avenue on the east or Madison Avenue on the west. Assuming that the customer is right, an assumption that must be made about the users of downtown, it is obvious that Lexington and Madison have something that Park doesn’t.

The already cleared site for the postponed Astor Plaza building offers a great opportunity to provide the missing come-on and make Park Avenue a genuine promenade for many blocks. Instead of being aloof and formal, the ground level of this site ought to have the most commercially astute and urbane collection possible of one- and two-story shops, terraced restaurants, bars, fountains, and nooks. The Seagram tower and Lever House with their plazas, far from being disparaged, would then harvest their full value of glory and individuality; they would have a foil.

The deliberately planned promenade minus promenaders can be seen in the first of the “greenway” streets developed in Philadelphia. Here are the trees, broad sidewalks, and planned vistas–and there are no strollers. Parallel, just a few hundred feet away, is a messy street bordered with stores and activities–jammed with people. This paradox has not been lost on Philadelphia’s planners: along the next greenways they intend to include at least a few commercial establishments.

Fortunately, Philadelphia’s planners and civic leaders are great walkers, and one result is their unusually strong interest in trying to reinforce the natural attractions of the city’s streets. “We ought to do it a street at a time,” says Harry Batten, chairman of the board of N.W. Ayer & Son and a leading figure in the Greater Philadelphia Movement. “Take Chestnut, which is a fine shopping street; we ought to get rid of everything that hurts it, like parking-lot holes. Find merchants who ought to be there and sell them on the idea of relocating.” At the other end of the pole is

Market Street opposite Penn Center: cheap stores, magic shops, movie houses, and garish signs–exactly the kind of street most cities see as a blight. Batten, who thinks a city is made up of all kinds of people, is against making Market Street more prim. “It should be made more like a carnival,” he says, “more lights, more color.”

Focus

No matter how interesting, raffish, or elegant downtown’s streets may be, something else is needed: focal points. A focal point can be a fountain, or a square, or a building–whatever its form, the focal point is a landmark, and if it is surprising and delightful, a whole district will get a magic spillover.

All the truly great downtown focal points carry a surprise that does not stale. No matter how many times you see Times Square, with its illuminated soda-pop waterfalls, animated facial tissues, and steaming neon coffee cups, alive with its crowds, it always makes your eves pop. No matter how many times you look along Boston’s Newbury Street, the steeple of the Arlington Street Church always comes as a delight to the eye.

Focal points are too often lacking where they would count most, at places where crowds and activities converge. Chicago, for instance, lacks any focal point within the Loop. In other cities perfectly placed points in the midst of great pedestrian traffic have too little made of them–Cleveland’s drab public square, for example, so full of possibilities, or the neglected old Diamond Market in Pittsburgh, which, with just a little showmanship, could be a fine threshold to Gateway Center.

Unfortunately, most of the focal points that are being planned seem foredoomed to failure. Those ponderous collections of government architecture, known as civic centers, are the prime example. San Francisco’s, built some twenty years ago, should have been a warning, but Detroit and New Orleans are now building centers similarly pretentious and dull, and many other cities are planning to do the same. Without exception, the new civic centers squander space; they spread out the concrete, lay miles of walk–indeed, planners want so much acreage for civic centers now that the thing to do is to move them out of downtown altogether, as New Orleans is doing. In other words, the people supposedly need so much space it must be moved away from the people.

But city halls never have needed much grounds, if any, a fact that our ancestors– who knew why they wanted courthouse squares—grasped very well. Newspapermen who make it their business to know politicians soon discover their own city has a kind of political Venturi–one spot where politicians gather, one stretch of sidewalk where, if you stand there at noon, you will see “everybody in town.” Even in the largest metropolitan centers you will find the political Venturi easy to spot; it is here that lawyers, officeholders, office seekers, various types of insiders and would-be insiders, cluster and thrive, for information is their staff of life. This vital trading post is never marked on the official city map; nor have the city’s architects found space or color for it in their diagrams of Tomorrow’s City. In fact, if you ask some of them about it, all you get is a blank look, perhaps a bit of scorn.

Big open spaces are not functional for this kind of civic activity; the prestige and attractiveness of a sidewalk garden, such as that of the new Federal Reserve Bank in Jacksonville, or a side garden, such as that of the Federal Reserve in Philadelphia, would be about right for city halls and city-county offices and would enable them to stay where they belong, near the lawyers, pressure groups, and others who must deal with the local government.

The echo

Backers of the project approach often argue that giant superblock projects are the only feasible means of rebuilding downtown. Projects, they point out, can get government redevelopment funds to help pay for land and the high cost of clearing it. Projects afford a means of getting open spaces in the city with no direct charge on the municipal budget for buying or maintaining them. Projects are preferred by big developers, as more profitable to put up than single buildings. Projects are liked by the lending departments of insurance companies, because a big loan requires less investigation and fewer decisions than a collection of small loans; the larger the project and the more separated from its environs, moreover, the less the lender thinks he need worry about contamination from the rest of the city. And projects can tap the public powers of eminent domain; they don’t have to be huge for this tool to be used, but they can be, and so they are.

Architects, similarly, lament that they have little influence over the appearance and arrangement of projects. They point out that redevelopment laws, administrative rulings, and economics resulting from the laws do their designing for them. This is particularly true in residential projects, where stipulations about densities, ground coverage, rent ranges, and the like in effect not only dictate the number, size and placement of buildings, but greatly influence the design of them as well (including such items as doorways and balconies). Nonresidential projects are less regulated, but they are cast in much the same mold, and many an office-building project is all but indistinguishable from an apartment-building project.

The developers and architects have a point. They have a point because government officials, planners–and developers and architects—first envisioned the spectacular project, and little else, as the solution to rebuilding the city. Redevelopment legislation and the economics resulting from it were born of this thinking and tailored for prototype project designs much like those being constructed today. The image was built into the machinery; now the machinery reproduces the image.

Where is this place?

The project approach thus adds nothing to the individuality of a city; quite the opposite–most of the projects reflect a positive mania for obliterating a city’s individuality. They obliterate it even when great gifts of nature are involved. For example, Cleveland, wishing to do something impressive on the shore of Lake Erie, is planning to build an isolated convention center, and the whole thing is to be put on and under a vast, level concrete platform. You will never know you are on a lake shore, except for the distant view of water.

But every downtown can capitalize on its own peculiar combinations of past and present, climate and topography, or accidents of growth. Pittsburgh is on the right track at Mellon Square (an ideally located focal point), where the sidewalk gives way to tall stairways, animated by a cascade. This is a fine dramatization of Pittsburgh’s hilliness, and it is used naturally where the street slopes steeply.

Waterfronts are a great asset, but few cities are doing anything with them. Of the dozens of our cities that have river fronts downtown, only one, San Antonio, has made of this feature a unique amenity. Go to New Orleans and you find that the only way to discover the Mississippi is through an uninviting, enclosed runway leading to a ferry. The view is worth the trip, yet there is not a restaurant on the river frontage, nor tiny roof top restaurants from which to view the steamers, no place from which to see the bananas unloaded or watch the drilling rigs and dredges operating. New Orleans found a character in the charming past of the Vieux Carre, but the character of the past is not enough for any city, even New Orleans.

A sense of place is built up, in the end, from many little things too, some so small people take them for granted, and yet the lack of them takes the flavor out of the city: irregularities in level, so often bulldozed away; different kinds of paving, signs and fireplugs and street lights, white marble stoops.

The two-shift city

It should be unnecessary to observe that the parts of downtown we have been discussing make up a whole. Unfortunately, it is necessary; the project approach that now dominates most thinking assumes that it is desirable to single out activities and redistribute them in an orderly fashion–a civic center here, a cultural center there.

But this nation of order is irreconcilably opposed to the way in which a downtown actually works; what makes it lively is the way so many different kinds of activity tend to support each other. We are accustomed to thinking of downtowns as divided into functional districts–financial, shopping, theatre–and so they are, but only to a degree. As soon as an area gets too exclusively devoted to one type of activity and its direct convenience services, it gets into trouble; it loses its appeal to the users of downtown and it is in danger of becoming a has-been. In New York the area with the mast luxuriant mixture of basic activities, midtown, has demonstrated an overwhelmingly greater attractive power for new building than lower Manhattan, even for managerial headquarters, which, in lower Manhattan, would be close to all the big financial houses and law firms–and far away from almost everything else.

Where you find the liveliest downtown you will find one with the basic activities to support two shifts of foot traffic. By night it is just as busy as it is by day. New York’s Fifty-seventh Street is a good example: it works by night because of the apartments and residential hotels nearby; because of Carnegie Hall; because of the music, dance, and drama studios and special motion-picture theatres that have been generated by Carnegie Hall. It works by day because of small office buildings on the street and very large office buildings to the east and west. A two-shift operation like this is very stimulating to restaurants, because they get both lunch and dinner trade. But it also encourages every kind of shop or service that is specialized, and needs a clientele sifted from all sorts of population.

It is folly for a downtown to frustrate two-shift operation, as Pittsburgh, for one, is about to do. Pittsburgh is a one-shift downtown but theoretically this could be partly remedied by its new civic auditorium project, to which, later, a symphony hall and apartments are to be added. The site immediately adjoins Pittsburgh’s downtown, and the new facilities could have been tied into the older downtown streets. Open space of urban—not suburban–dimensions could have created a focal point or pleasure grounds, a close, magnetic juncture between the old and the new, not a barrier. However, Pittsburgh’s plans miss the whole point. Every conceivable device–arterial highways, a wide belt of park, parking lots—separates the new project from downtown. The only thing missing is an unscalable wall.

The project will make an impressive sight from the downtown office towers, but for all it can do to revitalize downtown it might as well be miles away. The mistake has been made before, and the results are predictable ; for example, the St. Louis auditorium and opera house, isolated by grounds and institutional buildings from downtown, has generated no surrounding activity in its twenty-four years of existence!

Wanted: careful seeding

When it comes to locating cultural activities, planners could learn a lesson from the New York Public Library; it chooses locations as any good merchant would. It is no accident that its main building sits on one of the best corners in New York, Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue, a noble focal point. Back in 1895, the newly formed library committee debated what sort of institution it should form. Deciding to serve as many people as possible, it chose what looked like the central spot in the northward-growing city, asked for and got it.

Today the library locates branches by tentatively picking a spot where foot traffic is heavy. It tries out the spot with a parked bookmobile, and if results are up to expectations it may rent a store for a temporary trial library. Only after it is sure it has the right place to reach the most customers does it build. Recently the library has put up a fine new main circulation branch right off Fifth Avenue on Fifty-third Street, in the heart of the most active office-building area, and increased its daily circulations by 5,000 at one crack.

The point, to repeat, is to work with the city. Bedraggled and abused as they are, our downtowns do work. They need help, not wholesale razing. Boston is an example of a downtown with excellent fundamentals of compactness, variety, contrast, surprise, character, good open spaces, and a mixture of basic activities. When Boston’s leaders get going on urban renewal, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh can show them how to organize, Fort Worth can suggest how to handle traffic, and Boston will have one of the finest downtowns extant.

The citizen

The remarkable intricacy and liveliness of downtown can never be created by the abstract logic of a few men. Downtown has had the capability of providing something for everybody only because it has been created by everybody. So it should be in the future; planners and architects have a vital contribution to make, but the citizen has a more vital one. It is his city, after all; his job is not merely to sell plans made by others, it is to get into the thick of the planning job himself.

He does not have to be a planner or an architect, or arrogate their functions, to ask the right questions:

– How can new buildings or projects capitalize on the city’s unique qualities? Does the city have a waterfront that could be exploited? An unusual topography?

– How can the city tie in its old buildings with its new ones, so that each complements the other and reinforces the quality of continuity the city should have?

– Can the new projects be tied into downtown streets? The best available sites may be outside downtown–but how far outside of downtown? Does the choice of site anticipate normal growth, or is the site so far away that it will gain no support from downtown, and give it none?

– Does new building exploit the strong qualities of the street—or virtually obliterate the street?

– Will the new project mix all kinds of activities together, or does it mistakenly segregate them?

In short, will the city be any fun? The citizen can be the ultimate expert on this; what is needed is an observant eye, curiosity about people, and a willingness to walk. He should walk not only the streets of his own city, but those of every city he visits.

When he has the chance, he should insist on an hour’s walk in the loveliest park, the finest public square in town, and where there is a handy bench he should sit and watch the people for a while. He will understand his own city the better–and, perhaps, steal a few ideas.

Let the citizens decide what end results they want, and they can adapt the rebuilding machinery to suit them. If new laws are needed, they can agitate to get them. The citizens of Fort Worth, for example, are doing this now; indeed, citizens in every big city planning hefty redevelopment have had to push for special legislation.

What a wonderful challenge there is! Rarely before has the citizen had such a chance to reshape the city, and to make it the kind of city that he likes and that others will too. If this means leaving room for the incongruous, or the vulgar or the strange, that is part of the challenge, not the problem.

Designing a dream city is easy; rebuilding a living one takes imagination.”

http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2011/09/18/downtown-is-for-people-fortune-classic-1958/

Freiburg – Universal Principles for Creating a Sustainable City

11 August 2011 - 11:39am

For Professor Wulf Daseking, the City of Freiburg’s Head of Urban Planning, longevity and continuity aren’t just buzzwords on a whiteboard but themes to live and plan by. After 26 years at the helm of Germany’s Environmental Capital, Daseking embodies the notion of sustainability in a city that has seen only four planning directors since World War II.

However, the secret ingredient that earned Freiburg the Academy of Urbanism’s European City of the Year Award in 2010 is Daseking’s flair for bold and unconventional thinking. From Seepark, a former gravel pit turned recreational eco-park, to Wiehrebahnhof, an old train station cooperatively rebuilt into a thriving cultural arts center, the Professor’s fingerprints are all over the projects in the “you can’t do that” category.

Daseking and his team have also found creative ways to accommodate population growth within its coveted city limits by using available land to build bustling eco-villages: Rieselfeld, a former brownfield area, and Vauban, once a French military base, are ecologically integrated and socially diverse developments that make car-free and high density living easy, fun, and a matter of civic pride for its residents.

Freiburg has a story to tell, and its recently released Charter for Sustainable Urbanism not only shows its own route to becoming a sustainable city but consists of a series of guiding principles that seek to inspire other cities to follow suit.

On a recent visit to Freiburg, writer and Ecocity Builders contributor Sven Eberlein talked to Professor Daseking about his experiences, visions and the lessons to be learned from the Freiburg experiment by American cities.

Eberlein: In recent years Freiburg gained international attention for its progressive vision of integrating functional and social aspects of sustainability. Was there a point when you decided to become “The Green City”?

Daseking: No, not at all. You have to understand that the history of city planning in Freiburg is based on steadfastness and continuity. We’ve had only four planning directors since World War II. The first one, Joseph Schlippe, was in charge of rebuilding a city that had been almost completely destroyed. Most people at the time wanted to erase the memories of the past by completely redesigning the city. In fact, almost all the other German cities bought up all the destroyed plots and built a completely new grid, that was the “modern” way of thinking. However, Schlippe recognized that there was value in keeping the old plots and landmarks intact and came up with a planning concept modeled after the original medieval blueprint. He was accused of being much too conservative and ultimately pushed out of his job. Schlippe’s accomplishments were finally recognized during the expansion of the pedestrian zone in the 1970s when it became clear how much these public spaces connect and embellish the diverse range of architectural styles.

The other important planner was Klaus Humpert, who was in charge from 1970 to 1982. Humpert brought a new style of building to the city, like Konviktstrasse, which was really run down at the time. It was around the same time when middle class people who had been part of the urban flight after the war were getting tired of mowing their 1000 square meter suburban lawns and looking to move back into the city. So Humpert said we’re going to keep the integrity and ease of the old layout but we’ll build brandnew buildings in the same style as the old ones. The houses on Konviktstrasse are all virtually new, but nobody knows it. The principal idea is simple, based on hundreds of years of city planning. It wasn’t about being green for him as much as it was about adding modern architecture into the existing infrastructure.

And then came Daseking in late 1983, and the first question was: what are we doing here? First came Rieselfeld…

Eberlein: Rieselfeld is widely credited as the first of its kind in terms of building a new development from scratch according to sustainable principles. High density living, zero-energy and affordable homes, car-free streets, access by proximity, cooperative design and ownership, cultural diversity, public transit hubs, all within a 15-minute tram ride from the city center. Was that all your idea?

Daseking: Well, an idea always has many sources. One of the burning issues at the time was that the region was experiencing a lot of population growth and then-Mayor Böhme said they shouldn’t all move into the countryside and suburbs. Then Chernobyl happened and the lessons from that were that we should minimize land use to reduce our energy use. With that in mind we introduced thirty initial building proposals that would accommodate the growing population, especially young people and families who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford housing in Freiburg. From those thirty proposals three finalists emerged and the mayor provided the political will to get the green light for the Rieselfeld project.

We wrote up the plan, discussed it with everyone, made lots of tweaks and revisions. We knew three conditions had to be met: First, we wanted to build a real neighborhood, not a park or recreational facility. Second, it had to be compact, everything had to be in close proximity. And third, there had to be easy access to public transit to reduce car use, and most critically, it had to pay for itself without any outside subsidies. We had a design competition, and with few exceptions a lot of remarkable ideas materialized that turned Rieselfeld into an urban district that today attracts attention and visitors from all over the world. And that’s without any top notch architectural accents, except for a couple of buildings.

A courtyard in Vauban. Image courtesy of Payton Chung.

Eberlein: Speaking of attention, the Vauban development has gained even more international notoriety than Rieselfeld for being a living breathing eco-village. How did that come about?

Daseking:Well, after the Cold War ended in 1989 a lot of military bases became obsolete. When the French closed down Vauban there was still a great housing shortage in Freiburg, so Mayor Boehme asked, “what are we going to do here?” At first there were a few big private developers who had petitioned the federal government to buy and build on the land, sparking a big internal discussion in our planning department. We said we’re the planning authority here, and since this land is zoned for military use you can’t just come in and build a bunch of apartments. You can either build another military base or leave it as open space. The mayer ended up working out a deal with the federal government to delegate authority over land use at Vauban to the city, so that without our approval nothing would happen there.

Then we drew up a plan. We sat together for many months in open discussion. From technical drafters to structural engineers, everyone was welcome to chime in about the future of Vauban. To take up where we left off with Rieselfeld we were drawing up a completely car-free district, which of course didn’t quite turn out that way, but we reduced car usage as much as possible. Consider that for every 1000 people in Germany there are 500-550 cars. In Freiburg it’s 430 cars, and in Vauban it’s below 100. What you have to realize is that you have to create incentives for people to go without car. This may not be possible in every city, but the potential was there in Freiburg.

We approached this within the context of building an entirely new district, a city of short distances, commercial outlets nearby, tram line running right down the middle of it, good shopping centers, public institutions, kindergartens, schools, etc. Another goal was to keep roads small and narrow, keep them primarily as access roads with limited parking time, keep parking garages off site rather than at each building. You can drop off your grandmother or shopping bag in your car but you can’t leave your car in the street because the street belongs to the children to play. So this is how we went into the discussion. We said, let’s make the city blocks relatively small with high density living, at least for our standards.

Eberlein: For a neighborhood that was conceived and built within such a short time I’m really impressed with how aesthetically pleasing and culturally seasoned Vauban feels. How do you inject culture and character into a neighborhood that is literally built from scratch?

Daseking: Well, you have to mesh together planning principles and existing culture. You have to bring together the different neighbors who are building homes, have them talk to each other and to the architects, so that everyone has a say in what it will look and feel like. If you need to alter the plan a bit, you talk to the people and see if they want to make that change. Think about it, if you go to our medieval old town that took hundreds of years to build, it was the same way, you always had to involve the people who would actually live there.

Let me give you the recent Wiehre Bahnhof (old train station) project as another good example of how to avoid the monotony in style that often comes with building multi-unit housing. Instead of a developer slapping together a cookie cutter building, we wanted all the different stakeholders to be actively engaged in the building process, even initiating it. So we experimented with building cooperatives, which consist of people who agree to build together and then look for an architect, or an architect looks for people with whom he can build. Everyone sits together, and paying close attention to the specific building, plot, residents and usage they custom-design a building that meets everyone’s individual tastes and needs. So there’s going to be a common entryway and hallways, but each apartment unit ends up being completely unique, made to everyone’s own specifications. And of course, along with it all the ecological concerns are covered: Absolute energy efficiency, gray water recycling, children’s areas, car access only for drop-offs but no permanent parking spaces. Just some simple basic rules, you just have to implement them.

Eberlein: And you could do this anywhere?

Daseking: Well yes, you could build like this anywhere, but you’ve got to have a long-term comprehensive approach and plan. I’m just returning from Istanbul, where each month over 50,000 new people move into the city. You can’t plan for something like that. They may have a plan in the broadest sense, but there’s nothing ecological about it. They just keep building, and every house looks the same. If you try to tell them about our ideas of ecological building design, they’ll laugh out loud. And they’re right, because to make good on our planning measures and our message that any growth should happen exclusively by increasing density rather than sprawl, that we’re going vertical rather than horizontal, takes a lot of work and dedication. You can’t just have a couple of people sit together in a meeting and decide that that’s what you want to do. It takes a whole long term planning process with everyone on board. And that’s how we got the attention of The Academy of Urbanism’s European City of the Year competition…

Eberlein: Which is how the Freiburg Charter for Sustainable Urbanism came about…

Daseking: Yes. After we won the competition they asked us to create a template of basic principles that led to our successes. So we sat down and came up with the twelve core principles that have guided us through the process of implementing our plans over the years. The key point is this: The Athens Charter contains principles that it wanted to implement but never materialized. The Leipzig Charter that was written eight or ten years ago similarly stated inherent goals that it wanted to achieve. But what we’ve got here are fully realized items, and that’s what really distinguishes us. What this means is that our tenets and principles have been lived and experienced in the recent past.

Eberlein: Could you imagine working for an American city? Suppose the City of Los Angeles called. How would you apply those principles there?

Daseking: Well yes, of course. I’m actually over there a lot. Our principles are universal, you just have to apply them according to each specific culture and background. In England I’m going to approach it differently than in Germany, and in America it’s yet another approach, but you cannot bypass the basic principles. For example, go to England or Northern Ireland and build a church that houses both Catholics and Protestants, with a movable wall for a common space in the middle. You see, that’s what we’ve done here, we’ve lived it, and here are the examples (points at the charter). We can work together, we can do it. This is my message for the next generation.

But to answer your question, in Los Angeles, you’ve got what — 4 million people with perhaps as many as 15 million in the metropolitan area? Freiburg has a population of 220,000. So in a city like Freiburg you can have a central government to oversee everything, but why would we presume to do the same in a place like L.A.? Why not have a bunch of smaller autonomous suburbs that can govern and plan for a much more manageable space and population? There may be a few things that need to be centrally directed, but for everything else, like whether a school should be build here or there, each suburb or town should be able to make their own planning decision. This way you get people closer together again. Someone who is miles and miles away from his city hall may as well have no city hall at all. It loses all its meaning and relevance. You see, you could fit 60 or 70 Freiburgs into L.A. or Istanbul and that’s how we have to look at it: We have to reconnect people to their civic centers again, and you can only do that on a smaller, more local scale. Big politics doesn’t like that idea of a more engaged public, but ask yourself why there’s only 50% voter turnout in the US. It’s because people feel disenfranchised and powerless, knowing that these distant representative do whatever they want anyway.

Eberlein: Speaking of politics, German city planners generally have more comprehensive control over the planning process due to a more centralized system less dependent on market forces and private profit. How would you implement a long term plan in an American city where there is much less leverage against developers’s interests?

Daseking: Here’s one thing I would do immediately: Take a city block in Manhattan, with high rises and everything. I would get all the building owners of that block in the same room under the premise of reducing energy use for the entire block by fifty percent and the goal of reinvesting these savings. If I could have the authority to talk to the building owners, that’s an assignment I would take on right away. It’s really simple. Look, the lights are on night and day, the escalators run 24/7, the windows are poorly insulated, heat is leaking out left and right. You could really do a lot there. Of course, we Germans have to be careful that we don’t come across as all-knowing. But what we can do is show what we’ve done and the principles by which you an do it. Then everyone can adapt it to their own styles and cultural customs. That’s why the charter is so powerful, because we’ve done it and we’ve lived it.

Eberlein: You have a reputation for being a free thinker, a sort of a renaissance man of city planning. How do you bring creativity into a profession that is often muddled in bureaucracy and extremely averse to new and unconventional ideas?

Daseking: One thing you have to be aware of within a city bureaucracy is that creative minds always play an outsider role. The key in my case was that I’ve had the support of a great planning team that found a way to realize these visions, against all odds. Just look at the Stühlinger district and the whole axis around the central station that we completely revitalized. Look at the once desolate Seepark area or the industrial parks that now have solar factory buildings. You can really accomplish things with planning. City planning is not just about configuration, it’s about ideas and content, about substance. Just like people, it’s not only about looks and a facade, but what’s behind a person.

The point here is that city administrations usually don’t want creative people because they don’t fit into the system. So when a creative person like myself is thrown into a system like that you’re always struggling rather than functioning. The key is to find the right openings and slip through them. One of the mayors once said to me that I wasn’t maneuverable. What does that mean? Maneuverable for whom and towards what? When you’re in the presence of administrators you’ll notice a clear and authentic difference between creative people and bureaucrats. The creative person is very conscious of what he’s done, whether it was good or bad, and whether the final outcome works, whereas the administrator’s primary concern is whether it was done by the book. The administrator might even say, “well I did everything by the book, so I don’t care what the final creation looks like.”

Ultimately though you can see with your own eyes what you’ve built and whether it works. We planners can see it, whereas a doctor has to go to the cemetery. Often the administrator wonders why the planner is doing it a certain way, going off script, perhaps even thinking that I’m on some sort of a power trip. But I’m not on a power trip at all, I just want to see a great functioning city. That’s what I was trained for, and that’s why the city hired me. After all, they wanted a city planner and not a subcontractor who rubber stamps every project.

Eberlein: What are the core issues that need to be addressed by the city of the future?

Daseking: First, we have to redesign our inner cities with ecological principles in mind. Another pivotal issue will be to keep working towards social justice and economic parity. Fostering cultural diversity will be very important. And of course, education, you have to have an educated population for any of this to happen. Obviously, all these issues are interconnected, a diverse and educated populace with economic opportunity is the foundation of an ecologically balanced city. There’s a lot of work ahead for generations to come, and I’m excited about it.”

http://www.planetizen.com/node/50883

Urban Green Space Key in Improving Air Quality

Tree-lined streets, like the ones seen here from Seoul, Korea, can have a significant impact in improving air quality in cities. Photo by Abby Yao.

A new study out of the University of Kent in the UK found that a 10 percent increase in urban tree coverage in mid-size cities, like Leicester, can absorb about 12 percent of carbon emissions, contributing to cleaner air. The study is yet another addition to the argument that any sound urban planning or transit policy to improve air quality must be supplemented with green spaces.

To reach their intuitive, yet essential, conclusion the conservation scientists first calculated tree density and vegetation on a city-wide scale, and later derived the biomass and carbon storage potential in each vegetation category. Based on their calculations, the researchers found that above-ground vegetation stores 231,521 tons of carbon, of which 97.3 percent is stored by trees.

And although the study brings some much needed positive news to the greenhouse gas debate, the researchers express the importance of maintaining this valuable resource for the city’s air quality.

“Although the quantities of carbon stored within the above-ground vegetation of Leicester are not trivial, it is not a permanent sink. The carbon captured as a plant grows will ultimately be released back into the environment when it dies or is destroyed, and replacement is therefore necessary to counterbalance the carbon emitted from removed vegetation. In some instances, trees lost in urban areas will be replaced through natural regeneration, but the majority are likely to require replanting to maintain current carbon reservoirs.This is of particular importance on publicly owned/managed land, where trees are frequently removed or subject to surgery in response to subsidence or human safety concerns.”

The study comes at a time when UK officials set a greenhouse gas reduction rate of 80 percent by 2050, based on the 1990 levels. With both the study and the realities of managing GHG emissions, the researchers highlight the importance of local authorities in accomplishing ambitious national goals.

“Local authorities are therefore central to national efforts to cut carbon emissions, although reductions required at city-wide scales are yet to be set. This has led to a need for reliable data to help establish and underpin realistic carbon emission targets and reduction trajectories, along with acceptable and robust policies for meeting these goals. Here, we have illustrated the potential benefits of accounting for, mapping and appropriately managing above-ground vegetation carbon stores, even within a typical densely urbanized European city.”

Download the study here.”

Jane Jacobs: Neighborhoods in Action

Wifi is Reinventing Our City Parks

Bryant Park, New York, 2010

“A walk through New York City’s Bryant Park is a walk through time. Designed during the Great Depression on the site of a former reservoir and executed under the leadership of Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, the park was inspired by French classicist gardens. Its gravel paths in the shade of London Plane trees suited the rhythm of life in pre-air-conditioned New York. Today the park, which sits behind the great main branch of the public library, has cafes, entertainment, a reading library, lawn games — all amenities tuned to contemporary urban life.

One of the most important amenities, though, is invisible. A cloud of wifi hovers over the park, bringing activities that Moses, a truly ambitious urban planner, could not have imagined. Those trees that shaded city-dwellers out for a stroll decades ago now keep the glare off touch screens. And despite the fears that mobile communication technology would drive us all into lives of wireless isolation, the opposite seems to be happening. Bryant Park, like myriad parks and plazas in other cities, is returning to a role it filled generations ago: a place to share, read, write, gossip, and debate…in short, communicate. (See how cities are powered.)

Technology has always shaped the city, changing our relationship to time, space, nature and each other, but today’s technologies are so small it’s hard to see how that happens. Yet ubiquitous data and information communication technologies (ICT) such as smart-phones, tablet computers, and digital books, are changing the way we interact with the built environment and our fellow citizens.

What does it mean for the future of our cities that technology is an integral part not only of design and construction but of the user experience? What does it mean for a city to learn from and respond to the users of its public spaces? These were some of the questions raised at the recent Intelligent Cities Forum at the National Building Museum. The Forum, a component of the year-long Intelligent Cities Initiative, brought together researchers, design and planning professionals, public health experts, and representatives from all levels of government for a day of conversation focusing on the challenges and opportunities that information and communication technologies (ICT) pose for cities. (See more intelligent cities around the world.)

The success of the rejuvenated Bryant Park raises familiar questions for designers and planners. What exactly are the essential ingredients of a great urban space? Can they be measured? In 1980, influential urbanist William Holly Whyte published The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, a meticulous study of how people used open space in the city. Whyte, who had been involved for more than a decade in the comprehensive plan for New York, wondered if all the parks and plazas were actually performing the way the architects and planners assumed they would. So he began to watch people. And film them. It was a radical project at the time, as no one had done any systematic research on how people actually used the spaces designed for them. Why were some brand new plazas empty while people crowded into others?

Whyte used film because it was the only medium capable of capturing time and motion, critical information in understanding any dynamic environment. Now, smart phones allow you to see when the next bus is arriving, where the closest coffee shop is located, and to track afternoon thunderstorms. Time and space together carry a lot of information about a city, and geospatial visualization lets us see characteristics of our cities that used to be invisible. ICT give us new ways to document and study urban spaces to better understand how to improve them. Moreover, those same technologies in the hands of the public are changing how those spaces are used.”

Anyone who has visited a park or plaza recently sees text-walkers, phone talkers, e-book readers, and laptop or tablet users. Following in the Whyte’s footsteps, Keith Hampton, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication wondered how people with mobile devices were using urban open space now. In 2007 he embarked on a research project in cities across North America to investigate community and social interaction in the wireless city. Are we too wrapped in our own cocoons to enjoy those chance conversations with fellow bench sitters? Or, does the material on screen give us something new to talk about? Would we even be in the park if we had to communicate only with the people sitting near us?

Hampton’s research showed that Internet users tended to get out more and that active users like bloggers tended to be active in “real” life as well. Some 25% of people interviewed admitted that they had not visited the public space before wifi became available and most of those said they came more often because of wifi. The average lap-top user made two hour-long visits per week. From its birth in the 19th century, the idea behind the urban park was to provide an escape from the machines and technology that dominate the cityscape outside the ornamental fence. The park is for leisure, not work. But Hampton found that over half the ICT users in Bryant Park were working. (See pictures of London freeing its data.)

What’s different today is nature of community and communication in the park. The conversations park users are having are as likely to be with someone on the other end of the country as on the other end of the bench. And the conversation is as likely to be work-related as idle chat. When a leisure space also becomes a work place, technology is nudging conventional categories of urban space toward something new.

To famed urbanist and activist Jane Jacobs, New York was a better place for the “eyes on the street,” her oft-quoted phrase that crowded sidewalks with abundant doors and windows make the city safer. What if the eyes are on the iPad? Or the ears in headphones? While 51% of Bryant Park habitués claim they are mostly working there, Hampton’s research indicates that they’re still paying attention to their surroundings. And, perhaps most important, these visitors chose to be there, in public, and not at their own desk or at home. Apparently, there is a there there. (See TIME’s video “What Makes a City Smart?”)

This invisible technology is arguably the single biggest influence on how our cities will look, feel and function in the future. The mid-century technologies — air conditioning, the private automobile, television — all conspired to drive us out of the city, out of public space, and into our own private worlds. Now we’re bringing our worlds back out into the city with us — our friends, families, photo albums, favorite music, to do lists, work projects, books, gossip and gripes.

We’ve had big ideas in the past about cities that turned out not as wonderful as we had hoped. Freeways and isolated residential towers seemed to make sense once, as did horizontally separating work from home and recreation. We know what a high performance building should do: sensors, GPS, and real-time communication yields data on energy and water use, air quality, and safety. But what is a high-performance urban place? The same tiny technologies that make buildings smarter can contribute to making cities better. ICT give us new ways to narrow the gap between how we hope people will use a space and how they actually might. In this case, the smartest technology is us.

For more information on the National Building Museum’s Intelligent Cities Initiative that explores how data and information technology impact the way our cities look, feel and function visit: http://www.nbm.org/intelligentcities”

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2026474_2026675_2083366-2,00.html

Carbon neutral Copenhagen by 2025

http://business.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/13/a-carbon-neutral-copenhagen-by-2025/

Park of Luna by HOSPER and DRFTWD Office associates /Landezine/

“Park of Luna by HOSPER and DRFTWD Office associates

Landscape architecture, Subplan 3/4 – HOSPER landscape architects and urban design
Park of Luna flow labyrinth and Huygendijk woods – DRFTWD Office associates and HOSPER
Masterplan ‘City of the Sun’, Subplan 1/2: KuiperCompagnons
Location: Heerhugowaard-South, The Netherlands
Client: Municipality of Heerhugowaard and HAL-board
Project management: projectbureau ‘City of het Sun’
Consultants/Team: watersystem, planting and nature – Neelen en Schuurmans, IWACO / artists public space – Alon Levin, Jurgen Bey / architects buildings in Park of Luna: Sander Douma Architecten, Schulze en van Dijk, Superflex / architects Subplan 1/2 – Boperai Associates, Jim Lubach architects, Roy Gelders Architects, A+I Architects, INBO, Van den Oever, Zaaijer and Partners, Atelier Dutch, Bear Architects, BBHD Architecten, 19 het atelier architecten and John van Dijk, Architectenburo Hans Wagner, Taneja Hartsuyker architecten and Den Heijer Architecten / architects Subplan 3/4 – v-eld, Venhoeven CS, INBO, Atelier Pro, Arjan Karssen BNO
Area: 170 ha
Completion date: 2003-2008
Text: Hosper
Photographer: Pieter Kers, Amsterdam / Aerophoto Schiphol BV / Jan Tuijp

HOSPER has been working on the Park of Luna for the past ten years, from the masterplan phase up until implementation. In collaboration with the municipality, Neelen and Schuurmans and DRFTWD this resulted in the development of an attractive recreational area with several activities and a naturally purified swimming lake as it’s central element. The Park of Luna has been nominated for the Rosa Barba European Landscape Prize 2010 and is, as part of the project ‘City of the Sun’, selected for the European Urban and Regional Planning Achievement Awards ‘Special Merit Award’ 2010

Recreational area Heerhugowaard
Over the course of the years the traditional agrarian polder landscape south of Heerhugowaard has changed into a modern city landscape in which homes, recreation and nature development are closely interwoven. The HAL (Heerhugowaard-Alkmaar-Langedijk) structural concept served as the basis for the spatial concept for the Heerhugowaard-Zuid location. The Stad van de Zon (the City of the Sun) is located in the middle of the plan area, a neighborhood with 1,600 homes designed by KuiperCompagnons, is a carré and new and autonomous element.

Unique water storage and conservation
The Stad van de Zon is completely surrounded by a ‘ring of open water’, which encompasses more than 70 hectares of new water. This ‘ring of open water’ will separate the residential area from the surrounding recreational areas and guarantee that a ‘large amount of open space’ can be experienced in the plan area. Most use of the water will be made on the banks in the recreational area. The recreational area has two sides: the inner side is oriented towards the open water and the Stad van de Zon, the outer side towards the surrounding landscape. The ambitious water system is unique: it is designed to store a great deal of water and conserve water in the summer. A great deal of attention was devoted to the water quality, accessibility, and the ability to experience the system. To this end a number of structures were designed which include a circulation pumping station, a natural purification plant, a dephosphatising pond, a bridge, and a canoe crossing.

Structures enable passersby to experience the water purification
The structures were designed to ensure that passersby could experience the water to the maximum possible extent. Pursuant to this objective the public can access the roof of the pumping station. This offers a view of the lake. In addition, the pumping station is located in a strategic position close to the entrance to the beach. The inlet of the water purification plant has been raised above water level where it is both visible and audible. In adopting this approach the structures have become part of the large ‘water purification machine’, form prominent features in the landscape, and serve as locations where the process can be experienced.

Subareas in the recreational area
The recreational area is comprised of subareas which each have an individual character: the Druiplanden, Huygendijk wood and Subplan 4. The Druiplanden, with an urban character, offers space for a pop podium with catering establishments and intensive bank recreation (sand beach, sunbathing areas, car parking, a day camp site with waterski). Subplan 4 forms the transition between the urban region of Heerhugowaard-South and the recreational area. The subplan offers ‘outdoor’ living in surroundings with many trees. Spacious recreational routes cross the area and link the recreational area to the urban region of Heerhugowaard-South. The Huygendijk wood has a sheltered character and offers space for walking, cycling, jogging and roller-skating, etc. The decor for these activities is comprised of forested areas, open (sunbathing) grassland and nature banks. Some of the soil excavated for the water has been brought to the Huygendijk wood. This soil has been used, in collaboration with the artists of DRFTWD Office associates, to create a variety of locations in the relatively small area that offer a range of experiences.”

Jan Gehl on Cities for People: The Safe City

“Danish Architect Jan Gehl on Cities for People: The Safe City

by Jan Gehl on June 13, 2011

Sibelius Park, a housing complex in Copenhagen, has cooperated with the Danish Crime Prevention Council to carefully define private, semiprivate, semipublic and public territories in the complex. Subsequent studies have shown that there is less crime and greater security than in other similar developments. Photos: Jan Gehl

Editor’s note: Streetsblog San Francisco is thrilled to launch a three-part series today by renowned Danish architect and livable streets luminary Jan Gehl. The pieces are excerpts are from his book, “Cities for People” published by Island Press. Donate to Streetsblog SF and you’ll qualify to win a copy of the book, courtesy of Island Press. Visit the Island Press website to find many more great titles by the nation’s leading publisher of books on environmental issues.

Feeling safe is crucial if we hope to have people embrace city space. In general, life and people themselves make the city more inviting and safe in terms of both experienced and perceived security.

In this section we deal with the safe city issue with the goal of ensuring good cities by inviting walking, biking and staying. Our discussion will focus on two important sectors where targeted efforts can satisfy the requirement for safety in city space: traffic safety and crime prevention.

Throughout the entire period of car encroachment, cities have tried to remove bicycle traffic from their streets. The risk of accident to pedestrians and bicyclists has been great throughout the rise in car traffic, and the fear of accident even greater.

Many European countries and North America experienced the car invasion early on and have watched city quality deteriorate year by year. There have been numerous counter reactions and an incipient development of new traffic planning principles in response. In other countries whose economies have developed more slowly and modestly, cars have only begun to invade cities more recently. In every case the result is a dramatic worsening of conditions for pedestrians and bicycle traffic.

The concept of shared or complete streets suggests equality between traffic groups, which is a utopian ide- al. Integrating various types of traffic is not satisfactory until pedestrians are given a clear priority (shared space in Haren, the Netherlands, and a pedestrian priority street in Copenhagen, Denmark).

In cities where the car invasion began early and has lasted decades, we can now see a strong reaction against the myopic focus on cars that has dealt such harsh blows to city life and bicycle traffic.

In many countries, especially in Europe, traffic planning in the 21st century has changed dramatically compared to the traffic planning of twenty or thirty years ago. The importance of promoting pedestrian and bicycle traffic has gradually been acknowledged while better understanding of the nature and causes of traffic accidents has produced a considerably wider variety of planning tools.

When the first pedestrian streets were introduced in Europe in the 1960s, there were really only two street models: those for vehicular traffic and those for pedestrians. Numerous types of streets and traffic solutions have since been developed so that today’s traffic planners have quite a wide range of streets to choose from: vehicular traffic-only streets, boulevards, 30 km/h (19 mph) traffic, pedestrian priority, 15 km/h (9 mph) areas, pedestrian-streetcar, pedestrian-bicycle and pedestrian only. The experience gained in the intervening years has also made it possible to reduce the number of traffic accidents and make walking or biking considerably safer and more comfortable.

In choosing street types and traffic solutions, it is important to start with the human dimension. People must be able to move comfortably and safely in cities on foot or by bicycle, and when traffic solutions are adopted special consideration must be given to children, the young, the elderly and people with disabilities. Quality for people and pedestrian safety must be key concerns.

A number of recent urban planning ideologies deriving from accident statistics contend that the risk of accident can be reduced by physically mixing types of traffic in the same street under the heading of “shared space.”

The underlying idea of these so-called shared streets is that they will give trucks, cars, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians of all ages the opportunity to travel quietly, side by side and with good eye contact. Serious accidents will rarely occur under such conditions, or so it is thought, because pedestrians and bicyclists need to be extra vigilant at all times.

Obviously, if people are sufficiently frightened and keep a close watch on traffic, nothing untoward will happen. However, the price is high in terms of dignity and quality. Children cannot be allowed free rein, and older people and others with reduced mobility may be forced to drop walking altogether. In any discussion about people and traffic safety the risk of accident must be weighed against quality for pedestrians and bicyclists. Much of modern traffic planning continues to pay far too little attention to the quality of city life.

Mixing types of traffic is certainly possible, but not on the equal terms implied by the shared street concept. As the British “home zones,” Dutch “woonerfs,” and Scandinavian “sivegader” have demonstrated for years, pedestrians can thrive with other forms of traffic as long as it is crystal clear that all movement is based on the premises of pedestrians. Mixed–traffic solutions must prioritize either pedestrians or provide appropriate traffic segregation.

Copenhagen-style bicycle lanes take advantage of parked cars to protect bicyclists.

The principle of having bicyclists bike outside a lane of parked cars does not solve many safety and security problems. It does help to protect the parked cars, however!

There is every reason to applaud the many new types of streets and policies that ensure safety for pedestrians and bicyclists while allowing service vehicles to make door-to-door deliveries.

From project to project, planners must consider which types of streets and degree of traffic integration would be a good solution. The actual and perceived safety of pedestrians must always be the determining factor. It is not a natural law that motorized traffic should be allowed access everywhere. It is generally  accepted that cars are not welcome in parks, libraries, community centers and houses. The advantages to not having car traffic everywhere are obvious, so even though there are compelling arguments for allowing car traffic all the way to the front door, in many situations there are equally good arguments for establishing car-free areas surrounding the residences.

For centuries traffic in Venice has functioned on the principle that the transition from rapid to slow traffic does not take place at the front door but at the city limit. The Venice principle is hard to beat when prioritizing city quality. As mentioned above, a number of options have been developed for coexistence between pedestrian and motorized traffic. While these options open new doors, they also create more problems.

A pedestrian in Venice can be forgiven for thinking that many of the recent traffic solutions represent various forms of compromise com- pared to the vision of a true city for people. Or put in another way, in Venice it is easy to surmise that “there is only one thing better than slow cars — and that is no cars.” But as also mentioned, it is important to be pragmatic and flexible. There are many good new compromises, but they must be assessed and carefully selected.

In Venice the shift from rapid to slow traffic occurs at the city limits rather than at the front door. This is an interesting and inspiring for the contemporary vision of creating lively, safe, sustainable and healthy cities.

Already in the first chapter of her 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs discusses the importance of safety in the streets. She describes the crime-preventive effect of life in the street, of mixing functions in buildings and of residents’ care for common space. Her expressions “street watchers” and “eyes on the street” have since become integral to city planning terminology.

Being able to walk safely in city space is a prerequisite for creating inviting well-functioning cities for people. Experienced as well as perceived safety is crucial for life in the city.

The safety discussion has a general and a more detailed dimension. The general focus is maintaining and supporting the vision of an open society in which people from all socioeconomic groups can move about side by side in the common room of the city as they go about their daily business. Within this general framework, safety can also be promoted through careful consideration for the design of the many detailed solutions in the city.

Juxtaposed with the idealistic visions of safe open cities is the reality of many urban societies. Social and economic inequality is the backdrop for high crime rates and the fully or semiprivate attempts to protect property and private life.

A profusion of bars, fences, signs and cameras signals the insecurity and fear that have crept into communities around the world.

Barbed wire and iron bars fortify houses, security patrols cruise residential areas, security guards stand in front of shops and banks, signs threaten “armed response” outside houses in exclusive quarters, gated communities abound: all of these are examples of people’s attempts to protect themselves against invasion and trespass of private property. The examples also illustrate a general retreat to the private sphere by some population groups.

It is important to point out that simple individual urban crime-prevention solutions are not of much help, where the invasive sense of insecurity is often deeply rooted in social conditions. On the other hand, many urban communities are less gridlocked, including hard-hit city districts. In these areas there is every reason to make a solid effort to avoid the retreat of the population behind bars and barbed wire.

Other parts of the world do have cities and societies in which cultural tradition, family networks and social structure keep crime low despite economic inequalities.

To conclude, in almost all situations there are good arguments for working carefully to reinforce real and perceived safety, a prerequisite for using common city space.

If we shift the focus from defending the private sphere to a general discussion about feeling safe while walking in public space, we will find a clear-cut connection between the goal to strengthen city life and the desire for safety.

If we reinforce city life so that more people walk and spend time in common spaces, in almost every situation both real and perceived safety will increase. The presence of others indicates that a place is acceptly good and safe. There are “eyes in the street” and often “eyes on the street” as well because it has become meaningful and interesting for people in nearby buildings to follow what is going on in the street. When people make their daily rounds in city space, both the space and the people who use them becomes more meaningful and thus more important to keep an eye on and watch out for. A lively city becomes a valued city and thus also a safer city.

Life in the street has an impact on safety, but life along the street also plays a significant role. Urban areas with mixed functions provide more activities in and near buildings around the clock. Housing in particular signifies good connections to the city’s important common space and a marked reinforcement of the real and perceived safety in the evening and at night. So even if the street is deserted, lights from windows in residential areas send a comforting signal that people are nearby.

Approximately 7,000 residents live in Copenhagen’s city center. On an ordinary weekday evening in the winter season a person walking through the city can enjoy the lights from about 7,000 windows.

The light from buildings along city streets can make a significant contribution to the feeling of security when darkness falls. Above: Bakery in Amman, Jordan.

The Apple Store in Sydney, Australia.

The proximity to housing and residents plays a key role in the feeling of safety. It is common practice for city planners to mix functions and housing as a crime prevention strategy and thus increase the feeling of safety along the most important streets used by pedestrians and bicyclists. The strategy works well in Copenhagen, where the city center has buildings between five and six stories high, and there is good visual contact between residences and street space. The strategy does not work as well in Sydney. Although the Australian metropolis has 15,000 people living in its heart, the residences are generally from 10 to 50 stories above street level, no one who lives high up can see what is happening down on the street.

Tall buildings can also land softly and elegantly along streets and soften the transition between out and in (Lloyd´s of London. Architects: Richard Rogers Partnership, 1978 – 86).

Ground floor building design has a disproportionately large impact on the life and appeal of city space. Ground floors are what we see when we walk past buildings. It is also from the lower floors that people inside can follow what is going on outside, and vice versa.  If ground floors are friendly, soft and — in particular — populated, pedestrians are surrounded by human activity. Even at night when little is happening  in cafés and front yards, furniture, flowers, parked bicycles and forgotten toys are a comforting witness of life and proximity to other people. Light streaming from the windows of shops, offices and dwellings at night helps increase the feeling of safety in the street.

Soft edges signal to people that a city is welcoming. In contrast, in streets with retail, where solid metal shutters close off shops outside opening hours a sense of rejection and insecurity  is produced.  The streets are dark and deserted in the evening, and there is not much reason to be there on weekends and holidays either. Given the general desire for safe cities and inviting ground floors, preferred façade options have open metal grills and other types of transparency to protect goods but allow light to stream onto the street, and they also give nocturnal pedestrians the pleasure of window shopping.

Life in the street and on the street, mixed functions along the street and friendly edge zones are key qualities for good cities — also in terms of safety and protection. The polar opposite is the perfect recipe for an insecure urban environment: lifeless streets, mono-functional buildings devoid of activity for most of the day, closed, lifeless and dark façades. To this list we can add insufficient lighting, deserted paths and pedestrian tunnels, dark nooks and crannies, and too many bushes.

In the face of this rather depressing scenario it is important to remember that almost any enticement to invite people to walk, bicycle and stay in city space will also contribute to a greater sense of security.

A soft edge and clear distinctions be- tween public, semiprivate and private territories provide good opportunities to signal where you live and decorate it with your favorite flowers (Almere, the Netherlands).

Another contribution to our sense of security is a good city layout that makes it is easy for us to find our way around. It is a mark of good urban quality when we can directly find the destination we’re looking for without hesitation and detours. Clear structure and organization do not require large dimensions and broad straight roads from point to point. It is fine for the streets to be winding and the street network varied. What is important is that the individual links in the network have clear visual characteristics, that space has a distinctive character and that important streets can be distinguished from less important ones. Signs and directions and good lighting at night are crucial elements of the relationship between city structure, sense of locality and feeling of security when walking in the city.

In the chapter on human senses, it was mentioned how different distances are used for various types of communication between people, and how these distances are continuously used to reinforce the character and intensity of contacts. Interacting with others and protecting our private sphere are two sides of the same coin. Just as close contact necessitates precisely defined territories, a clear articulation of private and public territories on the larger arena is an important prerequisite for social opportunities and a sense of security.

Human society is subtly organized around various social structures that define and reinforce the individual’s sense of affiliation and security. A university student is part of a structure with faculties, departments, classes and study groups that provide a framework. Workplaces have divisions, departments and teams. Cities have quarters, neighborhoods, housing complexes and single dwellings. Coupled with well-known designations and signals, these structures in themselves help reinforce a sense of affiliation within the larger entity and security for the individual group, household or person.

Also on a small scale — particularly in connection with individual dwellings — clarifying territories and affiliations is crucial for contact with others and for protecting the private sphere. Whereas efforts are made to graduate and soften transitions between private and public areas by building semiprivate and semipublic transition zones, the likelihood of contact from zone to zone increases, and residents gain the opportunity to regulate contacts and protect private life. A well-proportioned transition zone can keep events at a comfortable arm’s length.

In the previous section soft edges and their importance for life in the city are discussed. It is emphasized that edge zones, porches and front yards can make a decisive contribution to vitalizing life in public space. These transition zones between the private and public sphere must be carefully articulated in order to clearly distinguish between what is private and what is public.

Changes in pavement, landscaping, furniture, hedges, gates and canopies can mark where public space ends and fully or semiprivate transition zones begin. Height differences, steps and staircases can also mark the transition zone, providing critical prerequisite for the important function of soft edges as the link between inside and out, between private and public. Only when territories are clearly marked can the private sphere afford the degree of protection that people need to make contact with others and contribute to life in the city.

Pedestrian and bicycle traffic save a lot of space in the city. Bicycle paths have room for five times more traffic than car lanes. The sidewalk has room for 20 times more travellers than car lanes.”

http://sf.streetsblog.org/2011/06/13/danish-architect-jan-gehl-on-cities-for-people-the-safe-city/

Jan Gehl on Good Cities for Bicycling

“Danish Architect Jan Gehl on Good Cities for Bicycling

by Jan Gehl on June 16, 2011

Bicyclists on their way through the city are part of city life. They can, with ease, switch between being bicyclists and pedestrians. Photos by Jan Gehl.

Editor’s note: This is the final installment in our series this week featuring Danish architect and livable streets luminary Jan Gehl. The pieces are excerpts from his book, “Cities for People” published by Island Press. Donate to Streetsblog SF and you’ll qualify to win a copy of the book, courtesy of Island Press.

Bicyclists represent a different and somewhat rapid form of foot traffic, but in terms of sensory experiences, life and movement, they are part of the rest of city life. Naturally, bicyclists are welcome in support of the goal to promote lively, safe, sustainable and healthy cities. The following is about planning good cities for bicyclists, and is handled relatively narrowly and in direct relation to a discussion on the human dimension in city planning.

Around the world there are numerous cities where bicycles and bicycle traffic would be unrealistic. It is too cold and icy for bicycles in some areas, too hot in others. In some places the topography is too mountainous and steep for bicycles. Bicycle traffic is simply not a realistic option in those situations. Then there are surprises like San Francisco, where you might think bicycling would be impractical due to all the hills. However, the city has a strong and dedicated bicycle culture. Bicycling is also popular in many of the coldest and warmest cities, because, all things considered, even they have a great number of good bicycling days throughout the year.

The fact remains that a considerable number of cities worldwide have a structure, terrain and climate well suited for bicycle traffic. Over the years, many of these cities have thrown their lot in with traffic policies that prioritized car traffic and made bicycle traffic dangerous or completely impossible. In some places extensive car traffic has kept bicycle traffic from even getting started.

In many cities, bicycle traffic continues to be not much more than political sweet talk, and bicycle infrastructure typically consists of unconnected stretches of paths here and there rather than the object of a genuine, wholehearted and useful approach. The invitation to bicycle is far from convincing. Typically in these cities only one or two percent of daily trips to the city are by bicycle, and bicycle traffic is dominated by young, athletic men on racing bikes. There is a yawning gap from that situation to a dedicated bicycle city like Copenhagen, where 37 percent of traffic to and from work or school is by bicycle. Here bicycle traffic is more sedate, bicycles are more comfortable, the majority of cyclists are women, and bicycle traffic includes all age groups from school children to senior citizens.

At a time when fossil fuel, pollution and problems with climate and health are increasingly becoming a global challenge, giving higher priority to bicycle traffic would seem like an obvious step to take. We need good cities to bike in and there are a great many cities where it would be simple and cheap to upgrade bicycle traffic.

Bicycle traffic should be automatically integrated into an overall transport strategy. (Copenhagen).

If it is possible to take bicycles on the train, subway and by taxi, then travel can be combined over great distances. (Copenhagen)

A Whole Hearted Bicycle Policy

The cities that have successfully promoted bicycle traffic in recent decades can be tapped for good ideas and requirements for becoming a good bicycle city. Copenhagen is a compelling example of a city whose longstanding bicycle tradition came under threat from car traffic in the 1950s and 1960s. However, the oil crises in the 1970s were the catalyst for a targeted approach to inviting people to ride their bicycles more. And the message was received: today bicycles make up a considerable part of city traffic, and have helped keep vehicular traffic at an unusually low level compared to other large cities in Western Europe. The experiences from Copenhagen are used in the following to provide a platform for discussion about the good bicycle city.

In Copenhagen, a cohesive network for bicycles comprising all parts of the city has gradually been established. Traffic is so quiet on small side streets and residential streets in 15 and 30 km per hour/9 and 19 mph zones that a special cycle network is not necessary, but all major streets have one. On most streets, the network consists of bicycle paths along the sidewalks, typically using the curbstones as dividers toward the sidewalk, as well as parking and driving lanes. In some places bike lanes are not delimited by curbstones, but rather marked with painted stripes inside a row of parked cars, so that the cars protect the bicycles from motorized traffic. In fact, this system is known as “Copenhagen-style bicycle lanes.”

Another link in the city’s bicycle system is green bicycle routes, which are dedicated bike routes through city parks and along discontinued railway tracks. These paths are intended for bicycles in transit and are viewed  as a supplementary opportunity, a sightseeing possibility and a green option for bicycles. However, the main principle of bicycle policy is for bicycles to have room on ordinary streets, where just like the others in traffic, their owners have errands in shops, residences and offices. The principle is for bicycle traffic to be safe from door to door throughout the city.

Room for this comprehensive bicycle network has been largely gained by downsizing car traffic. Parking space and driving lanes have been gradually reduced, as traffic patterns have moved from car to bicycle traffic, and therefore bicycles needed more room. Most of the city’s major four-lane streets have been converted to two-lane streets with two bicycle paths, two sidewalks and a broad median strip intended to make it safer for pedestrians to cross the street. Roadside trees have been planted and traffic is two-way as before.

Bicycle paths are placed along sidewalks in the same direction as ve- hicular traffic, and are always on the right and thus “slow” side of vehicular traffic. That way all traffic groups know — more or less — where they have the bicycles, which is the safest system for all parties.

Bicycles as Part of Integrated Transport Thinking

The invitation to bike must mean that bicycle traffic is integrated into the overall transport strategy. It has to be possible to bring bikes on trains and the metro lines, and preferably in city buses so that it is possible to travel by combining bike trips with public transport. Taxis too must be able to transport bicycles when needed.

Another important link in an integrated transport policy is the possibility to park bicycles securely at stations and traffic hubs. Good bicycle parking options are also needed along streets in general, at schools, offices and dwellings. New offices and industrial buildings should include bicycle parking, changing rooms and showers for bicyclists as a natural part of their planning.

Traffic safety is a crucial element in overall bicycle strategies. A cohesive bicycle network protected by curbstones and parked cars is an important first step. Another key concern is the experienced and real safety of the city’s intersections. Copenhagen is working on several strategies. Large intersections have special bicycle lanes of blue asphalt and bicycle icons to remind drivers to watch out for bicycles. Intersections also have special light signals for bicycles, which typically give a green light to bicycle traffic six seconds before cars are allowed to move. Trucks and buses are required to have special bicycle mirrors and frequent media campaigns admonish drivers to watch out for bicycles, particularly at intersections.

Good bicycle cities know that good visibility at intersections is vital. In Denmark vehicles are not allowed to park closer than 10 meters/33 feet from an intersection for this very reason. The widespread American practice of allowing cars to “turn right on red” at intersections is unthinkable in cities that want to invite people to walk and bicycle.

The volume of bicycle traffic is one of the most significant safety factors for making bicycle systems safe. The more bicycles there are, the more it forces drivers to watch out for bicyclists and be constantly on guard. There is a considerable positive effect when bicycle traffic reaches a reasonable “critical mass.”

A Comfortable Network

It is also relevant to mention comfort and amenity value in terms of bicycle networks. Bicycle trips can be pleasant, interesting and free of unnecessary irritations, or they can be boring and difficult. Many of the criteria for good places to walk can be transferred to bicycle routes. It is important for bicycles to have enough room so that they won’t be pushed or crowded. Bicycle paths in Copenhagen vary in width from 1.7 to 4 meters/5.5 to 13 feet, with 2.5 meters/8.2 feet as the recommended minimum.

As bicycle traffic is gradually developed into a versatile, popular transport system, many new and wider bicycles appear on the street scene. These include three-wheeled transport bicycles for children and goods, handicap bicycles and bicycle taxis. All of these transport options require room, and senior bikers as well as the many parents who transport their children by bicycle need increased reassurance that they won’t be pushed and crowded. As bicycle traffic successfully develops  as an alternative transport system, more room is needed. Despite the new demands for more room, the bicycle continues to be the superior means of wheeled transport, which requires the smallest amount of room per person in the streets of the city.

A study conducted in Copenhagen in 2005 concluded that one of the city’s most pressing problems was heavy congestion on bicycle paths. The city council has since adopted an expansion of the width of bicycle paths in the most popular streets and is currently carrying out this policy.

Recently, key bicycle lanes in Copenhagen have been widened to overcome the increasing congestion on bicycle lanes (Copenhagen)

Frequent interruptions are irritating and destroy the rhythm of the bicycle trip. Over the years Copenhagen has introduced several solutions to reduce the problem. Bicycle paths are often carried across minor side streets without interruption, which results in bicycle trips with fewer interruptions and lets drivers know they must wait. Introducing green waves for bicycles on selected street helps correspondingly to reduce irritating stops. In order to create these green bicycle waves, stoplights are set so that when bicycles bike at about 20 km/h (12.4 mph) they need not stop when they bike to and from the city during rush hour. That service used to be provided for cars. Another form of comfort and safety for bicyclists in Copenhagen is the city practice of snow removal. The bicycle lanes are always cleared before driving lanes to emphasize bicycle priority and the invitation to bike — despite the season.

Bicycle Cities and City Bicycles

In recent years, many cities have introduced various types of city bicycles that can be borrowed or rented from stands or depots. The idea is to reinforce bicycle traffic by making it easier for people to use bicycles for short trips in the city, while providing a collective bicycle system so that individuals do not need to buy, store and repair their own bicycles. Amsterdam’s white bicycle bike-share system came and disappeared quickly from the street scene in the 1970s. More stable and well organized systems were established in the 1990s, in Copenhagen, for example. Today Copenhagen has 2,000 city bicycles available at 110 bicycle stations in the city center. The bicycles are free, financed by advertisements. Users pay a coin deposit, which is returned when the borrowed bicycle is returned to one of the official bicycle racks. Copenhagen’s city bikes are used primarily by tourists, who can bicycle around town easily and safely, thanks to the well developed bicycle network. Copenhageners rarely borrow city bicycles, because they prefer their own bikes. In brief, the principle underlying city bikes in Copenhagen  is to enable inexperienced city bicyclists to ride around in a relatively safe bicycling environment.

City bike programs have by now been introduced in numerous European cities. In Paris, the pattern of use is different from that in Copenhagen. Under the Vélib program, city bicycles are used primarily by Parisians themselves. By renting a Vélib by the hour, week or year, they are able to ride a bike without the trouble of storing and maintaining it. The bicycle rental companies handle the bother in return for the rental fees they charge the bicyclists.

The idea of offering bicycles to bor- row or rent has spread rapidly (Lyon, France).

During 2008 the Vélib system in Paris was expanded to comprise 20,000 rental bikes parked in about 1,500 bicycle racks. In a very short time the Vélib bicycles have become a well-used service, primarily for short trips: 18 minutes on average. Here the idea is to enable many more or less experienced  bicyclists acquainted with the locality to bicycle in a network that is neither very safe nor well developed. Although there have been a number of accidents, the program has had the valuable result that more people now bicycle in Paris — on rental bikes and personal bikes. In only one year the number of trips on personal bicycles has doubled, an increase that has doubtless been inspired and reinforced by the bicycle traffic on the new Vélib bicycles. The Vélib bicycles accounted for one-third of all bicycle trips in Paris in 2008, and bicycles in total accounted for between 2 percent and 3 percent of all traffic in Paris.

Inspired by the development in Paris, among other cities, many new city bicycle systems are underway at this time, also in cities that have essentially no bicycle infrastructure or bicycle culture. The idea seems to be that easily accessible city bikes can kick-start development of more bicycle cities on the principle that first you send people out on city bicycles and then you gradually develop comfortable, safe bicycle networks. There are good reasons to be cautious about sending inexperienced bicyclists out on two wheels in cities where bicycle traffic and networks do not have the critical mass to allow city bikes to reinforce ongoing development. Bicycle traffic and traffic safety must be taken seriously, and experiences from good bicycle cities incorporated, before experimenting with cheap bicycle campaigns. City bikes must be a link in efforts to build and reinforce bicycle culture — not the spearhead.

On the Way to a New Bicycle Culture

A number of cities, particularly in Scandinavia, Germany and Holland have witnessed a considerable development in bicycle use in recent years. The number of bicyclists and bicycle trips grows gradually as it becomes more practical and safe to bicycle. Biking simply becomes the way to get around town. Bicycle traffic changes gradually from being a small group of death-defying bicycle enthusiasts to being a wide popular movement comprising all age groups and layers of society from members of Parliament and mayors to pensioners and school children.

Bicycle traffic changes character dramatically in the process. When there are many bicycles and many children and seniors among them, the tempo is more stately and safe for all parties. Racing bicycles and Tour de France gear is replaced  by more comfortable family bicycles and ordinary clothing. Cycling moves from being a sport and test of survival to being a practical way to get around town — for everyone.

This shift in culture from fast slalom bicycle trips between cars and many infringements of traffic regulations to a law-abiding stream of children, young people and seniors bicycling in a well-defined bicycle network has a big impact on society’s perception of bicycle traffic as a genuine alternative and reasonable supplement to other forms of transport. The shift in culture also brings bicycles more in line with pedestrians and city life in general, and is one more reason that bicycles have a natural place in this book about city life.

In New York City 300 km/180 miles of new bicycle paths were built from 2007 to 2009. A comprehensive program to introduce the idea of bicycling to New Yorkers was instituted at the same time. Car free “summer streets” are arranged in the summer months, so that residents of the city can experience the delights of walking and bicycling in comfort (Park Avenue, Manhattan, summer 2009).

Cities are wonderfully innovative in their efforts to strengthen a broader bicycle culture and demonstrate that bicycles are an obvious choice for almost everyone. Schools offer intensive bicycle training, companies and institutions compete to have the highest percentage of bicyclists among their employees, and information campaigns, bicycle weeks and car-free days are held. Many cities now open bicycle streets on Sunday in campaigns to develop bicycle culture. Sunday is a particularly good day for two reasons: car traffic is usually limited and people usually have more time for exercise and experiences. The idea of closing city streets to car traffic, turning them into temporary bicycle streets instead, has been popular in Central and South America for years. The extensive “Ciclovia” program in Bogotà, Columbia is one of the best known and best developed initiatives of this kind. In the post-millennium years, the idea of reinforcing bicycle traffic has spread to more and more of those cities where cars have dominated planning for decades.

Ambitious strategies have been developed to establish extensive bicycle networks in the large Australian cities Melbourne and Sydney. Planners in both cities are hard at work laying out new bicycle lanes and moving existing lanes away from traffic and into safer “Copenhagen-style bicycle lanes” where bicycles move inside the rows of parked cars. New York City planners are working on a new traffic plan that will make NYC one of the world’s most sustainable metropolises.

New York City’s building density, flat terrain and wide streets provide good opportunities for converting car traffic to bicycle traffic, and a new bicycle network of 3,000 km/1,800 miles of bike lanes is planned for the city’s five boroughs: Manhattan, Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island. Work on the new bicycle lanes started in 2007 and already in the course of 2007 – 2008 about one-quarter of the planned bicycle lanes have been established and significant growth in bicycle traffic is evident. In New York the idea of closing streets to car traffic on Sundays, which NYC calls “summer streets,” was introduced in 2008 as a popular link to the efforts to develop a new bicycle culture.

In the future, concern about sustainability, climate change and health will most certainly mean that increasingly more cities, like New York City, will double their efforts to develop a new culture for city life and movement. Increased bicycle traffic is an obvious answer to many of the problems cities struggle with worldwide.

Bicycles play an important role for transport and mobility in many developing countries.

Bicycling in Economically Developing Countries

Bicycle traffic already plays a key role in the overall traffic picture in many cities in economically developing countries. However, bicycle traffic is typically given poor and dangerous conditions. People bicycle by necessity, and individual mobility is often a prerequisite for being able to get to work and earn a living. In many cities bicycles or bicycle rickshaws handle the lion’s share of goods and people transport. Dhaka in Bangladesh has 12 million inhabitants, and the city’s 400,000 bicycle rickshaws ensure cheap sustainable transport as well as providing a modest but vital income to upwards of one million people.

Many of the cities that actually have extensive bicycle traffic today unfortunately also have forces at work to reduce bicycle traffic in favor of more room for vehicular traffic. In Dhaka, for example, bicycle taxis are considered a problem for the ongoing development of the city. Small motorcycles have replaced bicycles in many cities in Indonesia and Vietnam. Only a few decades ago, large Chinese cities were world famous for their volume of bicyclists, today bicycle traffic has in many cities almost disappeared from the street scene due to traffic reprioritization or even direct bans on bicycles.

In this category of cities, giving bicycle traffic a higher priority needs to be a key ingredient in a policy aimed to effectively utilize street space, reduce energy consumption and pollution, and provide mobility for the great majority of people who cannot afford cars. In addition, investing in bicycle infrastructure is affordable in comparison with other types of traffic investment.

New direction and reprioritizing of city policy is underway throughout the world. Fortunately, this includes prioritizing bicycle traffic in many cities in economically developing countries such as Mexico City and Bogota, Columbia.”

http://sf.streetsblog.org/2011/06/16/danish-architect-jan-gehl-on-good-cities-for-bicycling/

Jang Gehl on good cities for walking /Streetsblog/

“Danish Architect Jan Gehl on Good Cities for Walking

by Jan Gehl on June 14, 2011

There is more to walking than walking. Photos by Jan Gehl.

Editor’s note: Streetsblog San Francisco is thrilled to present a three-part series this week by renowned Danish architect and livable streets luminary Jan Gehl. The pieces are excerpts from his book, “Cities for People” published by Island Press. This is part two. Donate to Streetsblog SF and you’ll qualify to win a copy of the book, courtesy of Island Press.

It is a big day when at about one year of age a child takes that first step. The child’s eye level moves from the vantage point of the crawler (about 1 foot) above the floor to about 2.6 feet.

The little walker can see much more and move faster. From now on everything in the child’s world — field of vision, perspective, overview, pace, flexibility and opportunities — will move on a higher, faster plane. All of life’s important moments will hereafter be experienced on foot at standing and walking pace.

While walking is basically a linear movement that brings the walker from place to place, it is also much more. Walkers can effortlessly stop underway to change direction, maneuver, speed up or slow down or switch to a different type of activity such as standing, sitting, running, dancing, climbing or lying down.

A city walk illustrates its many variations: the quick goal-oriented walk from A to B, the slow stroll to enjoy city life or a sunset, children’s zig-zagging, and senior citizens’ determined walk to get fresh air and exercise or do an errand. Regardless of the purpose, a walk in city space is a “forum” for the social activities that take place along the way as an integral part of pedestrian activities. Heads move from side to side, walkers turn or stop to see everything, or to greet or talk with others. Walking is a form of transport, but it is also a potential beginning or an occasion for many other activities.

Many factors impact on walking speed: the quality of the route, the surface, the strength of the crowd, and the age and mobility of the walker. The design of the space also plays a role. Pedestrians usually walk faster on streets that invite linear movement, while their pace falls while traversing squares. It is almost like water, which flows rapidly along riverbeds but moves more slowly in lakes. Weather is another factor. People move more quickly when it is raining, windy or cold.

Life takes place on foot in Amman, Jordan.

On Copenhagen’s main walking street, Strøget, pedestrian traffic on cold winter days is 35 percent faster than on good summer days. In summer there are many pedestrians in the city promenading and enjoying the process, while pedestrian traffic in winter is considerably more targeted. When it’s cold, people walk for warmth. On average the walking speed in summer is 14.2 min per km/23 min per mile, corresponding to 4.2 km per hour/2.6 mph. Corresponding winter walking speeds are 10.3 min per km/16.6 min per mile corresponding to 5.8 km per hour/3.6 mph.

A walk of 450 m/0.3 mile takes about five minutes, while a walk of 900 m/0.6 mile will take about 10 minutes at 5.4 km per hour/3.4 mph. Naturally, these time estimates are only valid if the area is uncrowded and people can walk without obstacles or breaks.

An acceptable walking distance is a relatively fluid concept. Some people happily walk many kilometers/miles, while even short walks are difficult for old people, the disabled and children. Walks of 500 m/0.3 miles are mentioned frequently as a distance most people are willing to walk. However, an acceptable distance also depends on the quality of the route. If the pavement is good quality and the route interesting, a considerably longer walk is often acceptable. Conversely, the desire to walk drops drastically if the route is uninteresting and thus feels tiring. In that case a walk of only 200 or 300 m/0.12 to 0.18 mile will seem like a long way, even if it only takes less than five minutes on foot.

A distance of 500 m/0.3 mile as an approximate goal for acceptable walks is supported by the size of city centers. By far the majority of city centers are about one km2/0.39 sq mile, corresponding to an area of 1×1 km/0.6 x 0.6 mile. This means that a walk of a kilometer or less will bring the pedestrians around to most of the functions in the city.

Huge cities like London and New York have corresponding patterns, as they are divided into numerous centers and districts. The magic one km2 center size can certainly be found in these cities. The acceptable walking distance does not change just because the city is larger.

This street sign in Poland discreetly recommends that people keep their arms close to their sides

An important prerequisite for a comfortable and pleasurable walk is room to walk relatively freely and unhampered, without having to weave in and out and without being pushed and shoved by others. Children, older people and people with disabilities have special requirements for being able to walk unhindered. People pushing strollers, shopping carts and walkers also need plenty of room for walking. Groups of young people are typically the most tolerant about moving about in crowds.

If we look at photographs from 100 years ago, pedestrians are often shown moving freely and unimpeded in every direction. Cities were still primarily the province of pedestrians, with horse-drawn carriages and trolleys and a few cars merely as visitors.

In step with the car invasion, pedestrians were first pushed up along building façades and then increasingly squeezed together on shrinking sidewalks. Crowded sidewalks are unacceptable and a problem worldwide.

Studies of urban streets in London, New York and Sydney illustrate the problems of narrow sidewalks for large crowds of pedestrians on streets where most of the area is designed for car traffic, despite the fact that the number of drivers is far lower than the number of pedestrians crowded together on the sidewalk.

The pedestrian traffic on sidewalks moves in columns that are pushed and shoved, and everyone must move at the speed dictated by the pedestrian stream. The elderly, the disabled and children cannot possibly keep up.

Various limits are suggested for what is considered an acceptable amount of space for pedestrian traffic, depending on context. Based on studies in New York, William H. Whyte proposes up to 23 pedestrians per minute per meter/three feet on the sidewalk. Studies in Copenhagen propose 13 pedestrians per minute per meter/three feet of sidewalk, if the limit for unacceptable crowding on sidewalks is to be avoided.

If walking is to be comfortable, including acceptable distance and pace, there has to be room to walk without too many interruptions and obstacles. These qualities are often offered in dedicated pedestrian areas, but seldom on sidewalks on city streets. On the contrary, it is impressive to note how many obstacles and difficulties have been incorporated into pedestrian landscapes over the years. Traffic signs, lampposts, parking meters and all types of technical control units are systematically placed on sidewalks in order “not to be in the way.” Cars parked on or partially on sidewalks, thoughtlessly parked bicycles and undisciplined street displays complete the picture of a pedestrian landscape where pedestrians have to maneuver like skiers down a slalom course in order to move along sidewalks that are too narrow in the first place.

The high priority given to car traffic and parking have created unreasonable conditions for pedestrians all over the world.

Enough space for walking is impor- tant to all groups of pedestrians, but especially children, the elderly and the disabled.

Walking in urban landscapes can present many other petty annoyances and difficulties. One is pedestrian fences intended to keep walkers confined to crowded sidewalks. Barriers erected on pavements at intersections to keep pedestrians away from corners extend some way down the street, causing more detours and annoyance

Interruptions in sidewalks to provide cars with uncomplicated access to garages, driveways, delivery gates and gas stations have gradually become a natural part of the street scene in car-dominated cities.

On Regent Street in London, 45 – 50,000 pedestrians daily force their way through 13 unnecessary sidewalk interruptions, and in Adelaide, South Australia, streets in the city center offer pedestrians no fewer than 330 unnecessary sidewalk interruptions.

In addition to these meaningless interruptions that force pedestrians, wheelchairs and strollers up and down curbs at garages and gates, there are many unmotivated interruptions where small streets run into larger ones. In almost all of the situations mentioned, the sidewalk should be led unbroken through entrance ways and side streets as part of a general policy of inviting rather than discouraging pedestrian traffic.

The combination of inadequate space and annoyances large and small is supplemented by endless waiting time at stoplights at city intersections. Pedestrians are typically given low priority and thus face long waits at red lights followed by short green-light periods. The green light often only lasts seconds before being replaced by blinking red signals meaning that it is now time to run to avoid delaying the traffic.

When walking resembles an obstacle course (Sydney, Australia).

In many places, particularly in the UK and other areas inspired by British traffic planning, crossing the streets is not a basic human right but rather something pedestrians have to apply for by pushing a button at intersections. Sometimes they even have to press three times to make it through the maze at complicated intersections. In these cities any thought of being able to walk 450 meters/1,476 feet in five minutes is a fantasy.

The center of Sydney has many pedestrians, as well as many intersections, many stoplights, many pushbuttons and long periods of waiting. Here pedestrians can easily spend half of the total walking time waiting for the “walk” signal. Waits of up to 15 percent, 25 percent or even 50 percent of a walk are common on many traffic streets in cities around the world.

By comparison, the waiting time on a one-kilometer/0.6 mile walk on Copenhagen’s main walking street, Strøget, is only 0 – 3 percent of walking time. A goal-oriented walk through the city via Strøget can be done in 12 minutes, but many people spend far more time because the walk is so interesting.

Another special walking phenomenon has been noted on sidewalks where crossroads streets and light signals cause pedestrians to stop frequently. Pedestrians move in clumps and therefore always in crowds, even at times when there isn’t much pedestrian traffic.

Every time the pedestrian stream meets a red light the pedestrians stop, and the slightly slower walkers have time to catch up with the main field, after which everyone is once again amalgamated into a clump. When the light turns green, the clump moves forward again, but disperses slightly before the next stoplight, where everyone  is gathered once again. Between clumps, the sidewalk is typically almost devoid of people.

Urbanites all over the world are highly energy conscious when it comes to saving their own energy when walking. They cross streets where it is most natural for them, avoid detours, obstacles, stairs and steps, and prefer direct lines of walking everywhere. When pedestrians can see the object of a walk, they rechart a course along the shortest line. Their pleasure from direct walks can be seen clearly in city squares, by their footsteps after a snowfall and on countless tramped paths worn across lawns and landscapes the world over.

Walking directly to your destination is a natural response, often in an unfortunate and almost comic conflict with architects’ rulers and the resulting right-angled urban projects. These right-angled design projects look neat and proper until the corners, lawns and squares are trodden on in every direction.

It is often easy to foresee the preferred lines of walking and to incorporate them to a reasonable extent in the design of complexes and landscaping. Preferred lines often inspire fascinating patterns and shapes.

Many cities have consistently allowed entrances, garages and side streets to interrupt sidewalks. However, cars should yield on side streets, allow- ing pedestrians and bicycles to continue on without interruption (Regent Street, London).

A standard traffic solution in Copenhagen.

About 500 meters/1,640 feet is a distance most pedestrians find acceptable. This is not an absolute truth, however, because what is acceptable will always be a combination of distance and the quality of the route. If comfort is low, the walk will be short, while if the route is interesting, rich in experience and comfortable, pedestrians forget the distance and enjoy experiences as they happen.

The “tiring length perspective” describes the situation in which the pedestrian can see the whole route at a glance before even starting out. The road is straight and seemingly endless, with no promise of interesting experiences along the way. The prospect is tiring before the walk is even begun.

Even a long walk feels short along a curved road with plenty to see (Cartagena, Colombia).

In contrast, the route can be divided into manageable segments, where people can walk from square to square, which naturally breaks up the walk, or along a street that winds enticingly, inviting the pedestrian from one section to the next. A winding street does not have to twist much to prevent the walker seeing very far down the street, but is constantly walking towards corners and twists, where new vistas open.

Copenhagen’s main pedestrian street, Strøget, is a good kilometer/0.6 mile long and runs almost directly from one end of the city center to the other. Countless twists and turns along the way keep the spaces closed up and interesting. Four squares further divide the route and make walking the length of the city center psychologically manageable. We walk from square to square, and the many twists and turns make the trip interesting and unpredictable. Under these circumstances a walk of one kilometer/0.6 mile or more is no problem.

Street patterns, the design of space, rich detail and intense experiences influence the quality of pedestrian routes and pleasure in walking. The city’s “edges” also play a role. We have plenty of time to look as we walk, and the quality of the ground floor façades we pass close by at eye level, is particularly important to the quality of the tour. The section on lively cities proscribes “small units and many doors” for streets frequented by pedestrians.

The principle of narrow units and many experiences is also important along pedestrian routes that don’t have shops and stalls. Front doors, building details, landscaping and greenery in front of housing, offices and institutions can make a valuable contribution to interesting experiences on walks. If buildings also have a primarily vertical façade expression, walks seem shorter and more manageable, whereas buildings with powerful horizontal lines underscore and reinforce distance.

Walking up stairs is harder than walking on a flat surface, and we avoid stairs whenever we can. And for many groups in society stairs are a direct barrier.

Stairs and steps are another area that clearly illustrate pedestrians’ major interest in saving energy. Horizontal movements are no big problem. If the telephone rings in a neighboring room, we just get up and answer it. However, if the telephone rings on another floor, we shout to ask if someone else will answer it. Going up and down stairs and steps requires new movements, more muscle power, and walking rhythm has to be changed to climbing rhythm. These factors make it more difficult to go up and down than to move on the same plane, or alternatively, to be transported mechanically up and down. At metro stations, in airports and department stores, people stand in line to take the escalator, while staircases next to them are almost empty. Shopping malls and department stores built in several stories rely on escalators and elevators to move people from floor to floor. If the transport breaks down, people go home!

It is interesting to study daily life in multistory housing. In almost all cases, the bulk of activity takes place on the ground floor. Once you have entered the living room, you naturally tend to wait before going upstairs again. Children bring their toys down into the living room, where they play with them all day until their parents take them back up again at bedtime. The lower floors are almost always more well-worn than the upper ones. Second-or third-floor rooms are almost always used less than those on the ground floor, and roof terraces are used far less than outside space with direct access without climbing stairs. The heaps gathered on the bottom steps waiting to be taken upstairs speak volumes about the physical and psychological problems related to internal stairs.

Stairs and steps definitely represent a genuine physical and psychological challenge for pedestrians. If possible pedestrians certainly will avoid them. However, like street length, staircases can also be disguised to make the trip seem more doable. If at the foot of a five-story building we could see the entire staircase with its seemingly endless steps, most people would find it impossible to crawl to the top, unless their lives were at stake. In situations like these it is interesting to see the wide- spread use of elementary “staircase psychology.”

If we can see the staircase all the way to the top, we find the climb all the more tiring.

Staircases are angled to wind from landing to landing, dividing the climb into shorter segments. It is like moving from “square” to “square,” and the climber never gets the chance to see the entire course of stairs in its exhausting length. That way we are enticed into the building, even if we have to climb. Even when the enticement is utterly convincing, it is the elevator that is the most used if there is one. Naturally staircase psychology is also used successfully in public space, where examples like the Spanish Steps in Rome demonstrate that a climb can be beautifully combined with interesting experiences.

With regard to visions of lovely urban space that invite people to walk as much as possible, the conclusion is actually very simple. Stairs and steps are genuine obstacles — in principle to be avoided wherever possible. When a necessity in the pedestrian landscape, stairs and steps must have comfortable dimensions, and visual interest and staircase psychology must be used purposefully. Ramps or elevators are estab- lished for rolling pedestrian traffic and people with reduced mobility as a matter of course.

If we consider situations where pedestrians are free to choose between ramps and stairs, we see that they clearly prefer ramps. Walking rhythm can be maintained if height differences are evened out by allowing the terrain to rise and fall slightly or by using ramps. Children, the disabled and rolling pedestrian traffic can also complete their walk without interruptions. Ramps are not always as full of character as stairs and steps, but they are generally preferred.

Marathon preparation in Venice means ramps instead of stairs.

Shoppers have a choice of ramps, stairs and escalators at this shopping center in Beijing, China.

In the early years of the automobile invasion, from the 1950s to the 1970s, road engineering focused uncritically on increasing capacity on the roads and preventing accidents to pedestrians. The solution to both problems was often to segregate traffic and lead pedestrians under or over roads by means of pedestrian underpasses and bridges. This meant subjecting pedestrians to stairs on either side of the crossing. Planners quickly learned that pedestrian underpasses and bridges were exceedingly unpopular and only worked if tall fences were also built along the roads, so that pedestrians literally had no other way out. This still did not solve the problem of strollers, wheelchairs and bicycles, however.

Pedestrian underpass systems had the additional disadvantage of being dark and dank, and people generally feel insecure if they are unable to see very far ahead. In short, the often expensive pedestrian underpasses and bridges were in conflict with the basic premises for good pedestrian landscapes. Seen in the perspective of current visions of inviting people to walk and bicycle more in cities, clearly pedestrian underpasses and bridges can only be solutions in those special cases where major highways must be crossed. Solutions must be found for all other roads and streets that allow pedestrians and bicycles to stay on street level and cross with dignity. An integrated traffic model will also make city streets friendlier and safer as cars will have to move more slowly and stop more often.

Today the world is full of abandoned pedestrian underpasses and bridges. They belong to a certain time and a certain philosophy.

in Japanese cities the overpass- es are intertwined into larger systems. Level of difficulty: great. Chances of interesting promenades: small (Sendai, Japan).

Naturally pavements play an important role in pedestrian comfort. In future the quality of pavement and surfaces will be particularly important in a world with more senior citizens and pedestrians with reduced mobility, more rolling pedestrian traffic and more people wanting to take children to the city. It is desirable for surfaces to be even and non slip. Traditional cobblestones and broken natural slate stones are full of visual character, but seldom live up to modern requirements. In places where the character of the old cobblestones has to be maintained, bands of flat granite have to be added to enable wheelchairs, strollers, small children, senior citizens and women in high heels to move in relative comfort. This type of pavement, combining old with new, is used in many cities and can be designed as elegant floors for public space, while paying history its due.

As far as possible, a good city for walking must function all year round, day and night. In winter it is important that snow and ice are cleared, and, to use the Copenhagen model as an example, pedestrian areas and bicycle paths should be cleared before roads for car traffic. On cold days when pavements are icy, pedestrians have a far greater risk of injury than do car drivers, who typically drive more slowly and carefully. In all parts of the world and in all seasons, ensuring dry nonslip surfaces for pedes- trians is an important part of whole-hearted invitations to walk in cities.

Lighting is crucial once night falls. Good lighting on people and faces and reasonable lighting for façades, niches and corners is needed along the most important pedestrian routes to strengthen the real and the ex- perienced  sense of security, and sufficient light is needed on pavements, surfaces and steps so that pedestrians can maneuver safely.

Please walk — around the clock all year round.”

http://sf.streetsblog.org/2011/06/14/danish-architect-jan-gehl-on-good-cities-for-walking/

Smart growth reduces carbon emissions

Robert Steuteville, New Urban Network

“There’s a compelling graph in researcher Todd Litman’s article in the Spring 2011 Center for Real Estate Quarterly, a publication of Portland State University in Portland, Oregon.

Attached at top right, the graph shows vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in three types of neighborhoods in Portland. Neighborhoods with good transit and mixed use average 9.8 VMT/household/day. Neighborhoods with good transit but no mix of uses average 13.3 VMT/household/day. The rest of the region, with no mix of uses or good transit — mostly characterized by suburban sprawl — averages 21.8 VMT/household/day.

This difference — 55 percent less automobile use in mixed-use, transit-served neighborhoods compared to sprawl — is dramatic.

In his article, “Can Smart Growth policies conserve energy and reduce emissions,” Litman explains why people drive so much less in compact urban places. “In multi-modal, smart growth locations residents tend to own fewer vehicles, drive fewer annual miles, and rely more on alternative modes. Even larger vehicle travel reductions occur where smart growth is implemented with efficient road, parking and fuel pricing; such pricing reforms tend to be more effective (price elasticities increase) at reducing vehicle travel if travelers have viable alternatives.”

In Pittsburgh, for example, the close-in city neighborhoods range from 7,000 to 11,000 VMT/household/year, while the distant suburbs range from 21,000 to 25,000 VMT/household/year. The same general pattern holds for literally every metro region.

Litman cites studies that show density alone does in fact have “modest impacts” on VMT and greenhouse gases. But the big impacts from smart growth are from a series of related characteristics — street connectivity, mixed-use, availability of transit, thoroughfare design, and effective parking management among them — that are also correlated with reductions in VMT.

In other words, if all you do is bring people closer together, you get modest reductions in gasoline consumption. But if you do all of the other things associated with smart growth — that is to say, create a walkable environment with multiple destinations and alternative modes of transportation — the impacts on VMT, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions are huge. It’s worth glancing at Litman’s table, “Land use impacts on travel,” attached here, which is a summary of research on how various smart growth strategies affect automobile use.”

http://newurbannetwork.com/news-opinion/blogs/robert-steuteville/14788/does-smart-growth-reduce-carbon-emissions-bet-house-it

Frederick Law Olmsted – Ten design lessons from the father of American landscape architecture

http://pctrs.network.hu/clubpicture/1/1/6/_/central_park_116395_83384.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3039/3403369342_2447258ff8_o.jpg

“Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903), the father of American landscape architecture, may have more to do with the way America looks than anyone else. Beginning in 1857 with the design of Central Park in New York City, he created designs for thousands of landscapes, including many of the world’s most important parks.

His works include Prospect Park in Brooklyn, Boston’s Emerald Necklace, Biltmore Estate in North Carolina, Mount Royal in Montreal, the grounds of the U.S. Capitol and the White House, and Washington Park, Jackson Park and the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. (The last of those documented excellently in Erik Larson’s book The Devil in the White City.) Plus, many of the green spaces that define towns and cities across the country are influenced by Olmsted.

Below, ten lessons from Olmsted’s approach:

1) Respect “the genius of a place.”
Olmsted wanted his designs to stay true to the character of their natural surroundings. He referred to “the genius of a place,” a belief that every site has ecologically and spiritually unique qualities. The goal was to “access this genius” and let it infuse all design decisions.

This meant taking advantage of unique characteristics of a site while also acknowledging disadvantages. For example, he was willing to abandon the rainfall-requiring scenery he loved most for landscapes more appropriate to climates he worked in. That meant a separate landscape style for the South while in the dryer, western parts of the country he used a water-conserving style (seen most visibly on the campus of Stanford University, design shown at right).

2) Subordinate details to the whole.
Olmsted felt that what separated his work from a gardener was “the elegance of design,” (i.e. one should subordinate all elements to the overall design and the effect it is intended to achieve). There was no room for details that were to be viewed as individual elements. He warned against thinking “of trees, of turf, water, rocks, bridges, as things of beauty in themselves.” In his work, they were threads in a larger fabric. That’s why he avoided decorative plantings and structures in favor of a landscapes that appeared organic and true.

3) The art is to conceal art.
Olmsted believed the goal wasn’t to make viewers see his work. It was to make them unaware of it. To him, the art was to conceal art. And the way to do this was to remove distractions and demands on the conscious mind. Viewers weren’t supposed to examine or analyze parts of the scene. They were supposed to be unaware of everything that was working.

He tried to recreate the beauty he saw in the Isle of Wight during his first trip to England in 1850: “Gradually and silently the charm comes over us; we know not exactly where or how.” Olmsted’s works appear so natural that one critic wrote, “One thinks of them as something not put there by artifice but merely preserved by happenstance.”

4) Aim for the unconscious.
Related to the previous point, Olmsted was a fan of Horace Bushnell’s writings about “unconscious influence” in people. (Bushnell believed real character wasn’t communicated verbally but instead at a level below that of consciousness.) Olmsted applied this idea to his scenery. He wanted his parks to create an unconscious process that produced relaxation. So he constantly removed distractions and demands on the conscious mind.

For example, his designs subtly direct movement through the landscape. Pedestrians are led without realizing they’re being led. If you’ve ever gotten lost on one of Prospect Park’s paths, you’ll understand the point. It’s a strange sensation of feeling lost yet completely confident that you can easily return to your starting point.

5) Avoid fashion for fashion’s sake.
Olmsted rejected displays “of novelty, of fashion, of scientific or virtuoso inclinations and of decoration.” He felt popular trends of the day, like specimen planting and flower-bedding of exotics, often intruded more than they helped.

For example, he contrasted the effect of a common wild flower on a grassy bank with that of a gaudy hybrid of the same genus, imported from Japan and blooming under glass in an enameled vase. The hybrid would draw immediate attention. He observed, but “the former, while we have passed it by without stopping, and while it has not interrupted our conversation or called for remark, may possibly, with other objects of the same class, have touched us more, may have come home to us more, may have had a more soothing and refreshing sanitary influence.”

6) Formal training isn’t required.
Olmsted had no formal design training and didn’t commit to landscape architecture until he was 44. Before that, he was a New York Times correspondent to the Confederate states, the manager of a California gold mine, and General Secretary of the United States Sanitary Commission during the Civil War. He also ran a farm on Staten Island from 1848 to 1855 and spent time working in a New York dry-goods store.

His views on landscapes developed from travelling and reading. When he was young, he took a year-long voyage in China. And in 1850, he took a six-month walking tour of Europe and the British Isles, during which he saw numerous parks, private estates, and scenic countryside. He was also deeply influenced by Swiss physician Johann Georg von Zimmermann’s writings about nature’s ability to heal “derangements of the mind” through imagination. Olmsted read Zimmermann’s book as a boy and treasured it.

7) Words matter.
Olmsted wrote often and thought hard about the words he used. For example, he rejected the term “landscape gardening” for his own work since he felt he worked on a larger scale than gardeners. He wrote, “Gardening does not conveniently include exposing great ledges, damming streams, making lakes, tunnels, bridges, terraces and canals.” Therefore, he said, “Nothing can be written on the subject in which extreme care is not taken to discriminate between what is meant in common use of the words garden, gardening, gardener, and the art which I try to pursue.” He also wrote extensively on design principles and his words still inspire many in the field to this day.

Stand for something.
By the time he began work as a landscape architect, Olmsted had developed a set of social values that gave purpose to his design work.

From his New England heritage he drew a belief in community and the importance of public institutions of culture and education. His southern travels and friendship with exiled participants in the failed German revolutions of 1848 convinced him of the need for the United States to demonstrate the superiority of republican government and free labor. A series of influences, beginning with his father and supplemented by reading such British writers on landscape art as Uvedale Price, Humphry Repton, William Gilpin, William Shenstone, and John Ruskin convinced him of the importance of aesthetic sensibility as a means of moving American society away from frontier barbarism and toward what he considered a civilized condition.

His writings show that, in his view, he wasn’t just making pretty, green spaces. He was democratizing nature…

It is one great purpose of the Park to supply to the hundreds of thousands of tired workers, who have no opportunity to spend their summers in the country, a specimen of God’s handiwork that shall be to them, inexpensively, what a month of two in the White Mountains or the Adirondacks is, at great cost, to those in easier circumstances.

…and healing people’s mental conditions.

It is a scientific fact that the occasional contemplation of natural scenes of an impressive character, particularly if this contemplation occurs in connection with relief from ordinary cares, change of air and change of habits, is favorable to the health and vigor of men…The want of such occasional recreation where men and women are habitually pressed by their business or household cares often results in a class of disorders the characteristic quality of which is mental disability, sometimes taking the severe forms of softening of the brain, paralysis, palsey, monomania, or insanity, but more frequently of mental and nervous excitability, moroseness, melancholy, or irascibility, incapacitating the subject for the proper exercise of the intellectual and moral forces.

9) Utility trumps ornament.
There was always a “purpose of direct utility or service” to Olmsted’s work. Service preceded art in his work. He felt trees, flowers, and fences without purpose were “inartistic if not barbarous.” He wrote, “So long as considerations of utility are neglected or overridden by considerations of ornament, there will be not true art.”

This could be seen in the way he treated practical aspects of his work. Providing for adequate drainage and other engineering considerations mattered as much as arranging surface features.

He was also into sustainable design and environmental conservation long before it was in vogue. He wrote, “Plant materials should thrive, be non invasive, and require little maintenance. The design should conserve the natural features of the site to the greatest extent possible and provide for the continued ecological health of the area.”

10) Never too much, hardly enough.
Olmsted fought against distracting elements. He constantly simplified the scene, clearing and planting to clarify the “leading motive” of the natural site. Though he often faced criticism from those who found his style too rough and unkempt, Olmsted was as proud of what he didn’t do as what he did do. Thirty years after he helped to design Central Park, he observed to his ex-partner, Calvert Vaux, “The great merit of all the works you and I have done is that in them the larger opportunities of the topography have not been wasted in aiming at ordinary suburban gardening, cottage gardening effects. We have let it alone more than most gardeners can. But never too much, hardly enough.”

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