TOPP (The Open Planning Project) builds technology to enhance the role of the citizen in democratic society. One of their projects is the New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign, the source of these images of an urban street and its transformation into a living street . They claim that ‘the time is long overdue for our great city to strike a better balance between traffic and the needs of pedestrians. The NYC Streets Renaissance Campaign aims to educate New Yorkers about potential transportation policy changes that will improve quality of life across New York City, promote a rebalancing of this public space away from private vehicles and toward community needs, demonstrate the widespread public support for reform on these issues and tap the potential of New Yorkers to re-imagine their own streets’.
The Open Planning Project http://topp.openplans.org/
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Good business Often unappreciated is the fact that living streets make great business sense. Jan Gehl, an urban design consultant, when discussing pedestrian zones in Copenhagen said ‘shopkeepers protested vehemently that it would kill their businesses’. 7 They quickly discovered that these fears were unfounded. Pedestrian traffic has more than tripled over the past 40 years and the pedestrian district is now the thriving heart of a reinvigorated city. When West Palm Beach, Florida converted several wide thoroughfares into narrow two-way streets, traffic slowed and people immediately felt safer walking. This increase in pedestrian traffic attracted new shops and apartment buildings, and property values along one of the town’s main streets have more than doubled. It is perhaps one of those things that is so obvious that it passes notice, but the most successful public spaces are the ones that attract people. Unless you have a drive-in store, pedestrians are the main ingredient of any business. By providing beautiful, distinctive places to be, sheltered by trees, safe and easily reached by a variety of means, you’ve essentially created a pedestrian magnet. And there is a symbiotic relationship between business and the creation of great public space. Each enhances the opportunities for
Trees on streets provide obvious health advantages. Lung-damaging particles and pollution are filtered from the air and replaced with oxygen. They also foster a healthy environment by moderating severe heat – providing up to 9°C difference between shaded and exposed streets, reducing noise pollution and conserving water. And it is not just physical well being that is at risk where we foster single purpose roadways over living streets, there are also psychological repercussions. Consider this sad statistic: ‘People in very high traffic areas have an average of 0.9 friends. This means that some of these people have no friends at all!’ 9 Moving forward If we switch our approach from engineering single purpose street- scapes – traffic corridors , to designing streetscapes as multi-functional ecosystems – living streets , we will foster a reincarnation of our streetscapes as inclusive, healthy, friendly, safe, environmentally thoughtful and economically sensible public space, not only useful for moving through and locating ourselves within the city but also delightful. p If we can develop and design streets so that they are wonderful, fulfilling places to be – community-building places, attractive for all people – then we will have successfully designed about one-third of the city directly and will have had an immense impact on the rest. —Allan Jacobs 10 1 Whyte, William. City . New York: Doubleday, 1988. p109 2 New Zealand Land Transport. Crown Entity, Governmnent of New Zealand, Minister of Transport. http://www.ltsa.govt.nz/index.html 3 Walljasper, Jay. The Great Neighborhood Book: A D.I.Y Guide to Placemaking. Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers, 2007. p56 4 Ibid. p120-1 5 Mental Speed Bumps. http://www.mentalspeedbumps.com/ 6 Kulash, Walter. ‘The Third Motor Age’ Places , Vol 10, N o 2 7 Walljasper, Jay. ‘Our Place in the World’ Ode Magazine , June 2005 8 Barber, John. ‘Reliance on Cars puts Commuters on Road to Fat City’ The Globe and Mail , Tuesday, April 24, 2001 9 ‘An Epidemic of Boldness’ Project for Public Spaces . http://www.pps.org/ 10 http://www.pps.org/training/info/transportation_training_course
the other. Health
McGill’s Avi Friedman notes ‘ Where you live, however upscale your community, could be killing you’. This is largely due to how we engineer streets to cater to car travel; ‘We have engineered out physical activity’. 8 The decline of safe, walkable streetscapes in North American towns is considered a major factor in our obesity epidemic and consequently our susceptibility to heart conditions and strokes. Living streets reverse this trend, providing seductive incentives to get out of our cars, making physical activity a pleasure and a part of daily life rather than a chore to be sweated out at the gym.
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street, street smarts, street life: onsite 19
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