On Streetscape Design

Some of the most important features of an urban area are street layout and street design. These are responsible for not only transporting people, but also for promoting interaction with other people and with the surrounding environment. The design of an area's streetscape says much about how the area is used by those who live and work in it, as well as what kind of interaction it is intended for. The streetscape is composed of several components: sidewalks, the street itself, landscaping, and the design and orientation of buildings along the street.

The first aspect I will be examining is the sidewalk. Sidewalks serve many purposes, the transportation of pedestrians being one of them. They serve as a form of protection for a community, a basis for social interaction, and a location for children to play and be easily supervised.

-Sidewalks do not always breed pedestrians, and pedestrians can exist without sidewalks.

A well used sidewalk can function as a means of community protection because the people using it are witnesses to activities carried out on it. This is described in detail in The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs, which notes that criminal activity is less likely to occur in places with heavy public use, as there is a greater chance that there will be witnesses who can thwart the criminal's objectives or describe them to police.

 

Sidewalks facilitate social interaction because they act as a melting pot for people performing all varieties of activities. They serve as stages for street performers, transition areas between shops and restaurants, and act as platform for shopkeepers and street vendors to advertize to potential customers, either with menu displays in front of restaurants or with racks of clothing, records or books in front of shop doors.

Sidewalks also facilitate the safety of children and allow them to be supervised effectively, much in the same way that sidewalks also prevent crime. Children who play on sidewalks can be supervised without the need for parents and other adults to leave their houses, unlike parks. This also applies to store employees and shopkeepers, who also serve a surveillance and security purpose as they are part of the neighborhood and the street environment.

The second aspect I will look at is the design of the street. The street is responsible for transporting all non-pedestrian traffic through and around a city. Many counter-intuitive ideas surround street design and traffic volume, these ideas create hostile pedestrian environments and lower the economic potential of the streetscape.

Widening a street will increase traffic congestion, not lessen it. This is known as the rule of induced demand, that increasing capacity of a thoroughfare will entice users to use it and thus cause a net increase in congestion. This is often seen during rush hour when freeways experience gridlock, but secondary roads are relatively free of traffic. Freeways are used because drivers assume they are automatically faster because of their higher speed limits, regardless of the traffic volume they are carrying.

Wider streets also pose a hazard to pedestrians, as someone crossing the street has to cross more lanes of traffic which will most likely be moving at a higher speed. Wider streets also lead to an increase in vehicular accidents.

In addition, the higher speeds promoted by wider streets lessen the possible uses of the street, as bike lanes and improved sidewalks are less likely to be introduced along streets with high traffic speeds.

Streets carry vehicles other than cars, they also transport bicycles, buses, and streetcars. Each of these has specific needs and are accommodated in specific ways.

Bicycles require dedicated lanes, which should be placed between the sidewalk and the parallel parking area of a street. This is so that the line of parked cars can offer bicyclists a form of protection from other vehicles using the street.

Buses are the backbone of a city's public transportation system. However, their ride quality (a factor in attracting users by choice) varies greatly and depends primarily on the condition of pavement, which is difficult to maintain in an urban environment where it is heavily used. Bus stops are primarily located curbside, either directly on the sidewalk or on bus bulbs. Buses do not have traffic signal priority and often share lanes with cars, the exception to both of these being bus rapid transit.

Streetcars are the step between buses and light rail or metro systems, providing rail transit without the need for segregated rights of way. They usually do not have traffic signal priority, and stops can be either curbside or in street medians. Streetcars do not wear the pavement, and their use can help lead to lower road maintenance costs. However, streetcars cannot bypass obstacles on the tracks, and therefore can be slower than buses.

Street landscaping also plays a large role in the use (or lack thereof) of a street. Street trees shade a street and can make the street more attractive to pedestrians, but also limit the visibility of the street from upper floors of buildings. Bicycle racks and benches can serve to promote walking and alternative transportation, but also take up sidewalk space that could be used by businesses or
increase pedestrian capacity.

Lastly, the way buildings along the street are designed greatly impacts the way the street is used. To generate optimal pedestrian activity, buildings should be built up to the sidewalk, with parking either behind the buildings in alleyways or non-existent.

Building the parking lot in front of the building not only promotes transportation to and from the building via automobiles, but separates the pedestrian environment from the storefront, and creates a “dead zone” that the pedestrian must cross to enter the building. This space not only exposes one to pollution from automobiles, but can also pose a threat to one's safety as parking lots do not normally have surveillance cameras.

Most urban buildings are mixed use, supporting shops, restaurants or bars on the street level and apartments or condominiums on upper floors. These allow people not only to use transportation alternatives, but to also live above their workplaces if they so choose. However, if mixed use buildings are constructed in isolated pockets, they will not create vibrant streetscapes, as traveling between the pockets of mixed use cannot be done with walking alone.

The correct implementations and combinations of these elements can produce a streetscape that encourages alternative transportation, independent businesses, and public health. The incorrect use or disregard of these elements produces a streetscape that is hostile to the pedestrian and dangerous to the bicyclist, inefficient at moving traffic, and hostile to development.

House Republicans Prefer Freeways over Safe Access to Schools

A recent article by the Huffington Post noted that two committees within the House of Representatives voted to remove federal funding for the Safe Routesto School National Partnership, an organization which promotes pedestrian and bicycle friendly environments around schools. The $202 million provided to the organization is approximately five percent of the interstate highway system's annual funding. This money will still be distributed to states, but in the form of general highway funding, which would be spent on interstate improvements and road construction as well as transit. John Mica (R-FL), who has a record of opposing alternative transit investments and was also the author of a bill to privatize Amtrak, claimed that this reduction in funding would not pose a problem, as he claimed that communities would make up the missing funds with their own investments. This seems highly unlikely however, as many communities are cutting back on program funding due to the economic climate.  

Dedicating additional funding towards freeways is wasteful and inefficient, as it causes increases in traffic congestion because of induced demand, increases in utility costs because of expansion of power and water lines to low density development and increases in personal transportation expenses.

Not only does this measure show the Republicans' support for inefficient and wasteful transportation projects, but it also shows they are willing to forsake communities and schools to get there way on these issues. Depriving schools of adequate pedestrian and bicycle access not only puts children at risk of being injured in a vehicular accident, but also promotes an unhealthy lifestyle as it discourages walking and bicycling, leading to a decrease in physical activity.

Furthermore, this proves once again that Republicans and the Tea Party are guided by blind ideology alone and care only about the illusion of policy implementation, rather than the substance of it. If reducing government spending was indeed a high priority for the right wing, then they would be adamant supporters of mixed use development, public transportation use, and bike paths and sidewalks such as those supported by the Safe Routes to School National Partnership. All of these things are proven to not only reduce government and private expenses but also to generate economic development, which is something that today, simply cannot be ignored.

"The City," A 1939 Film on the Supposed Suburban Future

Part 1:

Part 2:

The intent of this film was to promote the idea of the Garden City, an idea that was gaining traction at the time due to the popularity of the automobile. In this film, a social justice appeal is made claiming that traditional methods of city building are no longer adequate to foster social interaction among residents, that density causes isolation, and that pollution generated from nearby factories aids in the creation of slums. The solution that is presented to this problem is that of separating the living from the working. In other words, the creation of suburbs.

It is interesting to note that the suburbs depicted in this film differ in many respects from the actual results of the Garden City movement. In the film, houses are in close proximity to stores and offices, but factories are separated, it is noted that one can walk to work, school, and various stores. The film claims that this will bring people closer to nature, something which the film (commentary written by Lewis Mumford) considers a major concern.

The film lists the benefits of these as such: It claims that cities built in this manner will remain human scaled and not grow ungainly (read: will not be dense), it claims that they will balance people, technology, and nature, and it claims that they allow for efficiency by consolidating living and working into separate domains.

However, when these ideas were translated into policy, the exact opposite happened. Suburbs became disconnected and focused on the automobile alone, they sprawled out of proportion and sacrificed natural resources and land, and made living less efficient because more money must be spent on roads, utilities, and transportation expenses.

The arguments that this film makes for suburbs seem more appropriate if they are instead used to promote density, mixed uses, and transit options. These are efficient, conserve land, and allow for social interaction.

Further more, in Death and Life of Great American Cities, published slightly over twenty years after this film, Jane Jacobs argues that density and mix of uses are, in fact, beneficial as they promote both social and economic diversity, which allows cities to develop and function efficiently. This has been proven as suburbs have expanded and required large amounts of land and money to do so.

The lacuna between the ideas expressed in this film and their implementation is a lesson for the current generation of urban planners. Care must be taken to insure that cities are rebuilt with proper regard to how they are used by their residents and the social and psychological effects of the urban landscape. In addition, planners must insure that their ideas are not tainted in the name of political gain or expedience during implementation.

VDOT Sees Sprawl as Good Politics

A month ago, the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) reversed its neighborhood connectivity standards. In doing so, it threw out progressive, anti-sprawl regulations made in 2009.

In Virginia, when a developer builds a development, they construct the roads and then VDOT acquires them from the developer and covers their maintenance costs. In 2009, VDOT edited their regulations as to what they require from developers to include connectivity. With this, the number of roads in a development would be divided by the number of intersections, yielding the “connectivity index” of the development. These regulations stipulated that cul-de-sacs and other road termini count as intersections, but roads that terminate at the property line of the development without connecting to adjacent roads in another development do not, thus discouraging isolated developments connected only by a main road.

However, the regulations made permissions for “incompatible uses” or developments separated by natural boundaries (such as railroad tracks or streams) to be exempt from these connectivity standards, but went on to say that residential and commercial uses are always compatible and should be connected when possible.

Ironically, these original regulations were made with the understanding that they would save the state money in the long term, as less funding would be required to plow roads, install utilities, and provide police protection, fire protection, and educational facilities. In addition to this, it would also make main roads safer by diverting traffic off of them, save time by offering direct routes to destinations, and promote walking and bicycling, as secondary routes with lower speeds and less traffic were available.

However, in what seems to be nothing more than a political statement, VDOT and the Republican governor Bob McDonnell decided to throw these regulations out the window. Allowing for single use, cul-de-sac centered sprawl to grow without bound, and causing increased traffic congestion, increased rates of automobile accidents, increased pollution, and unnecessary spending on utilities and services.

 

Why, then, did VDOT and Governor McDonnell allow this to happen?

The answer is simple, ideology and politics got in the way of facts and numbers. Govenor McDonnell and VDOT decided to conveniently ignore the cost savings these standards could bring about. Instead, they derided the standards as “Socialist” and promised to stamp them out, as the Tea Party usually does with regulations that promote public transit, mixed use development, and alternatives to driving.

In reversing these development guidelines, the State of Virginia has shown that it is willing to ignore facts, sacrifice economic development, public safety, the environment, and the well being of its citizens in order to score political points. This is something that should not be allowed to happen.

On Streetcars

Given the current political turbulence over streetcar projects in Northern Virginia, Washington, DC, and Cincinnati, Ohio, I think it's time for a discussion surrounding the nature of these projects, what they are intended to do, what the rational for supporting them is, and how accurate the arguments against them are. This article will also look at several features of each individual project.

Streetcar systems are one of the best ways of promoting urban investment, they allow quick and convenient access around a city and to city districts, allowing people to access more area than they would be able to access by foot or car. This shows that a community is willing to make long term investments and intends to promote downtown growth over suburban growth into the future. Developers see this as a green light to build and renovate. Constructing mixed use development in conjunction with affordable and mixed income housing. Streetcar construction also promotes an improved street scape, including rebuilt sidewalks, roads, and vegetation.  

However, this investment does result in a redirection of resources from the suburbs to the city, but these resources are put to good use, and do not require the quality of public services provided to suburban residents to decrease. Dense urban living is more efficient than suburban living, and requires less resources to maintain. In addition to this, the investment in urban areas will serve as an impetus for people to move to them, decreasing suburban sprawl.

Streetcar systems are superior to buses for several reasons, such as lack of pollution, a smoother ride, a lack of social stigmas, visible routes, longer vehicle lifespans, and inclusion on local non-transit maps.

This being said, let's examine a few systems

Washington, DC: The Washington system is unique in that it is a city wide network being planned and built in phases, with the first segment currently scheduled to open in 2013 along H Street. However, the construction and planning has been besieged with mismanagement from the beginning. The concept originated as a light rail line in Anacostia, which was then became a streetcar route. The H Street line and the Anacostia line were under construction simutaneously until 2009, when the DC Department of Transportation ordered construction hated on the Anacostia line and incorporated it into another phase of the project.

The goal of the Washington, DC project is to connect the districts and neighborhoods within the city, as opposed to the Metro, which was designed to get commuters into and out of the city. It will also serve as an impetus to rebuild many decayed parts of the city, as some segments of the streetcar project (such as the H Street line) are part of complete rebuilds of the streets and street spaces, which also includes new development and affordable housing.

The initial H Street line will then be extended up K Street and out Benning Road, forming the first in a series of lines crossing the district.

The majority of the lines will terminate at Metrorail stations, allowing residents of DC neighborhoods access to the greater metro area without necessitating a car. It will also run on battery power in the core downtown, to comply with a 19^th century law prohibiting overhead electrical wires downtown.

Northern Virginia/Columbia Pike Streetcar: This is an initiative sponsored by the Columbia Pike Transit Initiative with the intent of turning Columbia Pike into a “main street” with urban areas surrounding it. The line is intended to run from Northern Virginia Community College to just past the Pentagon Metrorail Station, however there are no current plans for it to bridge the Potomac River and connect with the Washington DC system. Such a connection would be advantageous because it would eliminate the need for a transfer to Metrorail in order to access Washington DC. However, the future of this project is uncertain, as the Virginia General Assembly ruled that the agency set up to develop it cannot collect the money necessary to build it.

When constructed, this line will serve as a development anchor for the area, promoting dense development and urban growth patterns to counteract sprawl.

Cincinnati, Ohio: The proposed system in Cincinnati, Ohio is modeled after the successful system in Portland, Oregon. This system is planned to connect downtown, Over-the-Rhine, and various neighborhoods in proximity to the University of Cincinnati. A feasibility study conducted on the proposed route in 2007 found that the city of Cincinnati would receive close to two billion dollars in benefits from the streetcar, including $34 million in tax revenue, $17 million in business activity, between $54 million and $193 million in redevelopment activity, and gain anywhere from 1,200 to 3,400 residencies.

Several extensions are also proposed to the initial line, including Clifton, the Cincinnati Zoo, and Union Terminal. The line is currently expected to cost $102 million, with full extensions to Clifton, the zoo and the university coming in at $185 million.

In 2009, a measure was put on the ballot by the right wing group the Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes (COAST) to kill the project, this measure targeted not only the streetcar but also proposed high speed rail from Cincinnati to Columbus to Cleveland as well as a tourist train at the Cincinnati Zoo. The measure failed 56% to 44%.

However, another measure by the same group is in the works and was recently approved to be added to the November ballot. This measure would prohibit any money regardless of funding from being spent on any rail project in the Cincinnati area for the next decade.

It is imperative that this measure be defeated soundly. Failing to do so will do nothing less than grant an economic death sentence to the city of Cincinnati and its metro area. COAST apparently wants to apply its acronym to the economy of Cincinnati, in which case it it will not grow, and coast until it stops completely.

6 Ways Urban Development Impacts You (and why Suburban Development is Bad)

1) Money: The amount of money you spend on transportation expenses relative to income increases with the number of cars you own. This is due to acquisition costs, fuel, and maintenance. This means that the farther away from your job you live (i.e. the more you spend on fuel and the more necessary multiple cars become) the less money you have to spend on other needs or to save. Mixed use zoning, transit oriented development, and high quality public transportation can reduce these costs. In addition to this, suburban housing is subsidized to an extent by the Federal Housing Administration and the loans it provides and guarantees towards single family homes, thus the true costs of suburban housing are hidden from the homeowners. These loans cannot be used to purchase residencies in multi-unit buildings and similar incentives are not available to renters.

2) Health: The lifestyles encouraged by different development types vary wildly. Suburban development is based on the car, which means minimal walking and lots of fast food restaurants. Urban development is pedestrian friendly, encouraging walking and transit use. However, the increased consumption of fast food and decrease of physical activity due to primarily suburban development patterns have put strain on our medical system. In addition to this, the long commutes created by automobile centric development have an adverse impact on mental health, as they cause levels of stress to increase, which in turn can cause violent behavior and loss of workplace productivity.

3) Reenforcing or Breaking Stereotypes: Due to the factors that were in play before and during the beginning of suburban growth, poverty has become unfairly synonymous with race. Ethnic minorities are almost always depicted as being impoverished, while Caucasians are almost always depicted as being wealthy. This has then created another unfair relationship between ethnic minorities and predisposal to criminal behavior, causing public housing projects and mixed income projects to be opposed along racial lines, thinking that they will bring crime. These same projects, if successful, will bring their occupants out of poverty regardless of race, and can be used to break these unfair depictions of ethnic minorities.

4) Quality of One's Living Environment: In addition to the health and economic effects of automobiles, large quantities of cars can also create low quality living environments. Large roads and freeways create noise and light pollution, and parking lots use land that could be developed or used for parks. In addition to this, pollution from cars creates smog and poor air quality, leading to additional health issues.

5) Decrease in Quality of Public Services: As the density of development decreases and the amount of land consumed by it increases, applicable services such as police and fire departments, schools, and utilities become more expensive and less efficient because they have to cover more ground. Since the fiscal needs of these organizations are not adequately met, their quality becomes unevenly distributed and overall quality decreases.

6) Crime: Sound urban development and urban revitalization includes use of tools such as mixed income housing, mixed use development, and transit oriented development. These serve to bring investment and people to the areas they are built in. The high presence of people and mix of uses serves as a deterrent for crime because they provide public surveillance of the street space and property.

Is Gentrification Good?

One aspect of New Urbanism that is often discussed is gentrification and the role it supposedly plays in making neglected areas of cities attractive again. However, its danger comes with the fact that it has potential to uproot current residents of the area being gentrified, and to replace current services with ones that will seem to be beneficial to the new residents.

These issues manifest themselves in the way that wealth (and the lack thereof) are personified in American society. Middle and high income residents are likely to be white, and low income residents are likely to be ethnic minorities.

And herein lies the problem. The economic issue of gentrification (middle and high income people moving into an area of investment and displacing the lower income groups who used to live there) is suddenly turned into a racial issue, where white residents are seen as kicking black residents out of their houses and forcing them to move elsewhere, either into other neglected areas or into public housing.

Because of this, gentrification areas and building public or affordable housing can sometimes be opposed along racial lines.  

The solution to this conundrum lies in breaking the perceived link between ethnic minorities and poverty, and thus ethnic minorities and criminal activity.

This can be accomplished through rebuilding an area while maintaining its architectural style and building public housing units interspersed with market rate housing units, allowing public housing units to be distributed to tenants in the form of vouchers. The value of the vouchers would decrease as the residents' income increased until the residents could own the property outright.  

Yet another way to determine whether a unit would be market rate or public housing would be to make every other unit that comes up for sale in a neighborhood public or market rate.

Either way, there should be no architectural differences between the public and market rate units. Doing such would create the opinion that occupants of public housing are by some means inferior to occupants of market rate housing.

Good public housing should not keep the poor in poverty.

Taking the approach of sandwiching public housing between units of market rate or affordable housing would both confer the social benefits of mixed income housing to the lower income residents and eliminate the stereotype of racial groups being predisposed to poverty or crime.

A good way to picture this would be to imagine side streets with rowhouses along them, every other rowhouse on one side of a street would be public housing, and the same for the other side of the street. Main avenues would be bordered by mixed use development with some commercial office space thrown in.

If you take away one thing from this article, it should be the following:

Ethnic minorities do not cause crime, poverty causes crime.