TheArtist
|
|
« Reply #20 on: February 22, 2009, 12:14:00 pm » |
|
Some thoughts and observations on street design. And yes, its another of my famously long, Sunday morning posts lol.
Blanket statements like, wide streets are bad, small streets are good.... well, sometimes, sometimes not.
Take 71st by the mall area. Its a wide street. Yet I have seen streets and been in cities with even wider streets that were wonderful and pedestrian friendly. The difference was, the buildings on the sides of the streets were up to the sidewalks and appropriate to the scale of the street(aka, wider streets, taller buildings, wider sidewalks). Yes its a pedestrian mess now. But lets imagine a possible future when perhaps the area continues to grow, things start building up and becoming more dense. It could happen. Then we may be fine having those wider streets and not be in the position of having to take out buildings to widen the streets like they often did in larger, older cities. If its thought of as a major corridor, and one that may evolve, we may want to encourage that evolution and growth in a certain, more pedestrian friendly, direction. The street may be fine, its whats growing up on either side of it thats perhaps not happening as it might.
The highways.... We can think of 2 approaches. Removing them, or designing with them in mind.
Removing them/scaling them down to encourage easy crossing from one side to the next. But that supposes that its worth it to do so. That there are lots of reasons, all up and down the length of the highway to do so. As in, there is a pedestrian friendly street on one side that is cut through and is now hard to get to the pedestrian friendly street or area on the other side for instance. I dont really see that in most instances so propose some other thoughts.
When I look at our city as a whole, I can see a development scenario in which our city becomes more "nodal". Having a number of scattered "Urban Villages" or "Mini downtowns" or denser, pedestrian friendly areas. Connected by mass transit bus or rail, bike lanes,etc. Just like every street downtown doesnt have to be pedestrian friendly, shouldnt be actually. All areas and streets of the city dont have to be perfect, pedestrian friendly places, and in actuality can't be. As long as these "nodes" are pedestrian friendly, thats what really matters. For then, for the most part, whatever you need is within walking distance in those denser nodes, or accessible by mass transit or cars to the other nodes. Even mass transit becomes more viable when there are denser nodes here and there where people will likely walk and there are more people nearby to utilize the mass transit. A highway and some suburban sprawl/neighborhoods, in this scenario are nothing more than a river and some fields between "towns". You wouldnt want to walk across them unless you were on a long trek lol.
Downtown and its IDL is a slightly different beast. But even here, perhaps our imaginations tend to be limited because of our limited experiences and our limited city at the moment. If say the arena were more connected to a great area just in front of it connected to a "node" around Bartlett Square for example. That node in and of itself could be a nice bustling, mixed use, pedestrian friendly area. If you wanted to then go to the Greenwood area, hopefully, eventually another bustling node. You just take a bus or "trolley". When I was in Paris, you didnt walk absolutely everywhere, there were nodes even within that city and would take the subway or buses to each one. There were busy, pedestrian friendly streets, and dead streets. There were bustling, pedestrian friendly areas, and areas where you wouldnt want to walk or where the distances were very far across a river, plazas, roadways, past huuuuge buildings where nobody walked, etc. so you took mass transit or automobiles from one "node" to another.
One last notion that occurred to me the other day though. I was thinking about Brookside and how successful it was and is becoming, and noting how that in many instances it was livelier at more times of the day and on more days than even many parts of downtown. I had made an analogy in another forum about how Brookside was in many ways a mini version of the Champs Elysee in Paris. A VERY mini version lol, but there were still similarities. They are both busy at all times of the day and evening because of the mixture of things along the street. There is stuff you do during the day like shop and dine, and stuff you do during the evenings, like shop and dine and late evenings like going to the clubs and coffee houses. There are grocery stores, and businesses, gym, offices, restaurants, barber, furniture stores, flower shop, laundry,,,, multiple reasons to go there and things that people will go to at all times of the morning, day and evenings. And of course its pedestrian friendly. Downtown has things that happen during all times of the day and night, but not streets like that. So when I imagine us creating a bustling street downtown, our Main Sreet, our Champs Elysee or busy Brookside. I can imagine that we can do that. We can have a pedestrian friendly, mixed use, always busy street... but then something occurred to me. The other similarity between the Champs Elysee and Brookside is that they are both arterial streets. They not only serve the people who live nearby, but also get a lot of traffic flow because they are arterial streets. They are easily accessible. They are not only destinations in and of themselves, you can use them on a regular basis to get from one point to another. Easy to get to and through. They are a natural part of the flow of the city and where people go.
Downtown is kind of cut off from the natural flow. Brady Street for instance as a possible street that could become a great pedestrian friendly street, is,,, well, out of the way. Its not part of any traffic flow. It seems like that is a negative to businesses along some of those street versus other arterial streets. Streets like 21st near Utica, Utica, 15th street, Brookside, are all part of your natural "getting around" from one point to another in those areas of town. Downtown, Brady and other like streets, not so much. For it seems that at this point in our cities development our small, pedestrian friendly nodes, still could use traffic flow to help the businesses in them. Not just people coming for a game, or to the bars, and there arent enough people living right by them to make them viable either.
I go down Peoria and 21st all the time, yet downtown still seems out of the way. Not only does downtown seem to be isolated via pedestrian friendly routes from one area to another, but it also seems to be isolated via car! Those other areas I spoke of as being "urban villages" "mini downtowns" earlier would all be on the main city grid and part of our daily flow from one place to another. But not so much downtown. Its like it, and the particular street you may want to go to, is surrounded by a moat consisting of; a river, highways, dead end streets, slummy abandoned areas, industrial sites, windy twists, one way streets, closed bridges, etc.
Will these things really matter? Could we do more to help things, and what and where lol? Am I barking up the wrong tree and the "natural traffic flow" thing wont matter with downtown?
|