On the Merits of Roundabouts
I grew up in Orange, California, a city that decided to forgo the traditional town square in favor of a circle. The Orange Circle is a two-lane roundabout surrounding a park and a fountain that was funded, I kid you not, back in 1886 through local bake sales. Every teenager in town learned to drive […]
Read MoreTransforming Vacant Lots into Public Spaces
One thing we heard loud and clear at our planning open house for The Loop was the desire for more public space. I heard Gertrude Stein paraphrased a number of times as people joked, “There is no there there.” Public spaces are taken for granted in a downtown area, where parks and squares are common threads in […]
Read MoreEmbracing the “Public” in Public Use
We travel down streets everyday, but rarely do we ask how this messy mix of buildings, people, and infrastructure came to be. Who planned this? Planning used to be fairly straightforward — it came from one person with a vision. A planner would look at a public space, decide the best use for it, and […]
Read MorePop-Up Bike Lanes
Standing along Pine Street in St. Louis, watching a pop-up bike lane in action, I struck up a conversation with a 64-year-old MetroBus driver about bicycles. As a kid, he would ride through the streets of downtown St. Louis balancing on his handlebars. His antics landed him in the hospital more than once. “I gave […]
Read MoreCrowdsourcing Traffic Studies
As my organization prepares to create a corridor plan, I’m spending much of my time surveying the street and benchmarking current conditions. At some point we’ll have to think about measuring traffic counts but I find the current technology a bit limiting. The old-fashioned approach involved throwing a sensor across the road to count cars. That’s […]
Read MoreActivating Alleyways
My former downtown office was adjacent to a pedestrian alley known throughout the city as Alley A. Shops, restaurants, and apartments open up onto the walkway and it’s become a lively pedestrian thoroughfare. It wasn’t always this appealing. Drainage was a huge problem and the alley became a skating rink during the height of winter. […]
Read MorePlay Streets
On a recent post about restoring the downtown street grid, Matt Boehner, planner for our city’s Parks and Recreation Department, had a great comment about reclaiming streets. Without a doubt, the default use of streets has become cars and any other use is considered an exception to that rule. (In fact, Vox recently had a […]
Read MoreInclusive Neighborhoods
I recently attend a neighborhood planning meeting for the West Central neighborhood, truly a busman’s holiday since it’s my own neighborhood. There was some great initial information about the demographics and character of the area, although nothing spoke to the inclusiveness and diversity of the neighborhood more than seeing “Quonset Hut” listed as one of the common architectural […]
Read MoreRestoring the Street Grid
Austin is adding nine new streets to their downtown, restoring the street grid and fixing what is called a “transportation dead zone.” According to the Austin American Statesman: (Director of the Downtown Austin Alliance Charlie) Betts noted that adding streets reverses what has been a sporadic trend of the downtown grid losing pieces of streets over […]
Read MoreThe Art of the Steal
I’m rewatching The Art of the Steal and am reminded about how difficult it is to find good guys and bad guys in real life situations. I’m torn between one man’s vision and what’s ultimately best for a city and the people within it. I cheer when the iconoclastic millionaire fights to keep his art collection […]
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