planning Archives - Carrie Gartner

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 […]

Crowdsourcing 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 […]

Inclusive 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 […]

Restoring 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 […]

The 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 […]

Managing Change

We recently had a spate of storms here in our city with winds up to 60 and 70 miles an hour. As I walked down our street the next morning I counted three downed trees, two damaged roofs, and one destroyed car. A few weeks later, another storm front came by snapping utility poles in half, […]

Global Trends Affecting Downtowns

Denver-based Progressive Urban Management Associates (better known as PUMA) just released their 2014 Global Trends Report and principle Brad Segal’s recently presented their results to the International Downtown Association. For a little perspective I pulled out all the Global Trends reports I had received from PUMA, starting in 2006. It came as no surprise that […]

Make Your Own Street

I just discovered Streetmix, a nifty online app where you build your own street. I put a lot of thought into my street–making sure there were dedicated bus lanes, bikes lanes, and lanes that cars and bikes could share. Sidewalks were wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side and there was plenty of room […]

Parkways: Still Freeways

I’ve written before about cities in which freeways form a barrier between the people and the places they’d like to be and Niagara Falls is one of the worst offenders. The Robert Moses Parkway runs along the Niagara River, separating the Niagara Gorge—truly one of the more amazing sites in the state—from the neighborhoods adjacent to […]

Emergence

How do some areas of a city become known as restaurant row while others sprout art galleries? How has Florence maintained a single street devoted to silk sellers, even as the buildings along it have been torn down and replaced multiple times? How did New York City develop both a diamond district and a button district? […]

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