Design for Walkability

I stumbled across a SPUR Report from 2013 on how to strengthen San Jose's future through urban design. For my own notes, I would like to go over the first part of the report that introduces the importance of design in cities. 

What is Urban Design?

• "the physical organization of buildings, streets and open spaces into whole places that work for people."

What does Urban Design address?

• The placement, orientation and form of buildings
• Site planning, or the physical arrangement of buildings and uses within development projects
• Multiple scales, from the human body to the neighborhood or district
• Circulation and access for all travel modes
• Human experience, activity, social interaction and travel behavior
• The arrangement and design of streets and open spaces
• The connection of buildings to the public realm and to one another
• Above all: the integration of these things

The Case for Walkable Urbanism

• Sustainability
• Mobility and Access
• Prosperity and Economic Growth
• Public Life
• Public Health
• Social Equity

Design for Walkability: Seven Key Components

1. Create fine-grained pedestrian circulation
• frequent and densely interconnected pedestrian routes that shorten both actual and perceived distances 
• smaller city blocks are good examples
2. Orient buildings to streets and open space
• buildings should be placed right at the edges of streets and public spaces, not set back
3.  Organize uses to support public activity
•  active use of space, for example retail, should be along pedestrian routes, and private spaces should be tucked away
• residential entrances should provide a graceful transition from public to private
4. Place parking behind or below buildings 
• parking is an expensive, space-hungry, and unattractive use and should be located to support and enliven public spaces
5. Address the human scale with buildings and landscape details
• people experience the built environment at the scale of their own bodies in space, and buildings should meet and engage people at that scale
6. Provide clear, continuous pedestrian access
• sidewalks are the city's connective tissue and should include elements like trees, lighting, street furniture and public art
7. Build Complete Streets (from the National Complete Streets Coalition, Smart Growth America)
• "A Complete Street provides safe, comfortable, attractive, and convenient access and travel for pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists, and transit users of all ages, abilities, and preferences. The design of a Complete Street considers both the public right-of-way and the land uses and design of the adjoining properties, including appropriate building heights and the planning of adjoining land uses that actively engage the public street realm."

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This information is adapted from the 12/2013 SPUR Report, "Getting to Great Places: How better urban design can strengthen San Jose's future." 

Social Capital

Investing in PEOPLE. 

In my opinion, this is one of the most important things we can do; as individuals (investing in yourself), as families, neighborhoods, communities, cities... all the way up to a national and even global level. 

I like to think of social capital in my own way as the collective qualities of people in a community, as a result of the ability to have their basic needs met and access quality care - ultimately enabling them to prosper and propel their community and economy forward in a positive way. But "social capital" doesn't come from nothing; it takes time to establish and there are essential components that build social capital.

Meeting basic needs (housing, food, shelter, etc., refer to an older post) but also creating equal and plentiful (and free) opportunities for quality healthcare and education, are just some key ingredients that build social capital. I also believe you can take it a step further and say that in order to maximize social capital, there needs to be a connecting and trusting relationship between the people and the governing system. So in difficult times or times of crisis, people feel secure and trust that their basic needs will be met by the system that's designed to support them - this encourages a level of comfort that allow people to take risks and those circumstances help churn out possibilities for a better society. 

When people do not have good access to, for example, clean drinking water, many other important aspects of their life come to a pause because they're forced to revert back to using some of our most basic human instincts to simple get by. Staying alive and healthy, feeling secure and free from danger will certainly become before more skillful achievements. So, social capital cannot be improved when people and communities are stagnant in this tier, instead it will dumb down communities. And on larger scales, whether we are aware of it or not, these affects will be felt across society, furthering inequality.

These ideas were sparked by an article I read by AECOM's Chief Sustainability Officer, mentioning the 3 types of capital and the current challenges we face with integrating them. The other forms of capital, natural capital (Earth's resources) and financial capital, along with social capital, are essential to each of our lives every single day. Author Gary Lawrence makes the most important point:

"In stark contrast [to natural and financial capital,] the only natural resource that actually improves through use rather than being diminished is human capital. The inventiveness, intellectual ingenuity and diversity of our species are unique to Homo sapiens as far as we know. When the human mind is given the space to be curious and the opportunity to explore, great things become possible. This does not happen when the mind is occupied with feeding and sheltering the human body, scraping a subsistence living from day to day."

Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in managing and protecting natural and financial capital when it's really the human aspect that we need to absolutely secure. Because in order to effectively manage our resources and external challenges, we need to have the knowledge base built and capacity to do so intelligently, and of course always with future generations in mind.

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Read more at Environmental Leader 

Human Capital on Wikipedia
Social Capital / OECD 

Twin City Rapid Transit

Yesterday I returned to SF from a short stay at "home" in St. Paul, Minnesota. Being with my family and friends certainly makes me feel the love for where I was born and raised, but I can't help compare the two places. I love it here, and while it's not the place where my "people" happen to be, it is the place where I don't spend 25% or more of my time in a car getting around from place to place, person to person. 

In celebration of the Twin Cities, I'm sharing this map from 1913 showing the "Rapid Transit" streetcars of Minneapolis and St. Paul. 

Timeline
1872: The first streetcars were pulled by horses, starting off in St. Paul
1875: The city of Minneapolis joins in
1887: Upgrades to the system allowed the cars to be pulled by cable loops
1892: Cars hit the electric grid
1920: Peak ridership occurred, carrying an estimated 238 million people
1929 - 1930's: The Great Depression saw ridership leveling off
1939 - 1945: There was a climb in passengers as World War II brought gas rationing
1954: The Twin Cities had its last streetcar journey in Minneapolis

The system stretched from Stillwater to Lake Minnetonka, with a total of 523 miles of streetcar!

The pink pin is Excelsior, on Lake Minnetonka. Stillwater in the northeast corner, located on the St. Croix River which separates Minnesota and Wisconsin here.

Is it ironic that streetcars in cities today are tourist attractions; we get entertainment out of these transportation units that are a thing of the past, yet technically speaking, very efficient? And had all the routes lasted longer, without the interfering competition from automobiles, they could have been a huge factor in the continued creation of what I imagine to be extraordinary urban and inter-urban transportation, spaces, and places. 

For example, San Francisco is famous for having streetcars that tourists will wait hours to ride. San Franciscans don't ride them unless you hop on to hop off, or, you find yourself in these situations: 

"These situations," being visits from family, are the best, by the way!

Even in Minnesota, we have a museum dedicated to our historic streetcar. Though they are a thing of the past in terms of getting people from point A to point B on a daily basis, I believe they will make a comeback by influencing future transportation services of the future!

Today in SF you find a convergence of the historical streetcar and a modern US city's bus system: buses that are (typically) connected to above electricity. The buses run absolutely everywhere, and are pretty reliable. Technology has helped with that :)

I didn't want to find something off the web, so I looked out my window and took one for myself! Notice the electric wires across the image; buses connect to these. Although an extensive bus system requires lots of energy, transportation connected to electricity reduces pollution, which is a concern in terms of air quality in denser cities.

Sources & Links:
MN Historical Society YouTube video 
Top 10 Trolly Rides
Minnesota History Center 
Minnesota Streetcar Museum

Street Design Shapes Lifestyle

Picture this:

You live in the neighborhood on the left where the streets were designed with the passive approach. You have errands to run so you get in your car, driving from store to store, even though each store is located just a few hundred feet from each other. You get into your car, likely just to drive across the street and park in another massive and identical looking parking lot. Get out of your car, get back into your car, spend 5-10 minutes to travel .02 miles. Your errands take 2 or 3 hours out of your Saturday.

Or picture this:

You live in a "proactively-designed-streets" neighborhood, and you spend 5-20 minutes a day, stopping for your errands down the block as you walk home from work/school/etc.

What lifestyle sounds more appealing? Which is better for health, happiness, and what is easier on our natural resources?

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Image adapted from the National Association of Transportation Officials Urban Street Design Guide

Suburbs: Twin Cities vs Munich

Woodbury - 10 miles to downtown St. Paul, 20 miles to Minneapolis

Vaterstetten - 12 miles to downtown Munich (the scales on these two maps are the same)

The colors show transit ways: freeways and major roadways in Woodbury, and in Vaterstetten the green is the train and yellow is the only "major" roadway (the Autobahn is in the upper left corner). Every home on the Vaterstetten map is a walkable or bikeable distance from an S-Bahn (train) station, which is a 20-minute ride into downtown Munich. The suburb of Woodbury was built around automobiles - any one of the houses is likely only accessible by car, a 25-minute drive to downtown Minneapolis without traffic.   

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Munich - darker lines show S-Bahn and U-Bahn (subway) routes, situated like spokes on a bicycle wheel to support sustainable growth and development along corridors 

Twin Cities - two new light rail systems travel between downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul (2014) and from Minneapolis to the MSP International Airport and Mall of America (2004). The last ~50 years of growth and development that took place in the Twin Cities and Region was planned around the car versus a mass transit system, in the fashion of laying separate blankets (individual cities) of sparse residential areas next to each other.

The Bikeable Suburbs of Copenhagen and Munich

Suburbs in Munich and Copenhagen are designed around and for diverse means of transportation. In contrast to this, the trend in American suburbs has been design around and for automobiles; travel by car is the only means of transportation built into the infrastructure, creating dependency on cars, unsafe roadways and traffic. 

Since I have a strange obsession with urban cores and like to focus my attention away from suburbs (especially American suburbs, simply because I think they are characterless and ugly - wide, spread out lots and streets with cookie-cutter houses give me anxiety), I can't help but to notice how differently the suburbs in Europe evolved in terms of planning, design, and function.

A few pictures will help. 

Brøndby, Denmark (suburb of Copenhagen)

Peds, Bikes, Cars/Buses

Barrier between bike lane and street for added safety

Street obstacles force cars to slow down

Slower traffic increases safety to encourage bikers

One-car-at-a-time

Vaterstetten and Baldham, Germany (suburb of Munich) 

CLICK ME

Paths for Sunday afternoon walks

Roadway incorporates greenery

Smaller streets = slower traffic

Mirrors help see around corners

Designated "Play Street" - more on this later

Mixed streets, varying priority for people/bikes and cars

Several non-car "secret passage ways"

Watch for bikes

Watch for peds

Sidewalk for peds, street for bikes and cars

Cars never drive fast down these roads

This stoplights only purpose is to stop traffic for peds

Open for all kinds of traveling

Similar road blocks in the street as Denmark

Not many pictures are needed of American suburbs since they all pretty much look alike (images from Google).

How does one walk or bike around in this mess???