What Snow Tells Us About Creating Better Public Spaces

http://thisoldcity.com/advocacy/photos-what-snow-tells-us-about-creating-better-public-spaces-e-passyunk-avenue#.UvfSh4tdU4Q

by heydenberk • 12 years ago

135 193 12 years ago

thisoldcity.com

lemonberry• 12 years ago

This is neat. It reminds me of being on college campuses where students have created new paths through grass bypassing sidewalks and paved paths. I always thought the worn paths should be incorporated into the "official" infrastructure somehow.

analog312• 12 years ago

According to legend, this was done at Wayne State University in Detroit.

saeranv• 12 years ago

Rem Koolhaas' design for the IIT Campus Center in Chicago takes this idea and uses it as a basis for generating the floorplan:

  "...OMA carried out a study to map the “desire lines” of student foot traffic across the campus. These intersecting diagonal paths are maintained inside the Campus Center itself..." - from the project description

Check out the third image here: http://www.oma.eu/projects/2003/iit-mccormick-tribune-campus...

One of my favorite buildings!

jevinskie• 12 years ago

It is a remarkably easy to navigate for how unique it is. Really a treat for the eyes! Crown Hall is also very beautiful:

http://ad009cdnb.archdaily.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/12...

benched• 12 years ago

"new PAths through grAss byPAssing sidewalks and Paved PAths" You might consider writing rap.

jay-anderson• 12 years ago

Apparently these are called 'desire paths' or 'desire lines' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path).

I've heard this story as well. From this conversation (http://ask.metafilter.com/62599/Where-the-sidewalk-ends) it appears that people have heard that this technique was used on quite a few college campuses. (I wonder how many are actually true.)

fnordfnordfnord• 12 years ago

After a building project at Rice University was completed some time ago, they waited more than a year to complete the sidewalks. Prior experience had taught them that the students would walk the most efficient routes, beating a path where the sidewalks actually belonged.

smileysteve4• 12 years ago

check out what the swedes are doing with this. these are called Desires

ohwp• 12 years ago

I think this is what Christopher Alexander did at the Eishin Campus.

The first year they didn't pave. Only after a clear route was created by the students they paved that route.

pedrocr• 12 years ago

Aren't the paths just the places where the plow passed? Cars may very well use the rest of the road if it was plowed too, no?

saraid21621• 12 years ago

There's at least one where cars were very clearly using space that wasn't plowed for U-turns. Text search for "Rita's".

heydenberk4• 12 years ago

The supposition is that if enough car traffic or parking would eventually remove the snow on its own, which is accurate in my experience.

saraid21621• 12 years ago

When did roads become the only meaningful public space we have?

malandrew• 12 years ago

Such a depressing question. I reckon the book "The high cost of free parking" goes into detail on this question.

saraid21621• 12 years ago

Walkable City and Happy City are also both fairly good books. Walkable City is better in terms of suggesting actual changes, but Speck's tone is unrelentingly unconstructive. Happy City is better on tone (passing a low bar there), but the meat of the book is in the title and probably better captured by Enrique Peñalosa's TED talk.

heydenberk4• 12 years ago

Several of these photos depict actual park space. See the second photo, for instance.

saraid21621• 12 years ago

I'm not sure what you mean. The first photo is a triangular island of snow; the second photo is an intersection with a lot for sale in the background; the third photo is a different triangular island; the fourth photo is another triangular island. I scrolled through all the photos and saw nothing except the trails left behind by cars making their way through snow across road intersections.

Where is the park space?

analog312• 12 years ago

As a bike commuter, I look at those areas marked in green as places where I can escape to if I get cut off, or where I can let a car overtake me. In fact, the narrowing of roadways due to piled up snow is one of the main dangers of winter cycling.

protomyth6• 12 years ago

Yep, one of the problems with winter driving is the "nowhere to ditch" if it all goes bad. Taking away the area a car or bike use to maneuver can be very dangerous. Bikes are really penalized for having no wiggle room.

heydenberk4• 12 years ago

I'm a bike commuter and I commute on these streets. I don't think this is as much of an issue in Philadelphia as it is elsewhere. The roads are all small, one-way streets with stop signs at every block. Cars are rarely going fast enough that they need to overtake a bike before they reach the next intersection where they can pass more easily. Less anecdotally, New York has been making these changes with many intersections and finds the roads are safer for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians.

revelation2• 12 years ago

Anecdotally, the number of car drivers that have the miniscule intelligence required to foresee that overtaking me would yield zero benefit at extreme risk is 0.

revelation2• 12 years ago

Ideally, as a bike commuter, that extra space would be used to create physically isolated lanes for bikes.

(Normal 'bicycle lanes' are a death trap thought up by people that have not ridden a bicycle in their life, and should be avoided at all times.)

protomyth6• 12 years ago

It seems like quite a few of these photos have snow with tire tracks in them. Also, people drive quite differently under these conditions and in a constrained, slower manner. It would be foolish to say that area isn't being used by cars unless you are trying to keep traffic slowed to a crawl.

notatoad2• 12 years ago

i think that's exactly the point. They refer to their suggestions as "traffic calming" measures.

protomyth6• 12 years ago

So "traffic calming" = congestion, frustration, and dangerous driving for bikes and cars. Not a great idea in my book to spend more money (and have a higher continued upkeep cost) to make the roads more dangerous and less useful. I suppose if they put an island there then they understand the snow is going to get piled on it and then expand into the rest of the road, right?

freehunter2• 12 years ago

Looking around here in the winter, we could make some major changes to how roads are laid out as well. For example, most of the freeways are just one lane during and right after a heavy snowfall. The cars are also traveling tens of miles an hour under the speed limit. I've even seen two-lane roads become one-lane roads, because people only want to drive where everyone else has proven it's safe to drive.

Driving in the snow is much more dangerous than driving in perfect weather. It's only natural that people are going to change their driving habits. This article has a good premise, but poor execution.

protomyth6• 12 years ago

"This article has a good premise, but poor execution."

Makes sense, but I take the view the premise is flawed. Its one of those "oh, that seems so obvious" type premises that describe the skin of the onion but fails on pulling back the layers. It seems to happen a lot while dealing with complex systems. The fun part of this one is that it seems like they don't realize they are dealing with a complex system. The illustrating pictures even show some cracks and the author skims over them.

mcrider6• 12 years ago

I wish driving and owning a car started to become discouraged the same way sin taxes and bylaws are discouraging cigarette smoking. Sitting outside on a bench in Honolulu yesterday, I looked around and saw that half of what I was seeing were roads and cars. This space that could be so beautiful (it's Hawaii after all) was overwhelmingly just about being a transportation network.

I love the feeling of driving a car, but I think the cost is too high -- So much financial and mental stress (not to mention so much death -- A classmate from high school was killed in a crash just last week) is caused by these things and they bisect our physical spaces making so much of our world uninhabitable and depressing. I realize people need transportation but I had hoped the rising cost of oil would cause a paradigm shift in how we commute, and that doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon.

heydenberk4• 12 years ago

We could start be simply encouraging it less — spending less public money on roads, having more pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly laws (and enforcement), and creating zoning codes that require less parking for development projects would all go a long way.

VLM4• 12 years ago

If you've heard the overused phrase "the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" the obvious analogy is intentional destruction of infrastructure results in lower population, lower population density, lower property values...

I don't know the specifics of the linked article, but stereotypically some outsider comes in, says "you have some nice profitable land here, and I have a plan to fix that...". If you'd like to experience anti-car infrastructure, we have plenty of semi-abandoned residential in the poorest parts of the inner city, and some vacant abandoned commercial space in the bad parts of town with limited parking. Of course the restaurant right off the interstate is doing booming business although there's always someone with a plan to "fix" that for them.

"We need more customers... I know, we'll make it impossible for anyone outside walking distance to get here, that'll fix everything..."

What we need is more money spent on roads and parking. Done the right way, of course. Nothing wrong with wide roads, wide sidewalks, strips of parks and trees and green spaces. Just remember where the bread is buttered, pedestrians = homeless panhandler but car = customer.

chrismcb3• 12 years ago

I live 30 miles from work, having more pedestrian and cycle friendly laws won't do one bit of good.

Tiktaalik2• 12 years ago

Some cities are doing this. Vancouver BC has a policy of not expanding its road network whatsoever, and is actively decreasing by reserving portions of it to exclusive bike and pedestrian use. The city has also engaged with communities to find portions of road that are unused enough that they could be converted to parklets.

notatoad2• 12 years ago

Sin Taxes and shaming are the wrong way to go about shifting away from car-centric cities - people still have to get where they need to go. You first need to build effective public transportation networks, bike lanes, and restructure cities to that long trips are less necessary. Once you've done all that, then you can start punishing people for driving.

jchrisa2• 12 years ago

Realistically, just removing the outsize subsidies driving has had for generations would be seen as an "attack" on the American way of life. Doesn't mean we shouldn't do it.

scoofy2• 12 years ago

Right, i disagree with you wholeheartedly. The probably is the how do we get from here to there. We have transportation infrastructure. It's roads, the roads are mostly designed for car and light truck traffic primarily. Now my question to you is, how do you justify, politically, the proposal to add a bunch of extremely expensive, and unpleasant to build (2nd ave subway made 2nd ave horrifically ugly for a couple years) infrastructure.

Without a billionaire (thus fairly incorruptible) mayor in his last term, i really don't think it's going to happen.

People have invested in the car infrastucture, they have bought certain houses, in certain neighborhoods because of it, they have planned their lives around it. You can't just say, "okay, we're all going to take light rail now, so we need to remove all the street parking on your street, sorry, 1/4 of this town is going to have to deal with dramatic changes in infrastructure.

No, the way to do it is sin taxes. Why? Firstly, because the pain is felt by everyone. This prevents NIMBY's from getting their ammunition. Everyone feels the pain, everyone must adjust. Secondly, it provides a gradual path to a low-car environment. Slow is good, fast is politically untenable for most cities. As traffic decreases, you can add BRT lines with little objection. You can switch current infrastructure from private vehicles to public. You don't have to dig a bunch of holes in the ground, you just have to re-purpose. Thirdly, you've just funded your public transit projects.

If we want to make public transit in america. I honestly thing the best way to do it is build a better bus. A bus that feels like a subway car. A bus that i would want to ride, even when it's packed.

pix64• 12 years ago

What exactly is the alternative to cars?

eddieroger3• 12 years ago

Oh, easy - bikes and/or public transportation, of course. /s

The idea of abandoning a car is silly at this point because it's just not going to happen. Maybe if urban sprawl wasn't a thing we could figure something out. On my team, I live the closest to work at 6 miles, with many of my coworkers commuting 40+ minutes. There's no complete replacement for that. Even when I was a public transportation commuter at a previous job in a different city, I had to drive a few miles on a highway to get to the bus depot. The anti-car sentiment seem to me to be localized in tighter packed cities with better public transit, which is a minority of the cities in America (sorry for being so US-centric, I haven't lived or worked outside of the States).

gamache2• 12 years ago

Walkable/bikeable urban and suburban planning. Living closer to work. Delivery services. Scooters, motorcycles, cargo bikes, light rail, buses, cars for hire.

mcrider6• 12 years ago

Besides the obvious alternatives in cities, having more efficient cars (i.e., self-driving cars that can algorithmically ease congestion and find efficient ways to carpool) would be a big step forward. Take a drive on any American highway and you'll see the amount of cars with a single occupant is overwhelming -- what a waste!

saraid21621• 12 years ago

I mentioned these books below, but they serve as a reasonably comprehensive answer to this question:

* http://www.amazon.com/Walkable-City-Downtown-Save-America/dp... (Warning: Speck's tone is pretty bad.)

* http://www.amazon.com/Happy-City-Transforming-Through-Design...

henrikschroder2• 12 years ago

When I visited Hawaii for the first time I noticed that something was very different compared to similar vacation destinations in for example south-east asia.

It's the same climate. It's the same relaxed atmosphere. It's the same hotels. People come there for the same reasons. People wear the same kind of clothes.

But the major difference is that all hotels in Hawaii have huge parking garages. It's a ten-minute drive from Honolulu airport to Waikiki, there's excellent public transportation, hotel shuttles, and taxis, but people still just rent cars, because american tourists rent cars out of habit, not necessity. It's so deeply ingrained, it's gonna take a long while to dispel it.

mcrider6• 12 years ago

I've lived in Honolulu for a couple years, and IMO its a shining example of bad infrastructure. The public transport is quite a bad actually and efforts to build a rail system have been constantly delayed by corruption, NIMBYs, and bureaucracy. People rent cars so they can access the rest of the island because otherwise its impossible. Its not just American tourists either, a huge portion of the tourist population is Japanese or Canadian.

But at the same time the locals seem to really love driving. Every household has at least one car and traffic is often rated as bad or worse than LA. For a place that you would think would be ecologically responsible (and a great test bed for transportation technology, as its such a well-isolated location), the car culture hear is so ingrained that I think it would take some major deterrents to get people to stop driving.

PakG1• 12 years ago

Parking is the primary reason why I'm so excited about self-driving cars. A much more efficient usage of cars and roads when you basically have an automated version of Uber's heatmaps. It would truly provide for everyone's transportation at a very personal and granular level ( the problem with public transportation being that it doesn't take you to exactly where you need to go) while freeing up all that real estate all over the place for better things. Bet you traffic congestion and per capita pollution levels get nicer too as the traffic becomes more efficient.

sliverstorm7• 12 years ago

Well, it's habit for a reason. Not every locale they visit is like Honolulu & Waikiki.

alexeisadeski32• 12 years ago

Heaven forbid they use these rented cars to stray outside of Honolulu!

Also: The reason there are so many cars, roads, and parking lots in Honolulu/Hawaii compared to SE Asia? Because the residents of Hawaii aren't poor - in fact they're quite well off by SE Asian standards.

jeza• 12 years ago

"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Yellow_Taxi

chrismcb3• 12 years ago

You can't just discourage the use of cars, without providing an alternative.

DanielBMarkham2• 12 years ago

Surely you've noticed that huge hunk of land over next to you on the maps called the mainland, haven't you? Lots of folks over here, like me, live 20 miles from town or more. Without a car, we'd starve.

Sure, it'd be great if we all lived in cities and sat on park benches fretting over the absolutely terrible state of aesthetics the cities have gotten into with so many cars -- wouldn't bikes and walking just spruce up the place immensely? -- but that's just not reality for us.

mcrider6• 12 years ago

Thanks for being patronizing, however I grew up in the country outside of (coincidentally) Philadelphia and understand owning and driving automobiles is necessary e.g. when you live on a farm. I don't think anyone would ever be against that considering there are no other options. It was pretty clear that I was talking about cities, and why would you not want your environment to be beautiful and healthy?

smileysteve4• 12 years ago

suburban areas 20 miles out worked before the car (100 years ago) and before the car was convenient (60 years ago).

msellout• 12 years ago

Remember how rapidly the general opinion on smoking changed? It wasn't that long ago that smoking was cool. I think we are seeing the beginning of a similar shift for personal automobiles in urban areas. It wasn't the taxes that drove away smoking, it was the frowns and glares. The shift will take longer. So much of our society is structured around vehicles. Government identification is mostly through driver's licenses. Whole chunks of the judicial and police systems are dedicated to traffic violations.

Spooky232• 12 years ago

Everyone, literally everyone who I know who advocated this type of position became silent when they had children.

Unless you have a parent in the household who isn't working, life gets pretty crappy without a car. The person who doesn't work spends half the day running errands that would take 45m in a car. If both parents work, You pay 2x for diapers at CVS vs Target, spend half your evening on the bus to pick up your kid from daycare and huff groceries home for dinner, etc.

artsrc• 12 years ago

People would work it out...

In Sydney, we have always had daycare next to home or work, in San Francisco I put the kids in a bike trailer.

The number one thing that worries me about my 9 and 12 year old getting to and from school are the cars. The 12 year old could bike to school if it were not for cars. The 9 year old walks, as did the 12 year old before starting high school and catching the bus.

Cars can be handy for carrying stuff. On the other hand I like strollers as a shopping trolly that goes all the way home.

In my family the person who does not work does not drive at all...

And disposable diapers (nappies) are cheap delivered. And you can use re-usable ones with a service that comes to your house.

vacri• 12 years ago

My housemates were public transport fanatics, public transport "does everything we need, you just need to harden up a bit, there really is no need for a car", and one of them was a moderate cyclist. I went away for three months during which they had free use of my car. On return: "We're getting a car".

tekalon• 12 years ago

I am friends with a couple that has two young children (the oldest just started kindergarten). They don't have a car. They have had trouble finding apartments near public transportation, and it has limited job opportunities. The occasionally ask for rides to locations or for large shopping trips. They seem to like the benefits though. They get more exercise, no need to worry about parking, and no car/insurance/gas/maintenance payments. While my husband and I use public transportation for work, we plan on keeping our vehicles (or at least one of them) for when we have kids.

aestra• 12 years ago

I grew up around families too poor to afford a car. They were inconvenienced but not overly. We had a car, but used it not a lot, mostly on weekends, my mom bussed to work everyday because she worked in a skyscraper that had no parking.

cylinder3• 12 years ago

I've lived both lifestyles: car free (NY) and absolutely car dependent (TX).

I can say that the best lifestyle is to have decent public transit and cycling infrastructure available, for example for commuting to work in a nuclear city on the weekdays to avoid traffic, in conjunction with 1 car for the family to use on weekends and evenings: grocery runs, errands, weekend getaways, etc. In a city with sensible roads and limited parking, not monstrous freeways and parking lots that dominate the landscape like in Texas, so I can have an efficient hatchback or crossover and not feel like I'm going to get killed. And it's much more affordable to have one car for a family that gets shared. Growing up in TX, when my sibling and I were both over 16, we had four cars (!) in our household, which is absurd.

blueskin_3• 12 years ago

They would need to build proper public transport first.

Most of the US is far, far behind other countries there, but many other first world countries are still completely impractical to travel by public transport too. e.g the UK, where while trains go most places, they are notoriously slow, unreliable and expensive and do not run in the very early morning. Even countries people might expect to have good transportation (e.g. Germany) see the same problem to a lesser extent, rendering its day to day use impractical.

The real answer is to have guided taxi-style individual vehicles that people can book, take to whereever, which then leave to pick someone else up, giving the privacy, speed and convenience benefits without the parking and traffic problems, but the technology isn't there yet to implement them in a real city.

brandnewlow• 12 years ago

I've started trying out UberX in SF and it's been a revelation. The "public transportation needs to be better" argument goes away in a future when large swaths of urban professionals switch over to on-demand transportation, which will eventually be automated.

sosuke3• 12 years ago

As a driver I see the areas being sectioned off as stress inducing. I haven't lived in a city very long but I see a lot of short sighted ideas in this post. Parking is a concern, a place without parking is inaccessible to people from other areas. Plenty of the examples make turning impossible even for small sedans, let alone full sized vehicles. A fun concept that hits a bit too close to home for me right now. City planning like this has kept me from exploring my own downtown area.

henrikschroder2• 12 years ago

City planning like this has kept me from exploring my own downtown area.

Have you tried walking there instead?

stbtrax• 12 years ago

Parking is a huge subsidy for people that drive. It's basically giving away public land to motorists, land that could be used for much better purposes. If you're living in a city and parking is a major concern, perhaps the suburbs are more suited for you. More stress inducing than having to drive in narrow areas, is having to walk around in cities with motorists constantly on their phones, almost running you down in the street, and not facing any repercussions[1] I wish there were more car-free areas in the US like in a lot of metro areas in Europe.

1. http://cironline.org/reports/bay-area-drivers-who-kill-pedes...

lifeformed• 12 years ago

And that's why I only shovel 2 straight lines on my driveway.

moron4hire2• 12 years ago

Some of us don't want to make our entire life centered around an urban area. I have friends from South Philly who've never been outside of Philadelphia. For all the people here with their vitriol towards cars, that sort of provincial attitude is just as disgusting to me. New Yorkers are the worst about it. They can't imagine there is anything worthwhile that is not in their city.

I've been freelancing from home for 2 years now and the thing I miss the most is driving. I loved driving. Getting out, doing things, seeing different things, rather than going to the same, old places all the time just because they were in walking distance. Getting to places 10 miles away on time without having to leave an hour before hand. It was great.

burkemw3• 12 years ago

What happens if I take photos of a sidewalk after a snow storm, note the areas that are covered with snow, and argue that the unused space should be used for additional car lanes or parking?

mankypro• 12 years ago

It's clear that in the author's world everybody drives a Prius. I guess Amazon and Google shopping drones will deliver everything in his utopia. No need for trucks to be able to navigate the streets. Hey! I'd like to see a plow on a Nissan Leaf!

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