Takin’ it to the streets

Note: This commentary was printed in the January-February 2013 issue of Better! Cities & Towns.

Well-designed streets are the lifeblood of cities and towns, and they are the foundation of walkable, appealing communities. Badly designed streets, on the other hand, are the hallmark of what James Howard Kunstler calls the Geography of Nowhere.

We have too many badly designed streets in this great nation. More than 50 percent of pedestrian deaths in the US occur on arterial roads designed for fast-moving automobile traffic, according to Transportation for America. The dark cloud is that most of these streets will probably not be fixed — there are too many of them and we don’t have the money to rebuild them all. The silver lining appears when we consider that even transforming a few of them can have tremendous benefits.

Much of this issue revolves around streets and stories of efforts to improve them.

Lancaster, California, a city of just over 150,000 in the far suburbs of Los Angeles, may appear to be an unlikely site for a downtown resurgence. In a place known for sprawl, Lancaster’s main street was a bland, five-lane arterial road. But somebody got the idea that the city could be a hip urban place through the transformation of a single street (see page 5).

The designers, Moule & Polyzoides, took an idea from Spain — the ramblas, and transported it to a Southern California suburb. City officials had the courage to go forward with the idea, even though some thought it would be the “biggest waste of money ever,” as deputy city manager Jason Caudle says.

For $11.5 million, the city got its money’s worth. Implemented in a national economic downturn, the remade road soon generated $130 million on private investments and nearly $300 million in economic activity. Downtown revenues for the city have doubled. More important, the downtown has come alive with people. A harvest festival attracted 30,000 participants, and these kinds of crowds are coming in regularly to hang out on what was — until a few years ago — just the middle of an asphalt road.

Pushing the ‘Shared space’ envelope

Across “the pond,” in a town called Poynton, officials took a leap of faith by removing a massive traffic signal, reducing the number of lanes by two-thirds, and letting cars, trucks, walkers, and bicyclists intermingle (see page 4). The project pushed the limits of the idea called “shared space,” where design — not signs and lights — regulates the activity of streets. In Poynton, like Lancaster, the downtown seems to be coming back to life simply by changing the street design.

There’s nothing unique about these places. There are opportunities to do similar projects all across the US and in other countries. Whereas in the last century it seemed that America wanted to build millions of miles of roads and spread its population across the landscape, the tide is now running in the other direction. Public investments with the greatest “bang for the buck” may be street transformations that allow citizens to come back downtown and enjoy mixed-use amenities.

Great progress has been made in recent years in public policy. Complete streets policies were approved in 146 jurisdictions in 2011, bringing the total to 350. Nearly half of the states have policies. Many Departments of Transportation also have context-sensitive design programs. These are good indications, but by no means signifying victory.

In Florida, a milestone has been reached. After years of effort, a state DOT has formally, legally, endorsed narrow, walkable, interconnected streets (see page 8). This is an important document that can be used as a tool all across the US and North America, not just in Florida. The Florida Greenbook, as it is called, is the real deal. Written by professional engineers, the Florida Greenbook actually endorses streets with design speeds as low as 10 miles per hour. Historically, this manual has always supported conventional suburban development patterns. With the latest Florida state street design manual, great urbanism can be achieved. I hope that other state DOTs follow Florida’s example.