Location: Nationwide
Website: www.urbanretailinstitute.com
pps.org/reference/rightsizing/
The needs of our communities evolve over time, and our street design should, too. That’s the idea behind ‘rightsizing streets’ – reconfiguring the layout of our streets to better serve the people who use them, whether they’re commuters driving, shoppers walking, or children bicycling.
Across the country, communities large and small are achieving impressive safety, mobility, and community outcomes by implementing such reconfigurations. Project for Public Spaces created this rightsizing resource to highlight the accomplishments of these communities and share best practices.
Our transportation staff +can advise stakeholders and decision-makers, skillfully facilitate a rightsizing process, and produce rightsized designs for agencies and community groups.
Rightsizing is the process of reallocating a street’s space to better serve its full range of users.
Picture a four lane road that was built thirty years ago in an undeveloped area, but that now has housing, shops, and an elementary school in close vicinity. The needs of the community surrounding that road have changed over three decades – and the design of that road may need to change to meet those needs as well. It may need a sidewalks or a median to help people cross safely, or on-street parking for folks who want to frequent local shops, or other safety features to prevent injuries.
Rightsizing a road can encompass a broad array of redesign measures, and should always be sensitive to context and the vision of the local community, but often involves some or all of the following goals and strategies:
- Rightsizing a street is often a prerequisite to the street becoming a place where people want to be, instead of just a corridor to pass through.
- Rightsizing reconfigures a street to best serve the people who need to use it, whether they’re drivers, pedestrians, or bicyclists. By improving safety, especially for people walking or biking, and by increasing space devoted to people, rightsizing projects cause vehicles to slow down and people to spend more time outside on the street.
This is great for people who live in the street’s vicinity, businesses that line it, and those who travel through it.
The most common type of street rightsizing converts a two-way four lane street to a three lane street. Removing one of the vehicle lanes can free up space to add or expand pedestrian, bicycle infrastructure, and on-street parking, or other uses.
A rightsized three lane street commonly has one traffic lane and one bicycle lane in each direction, with a shared two-way left hand turn lane in the center that allows cars in both directions to make a left. These changes help make a street better for the range of people using it, typically without restricting vehicle volumes or lengthening travel times.
Showing posts with label Streets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Streets. Show all posts
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Metropolitan Cityscapes
Location: International
Website: www.metropolitan-cityscapes.org
As devotees of Architecture we often travelled to visit famous buildings, not satisfied to only view them in books. Each Architectural quest brought us to places we might never have thought to visit, walking streets we otherwise would not have walked. In the end, it was the journey and not the destination that mattered. In these places and on these streets, we bore witness to scenes outside our usual experience. The array of foreign sights, sounds and smells quickened our senses as we breathed in these new vignettes of urban life.
Each journey's end left a growing desire, a need to create something we could hold onto to remind us of where we had been, a special keepsake to rekindle our memories and enable us to share stories with friends. And so the expeditions began.
We started with Sydney, then our home, walking every street, recording every building. We then moved onto Berlin, explored Paris and then London. It became an addiction. Eckard cycled for two solid weeks to capture the dense, intricate hive of Tokyo. He hiked up and down the steep lanes of Hong Kong and travelled twice to Beijing to document a city that was rapidly changing for the Olympics, taking more than 3000 photographs.
Cities are divided by a multitude of invisible boundaries; surprises are waiting around every corner. Walking every street means crossing these boundaries, a tedious process leading to exciting discoveries. We became accidental explorers, and inevitably perceived the city through different eyes.
The centre of a city, its beating heart, is a palimpsest overflowing with imagery. Layers upon layers of stories have accumulated and disappeared through time. Behind each facade, each brick, each pathway, untold stories, memories and dreams are waiting to be narrated. Above all the noise, if you listen carefully, you can hear your own tale of the city.
To tell our stories of the city, we peeled away all the complex urban layers so that only the bare bones of place remains. Each line drawn and cut on every cityscape has a distinct story. Metropolitan Cityscapes are a new vision of the city as organism. Each city is as different, and as beautiful, as we are.
Metropolitan Cityscapes is an homage to the cities we have visited and those that have inspired us. In making them, we hope to create a starting point for your own stories and experiences.
Current and former residents of Berlin, Sydney and Tokyo, Chauntelle Trinh and Eckard Buscher have a long held fascination for cities and the urban milieu. Working in the fields of Architecture and Design, they dealt with the minutiae of the city but yearned to explore the macrocosm of metropolitan life. They have been making art collaboratively since 2007.
Website: www.metropolitan-cityscapes.org
As devotees of Architecture we often travelled to visit famous buildings, not satisfied to only view them in books. Each Architectural quest brought us to places we might never have thought to visit, walking streets we otherwise would not have walked. In the end, it was the journey and not the destination that mattered. In these places and on these streets, we bore witness to scenes outside our usual experience. The array of foreign sights, sounds and smells quickened our senses as we breathed in these new vignettes of urban life.
Each journey's end left a growing desire, a need to create something we could hold onto to remind us of where we had been, a special keepsake to rekindle our memories and enable us to share stories with friends. And so the expeditions began.
We started with Sydney, then our home, walking every street, recording every building. We then moved onto Berlin, explored Paris and then London. It became an addiction. Eckard cycled for two solid weeks to capture the dense, intricate hive of Tokyo. He hiked up and down the steep lanes of Hong Kong and travelled twice to Beijing to document a city that was rapidly changing for the Olympics, taking more than 3000 photographs.
Cities are divided by a multitude of invisible boundaries; surprises are waiting around every corner. Walking every street means crossing these boundaries, a tedious process leading to exciting discoveries. We became accidental explorers, and inevitably perceived the city through different eyes.
The centre of a city, its beating heart, is a palimpsest overflowing with imagery. Layers upon layers of stories have accumulated and disappeared through time. Behind each facade, each brick, each pathway, untold stories, memories and dreams are waiting to be narrated. Above all the noise, if you listen carefully, you can hear your own tale of the city.
To tell our stories of the city, we peeled away all the complex urban layers so that only the bare bones of place remains. Each line drawn and cut on every cityscape has a distinct story. Metropolitan Cityscapes are a new vision of the city as organism. Each city is as different, and as beautiful, as we are.
Metropolitan Cityscapes is an homage to the cities we have visited and those that have inspired us. In making them, we hope to create a starting point for your own stories and experiences.
Current and former residents of Berlin, Sydney and Tokyo, Chauntelle Trinh and Eckard Buscher have a long held fascination for cities and the urban milieu. Working in the fields of Architecture and Design, they dealt with the minutiae of the city but yearned to explore the macrocosm of metropolitan life. They have been making art collaboratively since 2007.
Friday, October 19, 2012
StreetSense
Location: Nationwide
Website: www.streetsense.org
StreetSense is a multi-disciplinary look at the challenges and opportunities that our cities, towns, and countrysides are facing. StreetSense is founded on the principle that the design of our environments cannot be left simply to architects and engineers. On the contrary, what is around us is a product of every discipline working, or not working, together to create the most practical response to the needs of a society.
Our panel of contributors includes architects, urbanists, economists, developers, financiers, lawyers, and engineers. The goal is to make connections where there often is none. For example what does the cost of health care have to do with the way we build or how does regionalism protect our national and financial security?
Through making uncommon links we arrive at common sense solutions to adapt, grow, and prosper in an ever-evolving world. Our approach relies on the principles of thrift “that which cause a ramifying series of solutions (Berry)."
StreetSense is built around conversations, observations, and creating a dynamic toolkit for practical community building.
Website: www.streetsense.org
StreetSense is a multi-disciplinary look at the challenges and opportunities that our cities, towns, and countrysides are facing. StreetSense is founded on the principle that the design of our environments cannot be left simply to architects and engineers. On the contrary, what is around us is a product of every discipline working, or not working, together to create the most practical response to the needs of a society.
Our panel of contributors includes architects, urbanists, economists, developers, financiers, lawyers, and engineers. The goal is to make connections where there often is none. For example what does the cost of health care have to do with the way we build or how does regionalism protect our national and financial security?
Through making uncommon links we arrive at common sense solutions to adapt, grow, and prosper in an ever-evolving world. Our approach relies on the principles of thrift “that which cause a ramifying series of solutions (Berry)."
StreetSense is built around conversations, observations, and creating a dynamic toolkit for practical community building.
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