NonA Weekly: TAKE A WALK ON THE GREEN SIDE
Image by @malcolmfrance
Dear readers and friends,
The foundation of cities is our largest public asset: streets. Historically, engineers designed streets for the efficient (read: fast) movement of goods and cars. Only in the last few years have pioneering cities shifted to ensure pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit riders take priority within the street. Legacy, highway-era infrastructure – designed for unfettered vehicular speed – is now in question.
Pursuing our research on what concerns mobility, this week we are exploring the Public Space, pedestrianization and street front, and Green-blue streets.
1. IN THE ERA OF NEW MOBILITY, THE STREETS OF THE FUTURE MUST CHANGE
Today, city planners, urban designers, and engineers are reclaiming the STREETS to prioritize shared multimodality – that is, making space for people on foot, bikes, scooters, transit, and other ways to get around.
2. ARE YOU CURIOUS ABOUT WHAT A CAR-FREE BERLIN WOULD LOOK LIKE?
An initiative from 50,000 berliners envisions a livable and safe city that puts the slowest and weakest first – cyclists, PEDESTRIANS, children, and the elderly will take over the streets. Volksentscheid berlin autofrei campaign proposes a reduction to even a car ban within berliner ringbahn (a 37-kilometer-long ring line that encircles downtown berlin). A car-free zone in which the streets can no longer be used as parking spaces for private individual vehicles and their passage.
3. PLANNING A GREEN-BLUE CITY
A green-blue city is an urban area that is designed to successfully incorporate
NATURAL systems that provide the ecological and amenity value associated with urban greening, and also provide stormwater management.
4. WHY CITIES NEED TO TAKE ROAD SPACE FROM CARS – AND HOW THIS COULD BE DONE
In spite of growing pressure on urban space, many cities continue to accommodate car growth, building additional roads and parking capacity on the basis of predicting and providing principles. Progressive CITIES have realized that there is a need to reduce car numbers, and devised strategies to make car ownership costlier, or alternative transport modes more attractive.
5. DESIGNING GREEN AND BLUE INFRASTRUCTURE TO SUPPORT HEALTHY URBAN LIVING
There is a growing awareness in cities throughout the world that green and blue infrastructure can offer a wide range of ECOSYSTEM services to support a healthy urban environment. For example, landscape architects explore possibilities in their design of the urban landscape to use the potential of green elements for regulating the air temperature, air quality, water storage and drainage, and noise reduction.
6. A STREET YOU GO TO, NOT JUST THROUGH
What are the key ingredients for creating streets that function as quality public places that draw people in? Below is a list of 8 principles for FOSTERING Streets as Places, based on years of experience in working with communities, the observations and research of well-known placemakers like Jane Jacobs and Allan B. Jacobs, and recent conversations with folks like Victor Dover, Ben Hamilton-Baillie, and Gil Peñalosa.
7. PEDESTRIANIZED STREETS CREATE IMPORTANT PUBLIC SPACES
Pedestrianized STREETS create attractive public spaces which encourage walking and a sense of community. Jane Jacobs described streets as an important part of our social cohort where she thought it was an intricate ballet or a dance between people on a regular basis. Many cities around the world have adopted making streets more pedestrian-friendly and closing the streets to traffic, so there can be more activities present on the street.
Stay creative and see you all next week!
Daniela
