A few hours after the public launch of the Active Design Guidelines here in New York, President Obama gave his first State of the Union Address. In an aside which drew the evening’s loudest applause, the President took a moment to acknowledge the First Lady’s new public health campaign to fight the epidemic of childhood obesity. Was it coincidence that the city chose this date to launch the guidelines? Probably not. Just as other municipalities and regions in this country have looked to New York in the past for answers on issues of zoning and historic preservation, for example, New York City is poised to lead in this new initiative as well. And as the debate about how to provide better, more efficient healthcare continues, perhaps designers here in New York City have an answer; a prescription that requires no doctor and no insurance coverage – just a livable, efficient, sustainable city.
Imagine visiting a city where the populace steadfastly refused to wear sweaters or coats despite a cold climate. You might tell your friends incredulous stories about how much people complain about being cold while ignoring an obvious solution. You might take pictures of the enormous three-story space heaters the city placed along its waterfront to let people enjoy the outdoors, and marvel at the ugliness and environmental waste of the practice. Why would the residents of this city endure such painful conditions at such cost to their city and their planet while ignoring such a simple alternative?
A new report ranking the nation’s most dangerous metropolitan areas for walking finds that ‘incomplete’ streets are a major culprit in the deaths of thousands of Americans every year. Dangerous by Design, from Transportation for America and the Surface Transportation Policy Project, finds that as many as forty percent of fatal pedestrian crashes are in places where no crosswalk was available, and that arterials designed only for cars are the most dangerous.
British Ministers are considering making motorists legally responsible for accidents involving cyclists or pedestrians, even if they are not at fault. Government advisers are pushing for changes in the civil law that will make the most powerful vehicle involved in a collision automatically liable for insurance and compensation purposes.
When we talk about transportation, we tend to talk about things in motion. What is often left unremarked upon, in conversations about crowded highways, is something without which those crowds would not exist: parking. That humble 9-by-18-foot space (the standard size of a spot) is where traffic begins and ends. It is the fuel to traffic’s fire.
Over the past two decades, first hundreds and then thousands of San Franciscans have chosen to bicycle as a common means of transportation. This has generated a fair amount of heat and noise, whether during the monthly Critical Mass rides (17 years old and still going strong) or during the episodic controversies over bike lanes, parking, Octavia Boulevard planning and other bike-oriented changes. But what gets less notice is the way the simple choice to bicycle by ever more San Francisco residents is gradually reshaping a sense of public space and a sense of a shared city.
Whether it’s bike polo, urban golf or scaling public buildings, interesting new urban sports are leaving a distinctive mark on German cityscapes. The metropolitan antics add a twist to traditional sports — and may be cropping up on stretch of tarmac near you soon.
For many communities, street beautification has been viewed as an unnecessary expense. But as cities compete for investment, new residents, and tourists, there can be a substantial return on design dollars. The Value of Urban Design, produced by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) in the UK, quantifies and defines the monetary benefits of thoughtfully-designed urban spaces. CABE argues that good urban design adds value by: producing higher returns on investment; producing local competitive advantages; raising prestige; responding to demand of local businesses; providing benefits to local workers (through productivity gains and the like); and reducing management, maintenance, energy, and security costs.
What the city giveth, the city taketh away — at least with regard to the balance of power between pedestrians and automobiles. The Bloomberg administration has been trying to tame vehicles with bike lanes, the pedestrianization of Broadway and the failed congestion-pricing initiative. But a century ago, just the opposite was happening. The city was cutting back sidewalks to make room for the increasingly popular automobile, which was displacing the horse and carriage and even people on foot.
“The bicycle is the means of transport used most often in Amsterdam,” reports Bike Europe. “Between 2005 and 2007 people in the city used their bikes on average 0.87 times a day, compared to 0.84 for their cars. This is the first time that bicycle use exceeds car use.”
