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We're talking about some of the details of making successful Narrow
Streets for People.
March
15, 2015: Narrow Streets for People 2: Subtleties of Street Width
March 8, 2015: Narrow Streets for People
In our first item of this series, we showed that the defining
characteristics of a Narrow Street for People were:
1) That it is Narrow: much narrower than the
Arterial-style streets common in 19th Century Hypertrophism. These
Arterial streets are commonly 60-100 feet from one side to the
other, and often effectively larger due to setbacks on private
property on either side. This is true even of the quietest
residential street. However, the Narrow Street for People is
commonly about 10-25 feet wide. It can be larger, even sixty feet
wide or more, but this is unusual and, for a street of this
format, extremely wide. The term "narrow" is in contrast to
typical Arterial widths. As a street For People, 15 feet is not
particularly narrow, and is actually about average. 40 feet is
very wide. There is really no good reason at all to go beyond 40
feet, but we do find it when Arterials have been converted to For
People formats with the removal of the central vehicle roadway.
2) That it is For People. Another defining characteristic
of an Arterial is that it has very definite roadway segregation,
with a central area for exclusive use by wheeled vehicles, and
sidewalks on either side for exclusive use by people walking.
Thus, the Arterial is optimized for vehicles. The Narrow Street
for People is optimized For People, and is typically one flat
surface from one side to the other, as if the entire street
surface was a "sidewalk." Narrow Streets for People often allow
vehicle access, but vehicles normally travel very slowly, as in a
parking lot for example, because drivers are aware that they are
in a place For People. This is not a problem for drivers, because
there is typically an Arterial within a quarter-mile or so.
April
13, 2014: Arterial Streets and Grand Boulevards
In the second item in the series, we looked at various examples of
street width, and showed how problems can begin to appear rapidly
when Narrow Streets for People exceed about 25 feet in width.
I think I will continue that discussion with one more example. It is
quite common to find architects (subconsciously) attempting to
replicate Narrow Streets for People in outdoor shopping centers, or
possibly other "resort"-like destinations like a ski area base
village, beach resort or amusement park. These areas are explicitly
no-car people-only places, so this should be quite easy, as there is
no need to accommodate motor vehicles and all the issues involved.
You should be able to make an optimized environment. Yet, we find
that most examples are crude failures. The most common reason is
that the streets are much too wide.
Let's look at some typical commercial streets in the Narrow Streets
for People format:
This is a typical covered market street, in Atami, Japan. This is
not an "indoor mall," it is a regular outdoor street that was
later covered. The covering ends in the far distance of the
photograph, and the street thus becomes a regular uncovered
street.
Street in Athens, Greece with shops along the sides.
Commercial street in Limoges, France.
We see that, in Japan, Greece and France, despite all of the ethnic
and aesthetic and historical differences, the basic format is nearly
identical. The street width in all of these examples is almost the
same, around 16-18 feet I'd guess. This is the typical Traditional
City format that we find all over the world, and which was really
the only urban form before the introduction of 19th Century
Hypertrophism beginning around 1780.
So, we see that this width produces very beautiful and familiar
kinds of places. Especially since there is no need to accommodate
vehicles at all, the 16-18 foot width is, for people walking, quite
pleasant and roomy. Even for a destination with literally thousands
of visitors, or even hundreds of thousands in the case of some Tokyo
neighborhoods like Shibuya on the weekend, it is easy to simply have
more streets of this format, rather than a smaller number of wider
streets.
One of many such streets in the Shibuya district, Tokyo.
Now let's look at a typical example of design failure, the Woodbury
Commons outdoor mall, about an hour north of New York City.
http://www.premiumoutlets.com/outlets/outlet.asp?id=7
This is not the worst thing ever, and the shopping center
seems to be fairly popular. But, doesn't that seem empty,
bleak and barren to you? It does to me -- not only in this
photo, but in person as well. This is an explicit no-car area,
so you can't complain about that. The problem is that the
street is too wide For People. Note how we are getting some
attempts to fill in that barren expanse of pavement with some
planter boxes and picnic tables, because that amount of
featureless pavement is quite unpleasant For People. The width
here is 40-60 feet, I'd say. We saw the same problems in
Whistler Village.
It could look like this:
Netherlands.
Woodbury. Note the shrubbery used as a buffer/filler along the
sides. It is actually about six feet wide.
Yangshuo, Guanxi, China.
Woodbury. The usual vegetative fillers. Again, we have
confusion as to whether this is a "street" or a "square."
That's because it is neither, just some excess space to be
filled in with low-value shrubbery.
Here we have a far more successful shopping center design:
Village Square in Burlington, Canada.
http://www.village-square.ca
You don't have to travel to the Netherlands for this stuff,
you can just build it yourself in Burlington, Canada. Note how
much narrower these streets are.
As befits a place called Village Square, there is an actual
square, which is an enclosed public event area distinct from
streets. This place is very clearly a Square, not a street
that's too wide.
Of all the thousands of shopping centers in North America, this
one is so popular for photo shoots that it has its own photo
permit page:
http://www.village-square.ca/photo-permits.html
And, it has been used as a movie location:
http://www.village-square.ca/blog/location-location-location
I haven't devoted a separate item to squares and plazas yet, but
a square should be distinct from a street, like this:
Square in Florence, Italy.
It doesn't have to be actually square, of course, but it should
have a name that includes the word "square," "plaza" or
somesuch. The actual dimensions should roughly approximate a
square, overall width and length about the same, not something
very long and narrow like a street. And, a square should have
clearly defined boundaries, not just morph vaguely into streets
and vice versa. You can also have gardens and parks, with lots
of vegetation, but they should be identified as a "garden" or a
"park," not just a street that has a lot of filler vegetation
because it is too wide.
So, to summarize, if you have the urge to add buffers and
fillers like shrubbery and isolated picnic tables, your street
is too wide. Just make it narrower. If you want a place that is
not a Narrow Street for People, but more of a wide open public
gathering spot, then make a Square, Garden, Park and so forth.
Shopping center developments like Woodbury Common are excellent
places to incorporate Traditional City design principles. So, do
it! Because, you're going to build something anyway, so it might
as well not suck.
November
11,
2012: HTMAPODWTTC 10: Let's Bulldoze a Big Box Shopping Center
2: No, Seriously
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