4 Important Things to Consider When Designing Streets For People, Not

Just Cars

Go to any medieval European city and you will see what streets looked like before the advent of
the car: lovely, small narrow lanes, intimate, and undisputedly human-scale. We have very few
cities in the US where you can find streets like this. For the most part what you see is streets that
have been designed with the car in mindat a large scale for a fast speed. In my native San
Francisco, we are making the streets safer for walking and biking by widening sidewalks, turning
car lanes into bike lanes, and slowing down the cars. We are working with the streets we have; a
typical San Francisco street is anywhere from 60 to 80 feet (18 to 24 meters) wide, as compared
with a medieval, pre-car street which is more like 10 to 20 feet (3 to 6 meters) wide.

As an urban designer, I work on lots of projects where we take large parcels of land and
subdivide them into blocks by introducing new streets. These new streets are a rare opportunity
to take a fresh look at the kinds of car-oriented roads that we are used to, and instead try to
design streets that prioritize the safety and comfort of pedestrians. These projects give us a
chance to design streets that are just for people. Imagine that we made these people-only streets
into narrow, medieval-style lanes that are intimate and human-scaled. But even as we try to
design streets that might not ever see a single car, we find that the modern street design has
become so much more than just places for walking or driving. There are therefore a number of
things for socially-minded designers to consider, beyond the commonly talked about pedestrian-
car dichotomy.

First, the street is where utilities go

Ask any civil engineer and they will tell you a street is a highly engineered easement filled with a
variety of pipes, connectors, backflow preventers, and other feats of modern science bringing us
water, energy, and communication. Streets provide a linear system for organizing this network of
utilities both horizontally (there are required distances between different kinds of utilities) and
vertically (waterin all its formsneeds to flow downhill, even in seemingly flat streets). What
is more, there are established, well-tested conventions for how to design these systems so that
they operate every day without us even noticing. Our reimagined, car-less street, in whatever
form it takes, needs to manage the way we are connected into this vascular, subterranean system.

With new technologies, we are finding efficient ways to manage some of these utilities with less
reliance on the grid. For example, there are now a handful of buildings that treat and reuse their
own sewage. This blackwater is treated and the liquids are used for flushing and irrigation,
while the solids are used by bio-digesters for energy to help power buildings. We can go even
further and connect a few of these high performing buildings together into eco-districts, and find
that the amount of utilities that we need to accommodate in the streets might eventually decrease.

Second, the street is a drainage system

Get your civil engineer together with your landscape architect and you will begin to understand
the demands on streets for handling stormwater. In fact, you will learn that from their
perspective, the principle purpose of a curb is not to separate pedestrians safely from cars, but to
control flooding. Curb heights are set relative to the slope of a street and the size of the storm
drain to prevent flooded sidewalks and buildings.

However, in some ways this is a self-made challenge. An impermeable street and gutter actually
stops water from soaking into the ground and forces it to move faster and at greater volumes
across the surface. We know that permeable paving works much better to alleviate flooding, and
reducing areas of paved surfaces and increasing planted areas is even more effective. Many cities
are retrofitting their streets with both permeable surfaces and raingardens to help alleviate this
problem. By designing our streets to handle water in a more holistic way, with natural drainage
and infiltration, we can start to peel away the curbs and see signs of plant life moving back into
our new street section.

Which leads to this next point: a street is an ecosystem

In a city with an urban grid, streets take up as much as 30 percent of the total area of the city,
which represents a significant amount of land in the public realm. So it should be no surprise that
streets end up being where we find much of the biomass that is found in cities, in the form of
street trees and sidewalk plantings. Beautiful old streets mostly have one thing in common:
beautiful old trees. Large, healthy, mature trees can make for amazingly lovable streets, even if
the roads and sidewalks are nothing special. Case in point: Saint Charles Avenue in New
Orleans has some of the most impressive potholes and impassable sidewalks in the city, but its
arching canopy of centuries-old oak and fig trees firmly cements it into visitors memories as one
of the most beautiful streets in the city.

But trees can also perform in ways beyond aesthetics, to act as habitat for wildlife in the city.
Two great examples of this are the Pollinator Pathway in Seattle and the tiger swallowtail
butterfly rookery along San Franciscos Market Street. Landscape architects typically select
street trees for their durability, height, and canopy size, but increasingly they are selecting for
their contribution to a larger ecosystem. Given that street trees follow the connected network of
streets, by default they can create a rich, connected network for the fauna that rely on them as
well, linking from park to park across a city.

The good news is that street trees are usually selected, installed, and maintained by a single city
agency, which means that adding ecological performance to the species selection criteria could
be quite an effective way to implement such wildlife corridors on a larger scale, and converting
streets into ecological corridors benefiting all critters... humans included.

Finally, of course, a street is a public right of way

In other words, a street is publicly owned land, which the public has the right to occupy. In a
democratic country, the streets are a place where people come together to be seen as a group, to
stand up and be counted. We are seeing the importance of this fact in cities all over the country
(indeed, the world) where people are once more taking to the streets to find their voice; New
York Mayor Bill De Blasio recently said that protest is one of the important functions of New
York Citys streets. Even though at times this may conflict with other functions, such as moving
traffic easily, it remains a critical and fundamental purpose of a citys streets.

What is more, in every country, everywhere, the streets are the place where public life is lived
every day. From Algiers to Zurich, streets are filled with people doing everyday things like
chatting with their neighbors, hanging laundry, watering flowers, buying food, and socializing
their children. If we are to rethink the idea of the street, we would need to find a way to ensure
this vitality of public life has space, in all its forms, and in all its public-ness.

When drawing a street on a plan, you start with a centerline and offset it on two sides. It is quite literally
a line connecting two places with a certain width. This width is almost always determined by an engineer
who is trying to match an algorithm for how many lanes are needed for the cars that will drive down this
street, and how many utilities will need to comfortably fit here. Instead, we should think about streets
and all their various usesas places for gathering, finding our way, living more healthfully, with nature,
and with each other... and build from there.
7 Architectural Experiments that Failed Spectacularly

Experimentation in architecture is what propels the discipline forward. In an ideal scenario, once
a project gets as far as the planning stage, large amounts of careful research and collaboration
between the architect, contractor, and client contribute to a smooth execution of an exploratory
idea, and ultimately a successful end product. But its not uncommon for even the most skilled
architects to design work that has a misstep somewhere along the line, whether it has to do with
shrinking budget, unforeseen contextual changes, lack of oversight, or anything in between. In
some way, the projects here all fall into the second category of failed experiments, but some have
also become potential models for revitalization of existing buildings, rather than (less
sustainable) demolition and reconstruction. Read on to discover what went wrong in these
notable disasters.

20 Fenchurch Street, Rafael Violy (opened 2014)

Also known as the "Walkie Talkie," the unique top-heavy shape of this bulbous building is meant
to maximize floor space on the upper stories, which draw in higher rents. It was originally
designed to be even larger, but was shortened by a few meters to preserve the views of older
buildings in the London skyline. However, after construction, Londoners quickly realized that
the project could damage a lot more than the skyline.

The buildings slightly curved glass facade reflected light in concentrated beams so strong that
they melted cars and started fires. After wreaking its havoc on the city, 20 Fenchurch Street is
now partially covered with sun shades to prevent light from reflecting off of the glass, but it is
still being blamed for directing powerful gusts of wind downward towards street level.

Ponte City, Manfred Hermer (opened 1975)

Still holding its title as the continents tallest residential tower, Ponte City was built in 1975, in
apartheid-era Johannesburg, designed as luxury living that refused to rent to any non-white
patrons. The novel cylindrical building holds 55 stories of residential units with retail space at
the base, all wrapped around a large central courtyard. The plan for opulence and racist
exclusivity backfired when the neighborhood became rife with crime in the 80s and 90s and the
original residents moved out, turning Ponte City into a "vertical slum," and its courtyard into a
trash heap that at one point reached a height of five stories.

Despite its horrific reputation, the tower came under new ownership in 2001, and has since
recovered some of its hopeful comfortable lifestyle. The building now has 24-hour tight security
to combat safety concerns and has restored its plumbing and electricity after decades of decay.
But the racist legacy it was founded on has not completely disappeared, with the more expensive
upper units being most frequently occupied by white tenants.

Pruitt-Igoe, Minoru Yamasaki (opened 1954)

The public housing development of Pruitt-Igoe was built to provide affordable homes for St.
Louiss growing low income population. 33 cost-effective 11 story towers were built according
to the modernist principles of Le Corbusiers Ville Radieuse, where cars and pedestrians were
separated by large, slab-like buildings and stretches of green space. Pruitt-Igoe opened to ecstatic
residents who were thrilled with the amenities and sense of community it offereda welcome
change from the overcrowded tenement housing that until that point may have been their only
housing option.

A combination of political and economic factors resulted in a challenging construction budget for
Yamasaki's design, and cheap construction methods soon revealed themselves in structural
failings that ranged from inconvenient to dangerous. A complex combination of white flight
(caused in part by desegregation of the citys public schools), increased crime, and the general
economic decline of St. Louis were all part of Pruitt-Igoes short timeline, and contributed to its
abrupt demolition in 1972. A recent documentary details the full, complicated history of Pruitt-
Igoe within its urban context as the "death of modernism" in the United States.

KOMTAR Tower, Architects Team 3 (opened 1986)

In the 1960s, a masterplan for George Town, Malaysia was developed to create a new urban
center that it was hoped would revitalize the area. KOMTAR was slated as the central skyscraper
that would combine restaurants, shops, and administrative offices for the Penang government
with an elevated pedestrian walkway.

But revitalization didnt happen: the construction process displaced entire neighborhoods of
George Town residents, and preexisting local restaurants and shops were demolished to make
room for the skyscraper. The pedestrian walkway was never installed. Many of the original
retailers moved out of an unmaintained KOMTAR, and the empty building fell into disrepair.
The project had destroyed the very thing it had intended to help generate. In the past few years,
KOMTAR has been slowly resuscitated with the installation of Malaysias highest skywalk and
the worlds tallest mural, and it is slowly transitioning from white elephant to lively landmark.

The Farnsworth House, Mies Van der Rohe (completed 1951)

Whether the Farnsworth House could be considered a failure might depend heavily on whoor
more crucially, whenyou ask. After leaving Germany at the closing of the Bauhaus, then
designing several buildings for the Illinois Institute of Technology, Mies van der Rohes
Farnsworth House was the modernist architects first home commission in the United States. The
project was commissioned by Dr. Edith Farnsworth, a prominent nephrologist in Chicago, as a
weekend retreat in Plano, Illinois. The home is now a respected member of the modernist canon,
but at the time of its completion in 1951, it was a disappointment to Farnsworth and a publicity
nightmare for Mies.

Responding to Farnsworths undeveloped 64-acre property, the architects concept aimed to

minimize the separation between human and nature. Completely transparent glass walls are
sandwiched between flat, white planes, covered only by minimal steel beams. Unfortunately,
Farnsworth felt extremely uncomfortable in the resulting home, and has described feeling "like a
sentinel on guard day and night." The project came in significantly over budget, and Farnsworth
refused to pay the difference for a home she described as "almost nothing." Mies sued for lack of
payment, and Farnsworth sued back for fraud and deceit. Mies won the case, but the client was
never satisfied with her home and sold it to collector Lord Peter Palumbo in 1975.

Sports City, Santiago Calatrava (began 2007)

Just after completing his iconic Ciudad de las Ciencias in Valencia, Calatrava masterminded
Romes Sports City: a collection of athletic facilities for the University of Rome Tor Vergata. The
first building, a swimming stadium, was meant to host the 2009 World Swimming
Championships, but rapidly increasing cost estimates caused the project to come to a halt before
it was even close to completion. The stadium is estimated to have cost the public around 200
million, and its steel skeleton still sits off the highway as a cruel reminder of the projects failure.
Interestingly, the seemingly abandoned Sports City was included in Romes bid for the 2024
Olympicsat least, before the bid was withdrawn.

Ebenezer Howards Garden Cities

At the end of the 19th century, Sir Ebenezer Howard published Garden Cities of To-morrow,
which detailed a utopian vision for "slumless, smokeless" cities. The Garden City was
characterized by a collection of interrelated centers, each with individual programs, that radiated
out from a central cultural district. The cities had dedicated sections for agriculture and industry
that were separate from residential and park belts, allowing for self-sufficiency and plenty of
natural space. Once the city reached a population of 32,000, a new development was to begin,
preventing the first from growing too large for short commutes.

The Garden City model was used all over the world throughout the 19th century, including the
Americas and former British colonies around Asia. The model has been largely criticized for
facilitating many of the problems Howard wanted to plan against: rather than self-sustained
mini-cities, many garden cities have in practice become suburbs on the outskirts of larger, more
industrial urban centers with long commuting distances. They also necessitate a density that
some urbanists have argued is incompatible with modern concerns for environmentalism and
booming population. Today, the concept of the garden city is most frequently employed as a
rhetorical device, used by politicians to gain support for new housing policy without following
the actual principles of Howard's original idea.