Baseball, borne of street ancestry, has always been the sport of cities. Through perspective, and the lens of new urbanism, today’s modern ballparks display the oft-stated quest for a compact and community-oriented world on foot. We need not seek the validity of urban return through articles and studies. Confirmation is as simple as immersion in the crowd.
The chatter today is all about placemaking. We have often let “local place” wither away. So we rush to rediscover what landscape essayist J.B. Jackson termed a past golden age–“a time when we seek to restore the world around us to something like its former beauty”.
Along the way, we encounter many types of places, functional and symbolic.
Below, the vital Easter community of St. Peter’s Square in Rome gives way to the evolved and rustic, sea-oriented towns of Port Townsend, Washington, Manarola in the Italian Cinque Terre, and the Orcas, Washington ferry landing.
Here we see transformative places. While function of buildings can evolve, the vitality of place remains as our senses witness new contexts for human interaction with tradition, time and transport. Perhaps now more touristic than pious or seafaring, such places live on.
But is it fair to say that some places are “less place than the next”, because they are new, reflect only modern consumerism or somehow deface an edifice? What of a suburban mall, or mere graffiti along a path?
Surely these are places, too, but with inherent value distinctions. While not downtown, indoor malls remain vital retail centers, and while not museum art, spontaneous expression has legitimacy, often even when rendered without permission or legal sanction.
And finally, what of a gravestone in a company town no longer serving its industry? What of a true ruin, or vestige, such as the Coliseum?
In “The Necessity for Ruins” (1980), Jackson answered unequivocally, first identifying the need for “that interval of neglect” before renewal and reform: ruins “correct history”.
“Ruins provide the incentive for restoration, and for a return to origins”.
In discussion of public safety issues in urban areas, law enforcement, design and planning issues often remain in their silos, devoid of integration. Ongoing neighborhood policing and social service initiatives should be more outrightly integrated with the renewed focus on environmental and urban design criteria for safe streetscapes.
Concepts of “Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design” (CPTED)–frequently international in nature–have been present for decades and were implied in Jane Jacobs’ work.
Similar safety-enhancement approaches addressing perceived safety of female transit users have recently received wide attention in the professional and local press. Many cities and civic associations (such as the Downtown Seattle Association) have also advocated for integration of such concepts. As advocacy efforts for pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure funding accelerate, enhanced policy and regulation encouraging such principles for safety will present further discussion opportunities for agreement by interested parties.
In Seattle, after a see-saw match of legislation and veto focused on aggressive panhandling, we, like other cities, could benefit from an integrated and multifaceted discussion of truly “complete streets”.
A recent visit to Melbourne, Australia showed certain CPTED principles along neighborhood streetcar lines, including ample (but glare-protective) night-lighting, territorial sensitivities to illuminated, sidewalk-oriented window areas, enhancement of the role of passing vehicles, transparent protection from weather at building entries, and low bushes and/or lower picket-type fencing along the street to limit access while allowing for entry visibility.
As the street becomes disassembled to its component parts and modes are split, lower-budget striping is often the preferred definitional boundary for automobile, bicycle and pedestrian.
Consequently, discussion and debate often ensues around alternatives to the “great American stripe”.
We begin with the international contrast of “the flower line” and move on to variations anew.
Increasingly, everyday seems like “a day of the street”.
Today, as part of a feature series on recent mayoral “state of the city” speeches, Planner’s Web highlights Minneapolis, where in his address last month Mayor R.T. Rybak stressed that city’s “Great Streets” program, a coordinated funding assistance effort to ensure success of businesses located adjacent to commercial corridors and nodes.
Coincidentally, in Seattle, a broad campaign (citing, inter alia, Minneapolis) launched, with the goal of offsetting comprehensive funding shortfalls for Seattle street reinvention:
We believe that walking, bicycling and transit should be the easiest means of transportation in Seattle. But our current situation is that we face cuts in Metro service hours and we’re not funding the Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plans that are needed for our future.
Our coalition has identified a number of potential funding sources – to the tune of $30 million dollars – for walking, biking and transit infrastructure. And we look forward to working with the Seattle City Council, Mayor McGinn and our partners to create dedicated funding mechanisms for multi-modal transportation initiatives in Seattle.
We also look forward to engaging the entire city of Seattle in a conversation about how we fund and build the pedestrian, bicycle and transit infrastructure that aligns with our vision; this year, and into the future.
Here is an embedded link to the new coalition effort, which, at last review, garnered 267 Facebook fans in just over 24 hours: