Precipitous shore-side venues once reliant on marine commerce show retrofits adapted to the needs of modern housing, transportation and tourism. While such images show the potential of human adaptation, they also suggest the myriad of land use regulatory challenges associated with the prospects of compact development.
So goes the dance of density….
On one parcel of land, below, we see urban freight mobility across difficult topography and provisional sewer and garbage collection: Property-scale, integrated infrastructure!
Can this be achieved at the urban and regional scales in a sustainable fashion? Time will tell.
Last month, we illustrated some potential “quick wins” for placemaking, gleaned from a morning walk. Here are some additional, “scaled” lessons learned through observations of an historic urban park network partially restored by neighbors, in cooperation with a big city park department.
Local action supplements big ideas through demonstrable implementation. Seattle’s Madrona Woods story, accessible here, shows us how and why.
1. City woods, then (1909) and now (2010):
2. Stairways along the way, public and private:
3. New pedestrian bridge, restored lake shore:
4. The prize of the daylighted creek:
Here is further evidence for last night’s twilight apparition: A walkable, to-scale college town can present the ideal of a pedestrian and bike-oriented retail core, and a viable mix of uses which serve the needs of both the adjacent institution and a classic town center. Look to this model for what can go right, and wrong, with attempts to implement successful communities. In particular, the panoramae below provide the street-level sense of opportunity to meld physical, economic, aesthetic considerations with multi-modal traffic and service provision.
College towns are often the most walkable, serving a generation not yet auto-centric, and offering the classic mixture of businesses for the academy and small town “Main Street”. Here, Moscow, Idaho is no exception, with the University of Idaho a short walk to the west of downtown.
