An ode to public benches

 The public bench "transforms the surroundings into a place to be."

Well said. 

Mode Share

 

"This chart highlights the popularity of different transportation types in the Americas, Europe, and Asia, calculated by modal share.

Data for this article and visualization is sourced from ‘The ABC of Mobility’, a research paper by Rafael Prieto-Curiel (Complexity Science Hub) and Juan P. Ospina (EAFIT University), accessed through ScienceDirect.

The authors gathered their modal share data through travel surveys, which focused on the primary mode of transportation a person employs for each weekday trip. Information from 800 cities across 61 countries was collected for this study."

from:

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-people-get-around-america-europe-asia/

Public places ingredient list

 "The best places are those where there is social life for all. The most iconic, popular, frequently visited public places are those full of children, women, men, and all kinds of configurations of every kind of person. A placemaking strategy that starts with creating inclusive public spaces and puts a community’s future back into its hands is the first step in addressing some of the major systemic issues that hurt and divide us. Creating great public places where people come together is at the root of healthy, happy, and prosperous societies. At the foundation of those great public places is a mix of things to experience and enjoy. By adding layers of activities, amenities, and programming, we create public places where all kinds of people want to be. The more variety a place offers, the more people will be drawn to it and benefit from the powerful impacts of these beloved destinations."

When designing a public place, include the following:

• shade;
• bollards;
• seating;
• food, especially ice cream;
• art;
• fountains and water;
• programming, and;
• performances.

from:

https://www.sociallifeproject.org/campaign-creating-social-life-for-all-places-where-people-thrive/

Video of the week: What makes a place beautiful?

 It's not what you think!

"What makes buildings and cities beautiful, and why is beauty so important? How to design for beauty? I was always wondering why everything was getting so ugly, and why beauty doesn't seem to be valued anymore. So in this video, we take a deep dive into the topic of beauty - to hopefully learn some lessons from it. From the design disconnect to biophilia and deeper brain structures, no stone is left unturned to solve the puzzle: how can we build more beautiful, and why does that matter?"

Which place do you prefer to walk in?

Adaptive Streets

"Adaptive Streets is an illustrated handbook to inspire and guide citizens, planners and officials to re-imagine how our streets can be adapted to increase utility and delight as well as enhance human and environmental health. The book presents a collection of strategies, demonstrating how they can be implemented in prototypical streets. Adaptive Streets can be used as a community empowerment tool to create new visions to transform the right-of-way."

from:

https://issuu.com/schwin/docs/14_04_26_adaptivestreets_final

 

Is it time to design for neighbourhood electric vehicles instead?

 "Half of the work of urban design is deciding where to store cars."

"When designing parking spaces, planners have a size of vehicle in mind—a design vehicle scaled for highway and freeway travel. Yet almost half of all car trips in the United States are for trips under 3 miles,1 which shouldn’t require getting on a highway or freeway. In an era of growing climate threats, we need to rethink what kind of vehicle is necessary for running local trips. It’s time to seriously consider a class of vehicles called neighborhood electric vehicles, or NEVs."

from:

https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2021/10/13/rightsizing-automobile-local-mobility

Renewal - one building at a time

 "Less than a decade ago, Water Valley, Mississippi was a forgotten small town: there were 18 empty storefronts lining its four-block Main Street and plenty of decaying homes for sale. Located only twenty miles from the University of Mississippi and the pricey town of Oxford (also former home to William Faulkner), it was well-placed for revival.

In 2002, Mickey Howley and his wife Ole Miss professor Annette Trefzer bought an $80,000 century-old home and one of those empty storefronts for $60,000. They were early pioneers in the effort to rehabilitate the old 19th Century railroad town- turning their former drugstore into the Bozarts art gallery, but it took the formation of a community to create real change.

“In the last seven years,” explained Howley- now director of the Water Valley Main Street Association - in 2015 to a White House meeting on rural placemaking, “and remember Water Valley is 3,500 people with a four-block long downtown, this team has been instrumental in bringing 88 new jobs to downtown. Adding 26 new businesses. Fixing buildings and I don’t just mean façade jobs, but major renovations in 29 buildings. Adding 14 upper floor apartments. In that new business mix, we’ve added four new restaurants, three art galleries, one grocery store, one doctor’s office, and one brewery.”

Howley calls it “reimagining” structures: a foundry is now a brewery, a service station is now a restaurant, a drugstore is now an art gallery and a department store is now a grocery store/school."

Cars and streets

 

from here:

https://twitter.com/urbanthoughts11/status/1338388606478639104/photo/1

Tactical Urbanism

Transform Your City With Tactical Urbanism from STREETFILMS on Vimeo.

Amsterdam

6 Road Design Changes That Can Save Lives

"Six simple road design changes that can significantly improve road safety. These changes put people – not vehicles – at the center of design to reduce speeds, demand more awareness from drivers and create more opportunities for safe crossings. They can even help make cities greener.

1. Shorter Blocks

2. Narrower Lanes

3. More Roundabouts

4. Chicanes (or bump outs)

5. Speed Humps

6. Raised Crossings

Bonus: Compact, Coordinated and Connected Planning

from:

https://www.wri.org/blog/2018/10/6-road-design-changes-can-save-lives

Chat Bench

"Have you seen our ‘Chat Bench’ in Burnham or Taunton? To help us tackle loneliness and isolation in the community we have introduced a ‘Chat Bench’ in Vivary Park in Taunton and also on Burnham Sea Front.  Simply stopping to say "hello" to someone at the ‘Chat Bench’ could make a huge difference to the vulnerable people in our communities and help to make life a little better for them."



from:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/07/17/this-towns-solution-loneliness-chat-bench

Community Design

"As our political discourse generates derision and dissension, our time in the virtual world crowds out our time in the actual one, and trust in our institutions and each other has plummeted, local places such as markets, libraries, and coffee shops can help. A new study shows that living near community-oriented public and commercial spaces brings a host of social benefits such as increased trust, decreased loneliness, and stronger sense of attachment to where we live."

from:

https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/05/having-library-or-cafe-down-block-could-change-your-life/589813

and:

Ten great squares

"Squares are the outdoor living rooms of cities worldwide, and they have been planned at the center of the best North American cities for half of a millennium"

from:
https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2019/05/10/ten-great-public-squares

Fun video of the week

from:
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2016/07/a-1960s-cartoon-hilariously-mocks-americas-car-obsession/491558

From the archives

"101 smart transportation solutions that can make our cities better."

https://www.curbed.com/2017/9/20/16317036/best-transportation-ideas-cities-transit

Today's video

"In Tokyo 14 percent of all trips are done by bike, every single day. Yet Tokyo does not have the cycling infrastructure of an Amsterdam or even Hamburg, which is something most western minds believe to be a necessity for encouraging cycling. Not that wider cycling lanes wouldn't help boost the 14 percent mode share, but Japanese folks in Tokyo have shown they will cycle regardless. If there's no bike lane, they'll just hop on the sidewalk or wherever they feel safe."


The Gaman Spirit: Why Cycling Works in Tokyo from STREETFILMS on Vimeo.

Video of the week

Twitter user: 21st Century City

Top tweets that caught my eye:

"Autonomous vehicles would probably need more space, as they would have to drive around empty to find the next passenger."

from: https://twitter.com/urbanthoughts11/status/976859613990670336

or: 

"Snow to visualize the crazy amount of unused carspace."

from: https://twitter.com/bicivikingo/status/978034705298853888

or:



"If you design your city for people instead of cars, your city will thrive - in terms of business, safety, efficiency, people's mood, health & so much more"

from: https://twitter.com/urbanthoughts11/status/974329230887653376

The History of Vancouver

"Living in Vancouver you might not know it is actually an amalgamation of three cities. Their distinctive cultures survive today. This video has some highlights of this history. In deciding on future development and density, perhaps we should respect this past."