1 00:00:00,897 --> 00:00:03,786 So I'm here to talk to you about the walkable city. 2 00:00:03,810 --> 00:00:05,169 What is the walkable city? 3 00:00:05,193 --> 00:00:07,674 Well, for want of a better definition, 4 00:00:07,698 --> 00:00:14,586 it's a city in which the car is an optional instrument of freedom, 5 00:00:14,610 --> 00:00:16,494 rather than a prosthetic device. 6 00:00:16,518 --> 00:00:19,473 And I'd like to talk about why we need the walkable city, 7 00:00:19,497 --> 00:00:23,655 and I'd like to talk about how to do the walkable city. 8 00:00:23,679 --> 00:00:28,019 Most of the talks I give these days are about why we need it, 9 00:00:28,043 --> 00:00:31,139 but you guys are smart. 10 00:00:32,314 --> 00:00:35,561 And also I gave that talk exactly a month ago, 11 00:00:35,585 --> 00:00:37,652 and you can see it at TED.com. 12 00:00:37,676 --> 00:00:40,676 So today I want to talk about how to do it. 13 00:00:40,700 --> 00:00:42,639 In a lot of time thinking about this, 14 00:00:42,663 --> 00:00:45,763 I've come up with what I call the general theory of walkability. 15 00:00:45,787 --> 00:00:48,717 A bit of a pretentious term, it's a little tongue-in-cheek, 16 00:00:48,741 --> 00:00:51,315 but it's something I've thought about for a long time, 17 00:00:51,339 --> 00:00:54,723 and I'd like to share what I think I've figured out. 18 00:00:54,747 --> 00:00:57,586 In the American city, the typical American city -- 19 00:00:57,610 --> 00:00:59,850 the typical American city is not Washington, DC, 20 00:00:59,874 --> 00:01:02,182 or New York, or San Francisco; 21 00:01:02,206 --> 00:01:05,453 it's Grand Rapids or Cedar Rapids or Memphis -- 22 00:01:05,477 --> 00:01:08,588 in the typical American city in which most people own cars 23 00:01:08,612 --> 00:01:10,933 and the temptation is to drive them all the time, 24 00:01:10,957 --> 00:01:14,736 if you're going to get them to walk, then you have to offer a walk 25 00:01:14,760 --> 00:01:16,608 that's as good as a drive or better. 26 00:01:16,632 --> 00:01:17,783 What does that mean? 27 00:01:17,807 --> 00:01:20,348 It means you need to offer four things simultaneously: 28 00:01:20,372 --> 00:01:22,429 there needs to be a proper reason to walk, 29 00:01:22,453 --> 00:01:24,803 the walk has to be safe and feel safe, 30 00:01:24,827 --> 00:01:26,522 the walk has to be comfortable 31 00:01:26,546 --> 00:01:28,315 and the walk has to be interesting. 32 00:01:28,339 --> 00:01:30,949 You need to do all four of these things simultaneously, 33 00:01:30,973 --> 00:01:33,003 and that's the structure of my talk today, 34 00:01:33,027 --> 00:01:34,656 to take you through each of those. 35 00:01:34,680 --> 00:01:37,944 The reason to walk is a story I learned from my mentors, 36 00:01:37,968 --> 00:01:40,328 Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, 37 00:01:40,352 --> 00:01:42,353 the founders of the New Urbanism movement. 38 00:01:42,377 --> 00:01:45,890 And I should say half the slides and half of my talk today 39 00:01:45,914 --> 00:01:47,240 I learned from them. 40 00:01:47,264 --> 00:01:49,043 It's the story of planning, 41 00:01:49,067 --> 00:01:52,307 the story of the formation of the planning profession. 42 00:01:52,331 --> 00:01:57,082 When in the 19th century people were choking 43 00:01:57,106 --> 00:01:59,599 from the soot of the dark, satanic mills, 44 00:01:59,623 --> 00:02:03,999 the planners said, hey, let's move the housing away from the mills. 45 00:02:04,023 --> 00:02:07,490 And lifespans increased immediately, dramatically, 46 00:02:07,514 --> 00:02:08,665 and we like to say 47 00:02:08,689 --> 00:02:11,881 the planners have been trying to repeat that experience ever since. 48 00:02:11,905 --> 00:02:14,547 So there's the onset of what we call Euclidean zoning, 49 00:02:14,571 --> 00:02:18,646 the separation of the landscape into large areas of single use. 50 00:02:18,670 --> 00:02:21,147 And typically when I arrive in a city to do a plan, 51 00:02:21,171 --> 00:02:25,210 a plan like this already awaits me on the property that I'm looking at. 52 00:02:25,234 --> 00:02:26,936 And all a plan like this guarantees 53 00:02:26,960 --> 00:02:28,999 is that you will not have a walkable city, 54 00:02:29,023 --> 00:02:31,943 because nothing is located near anything else. 55 00:02:31,967 --> 00:02:35,607 The alternative, of course, is our most walkable city, 56 00:02:35,631 --> 00:02:38,161 and I like to say, you know, this is a Rothko, 57 00:02:38,185 --> 00:02:39,688 and this is a Seurat. 58 00:02:39,712 --> 00:02:42,253 It's just a different way -- he was the pointilist -- 59 00:02:42,277 --> 00:02:44,110 it's a different way of making places. 60 00:02:44,134 --> 00:02:46,943 And even this map of Manhattan is a bit misleading 61 00:02:46,967 --> 00:02:51,147 because the red color is uses that are mixed vertically. 62 00:02:51,171 --> 00:02:53,875 So this is the big story of the New Urbanists -- 63 00:02:53,899 --> 00:02:56,411 to acknowledge that there are only two ways 64 00:02:56,435 --> 00:02:58,725 that have been tested by the thousands 65 00:02:58,749 --> 00:03:01,689 to build communities, in the world and throughout history. 66 00:03:01,713 --> 00:03:03,591 One is the traditional neighborhood. 67 00:03:03,615 --> 00:03:07,029 You see here several neighborhoods of Newburyport, Massachusetts, 68 00:03:07,053 --> 00:03:11,320 which is defined as being compact and being diverse -- 69 00:03:11,344 --> 00:03:15,486 places to live, work, shop, recreate, get educated -- 70 00:03:15,510 --> 00:03:17,389 all within walking distance. 71 00:03:17,413 --> 00:03:19,549 And it's defined as being walkable. 72 00:03:19,573 --> 00:03:21,107 There are lots of small streets. 73 00:03:21,131 --> 00:03:22,857 Each one is comfortable to walk on. 74 00:03:22,881 --> 00:03:25,395 And we contrast that to the other way, 75 00:03:25,419 --> 00:03:28,238 an invention that happened after the Second World War, 76 00:03:28,262 --> 00:03:29,520 suburban sprawl, 77 00:03:29,544 --> 00:03:34,121 clearly not compact, clearly not diverse, and it's not walkable, 78 00:03:34,145 --> 00:03:36,043 because so few of the streets connect, 79 00:03:36,067 --> 00:03:38,950 that those streets that do connect become overburdened, 80 00:03:38,974 --> 00:03:41,064 and you wouldn't let your kid out on them. 81 00:03:41,088 --> 00:03:43,939 And I want to thank Alex Maclean, the aerial photographer, 82 00:03:43,963 --> 00:03:47,018 for many of these beautiful pictures that I'm showing you today. 83 00:03:47,042 --> 00:03:50,662 So it's fun to break sprawl down into its constituent parts. 84 00:03:50,686 --> 00:03:52,263 It's so easy to understand, 85 00:03:52,287 --> 00:03:55,290 the places where you only live, the places where you only work, 86 00:03:56,144 --> 00:03:58,100 the places where you only shop, 87 00:03:58,124 --> 00:04:01,468 and our super-sized public institutions. 88 00:04:01,492 --> 00:04:02,932 Schools get bigger and bigger, 89 00:04:02,956 --> 00:04:05,352 and therefore, further and further from each other. 90 00:04:05,376 --> 00:04:08,505 And the ratio of the size of the parking lot 91 00:04:08,529 --> 00:04:09,745 to the size of the school 92 00:04:09,769 --> 00:04:11,385 tells you all you need to know, 93 00:04:11,409 --> 00:04:13,947 which is that no child has ever walked to this school, 94 00:04:13,971 --> 00:04:15,876 no child will ever walk to this school. 95 00:04:15,900 --> 00:04:19,740 The seniors and juniors are driving the freshmen and the sophomores, 96 00:04:19,764 --> 00:04:22,388 and of course we have the crash statistics to prove it. 97 00:04:22,412 --> 00:04:25,880 And then the super-sizing of our other civic institutions 98 00:04:25,904 --> 00:04:27,074 like playing fields -- 99 00:04:27,098 --> 00:04:30,971 it's wonderful that Westin in the Ft. Lauderdale area 100 00:04:30,995 --> 00:04:34,063 has eight soccer fields and eight baseball diamonds 101 00:04:34,087 --> 00:04:35,946 and 20 tennis courts, 102 00:04:35,970 --> 00:04:39,582 but look at the road that takes you to that location, 103 00:04:39,606 --> 00:04:41,552 and would you let your child bike on it? 104 00:04:41,576 --> 00:04:43,706 And this is why we have the soccer mom now. 105 00:04:43,730 --> 00:04:45,972 When I was young, I had one soccer field, 106 00:04:45,996 --> 00:04:48,021 one baseball diamond and one tennis court, 107 00:04:48,045 --> 00:04:50,903 but I could walk to it, because it was in my neighborhood. 108 00:04:50,927 --> 00:04:53,778 Then the final part of sprawl that everyone forgot to count: 109 00:04:53,802 --> 00:04:56,622 if you're going to separate everything from everything else 110 00:04:56,646 --> 00:04:59,180 and reconnect it only with automotive infrastructure, 111 00:04:59,204 --> 00:05:01,726 then this is what your landscape begins to look like. 112 00:05:01,750 --> 00:05:02,965 The main message here is: 113 00:05:02,989 --> 00:05:06,591 if you want to have a walkable city, you can't start with the sprawl model. 114 00:05:06,615 --> 00:05:08,686 you need the bones of an urban model. 115 00:05:08,710 --> 00:05:11,558 This is the outcome of that form of design, 116 00:05:11,582 --> 00:05:12,973 as is this. 117 00:05:12,997 --> 00:05:15,586 And this is something that a lot of Americans want. 118 00:05:15,610 --> 00:05:18,323 But we have to understand it's a two-part American dream. 119 00:05:18,347 --> 00:05:19,707 If you're dreaming for this, 120 00:05:19,731 --> 00:05:23,112 you're also going to be dreaming of this, often to absurd extremes, 121 00:05:23,136 --> 00:05:25,753 when we build our landscape to accommodate cars first. 122 00:05:25,777 --> 00:05:28,018 And the experience of being in these places -- 123 00:05:28,042 --> 00:05:29,059 (Laughter) 124 00:05:29,083 --> 00:05:30,463 This is not Photoshopped. 125 00:05:30,487 --> 00:05:32,489 Walter Kulash took this slide. 126 00:05:32,513 --> 00:05:34,210 It's in Panama City. 127 00:05:34,234 --> 00:05:36,023 This is a real place. 128 00:05:36,047 --> 00:05:38,526 And being a driver can be a bit of a nuisance, 129 00:05:38,550 --> 00:05:41,015 and being a pedestrian can be a bit of a nuisance 130 00:05:41,039 --> 00:05:42,540 in these places. 131 00:05:42,564 --> 00:05:46,038 This is a slide that epidemiologists have been showing for some time now, 132 00:05:46,062 --> 00:05:47,078 (Laughter) 133 00:05:47,102 --> 00:05:50,567 The fact that we have a society where you drive to the parking lot 134 00:05:50,591 --> 00:05:52,465 to take the escalator to the treadmill 135 00:05:52,489 --> 00:05:54,417 shows that we're doing something wrong. 136 00:05:54,441 --> 00:05:56,013 But we know how to do it better. 137 00:05:56,037 --> 00:05:57,720 Here are the two models contrasted. 138 00:05:57,744 --> 00:05:58,899 I show this slide, 139 00:05:58,923 --> 00:06:01,709 which has been a formative document of the New Urbanism now 140 00:06:01,733 --> 00:06:03,137 for almost 30 years, 141 00:06:03,161 --> 00:06:07,320 to show that sprawl and the traditional neighborhood contain the same things. 142 00:06:07,344 --> 00:06:08,730 It's just how big are they, 143 00:06:08,754 --> 00:06:10,353 how close are they to each other, 144 00:06:10,377 --> 00:06:12,052 how are they interspersed together 145 00:06:12,076 --> 00:06:14,993 and do you have a street network, rather than a cul-de-sac 146 00:06:15,017 --> 00:06:17,052 or a collector system of streets? 147 00:06:17,076 --> 00:06:18,893 So when we look at a downtown area, 148 00:06:18,917 --> 00:06:21,052 at a place that has a hope of being walkable, 149 00:06:21,076 --> 00:06:23,634 and mostly that's our downtowns in America's cities 150 00:06:23,658 --> 00:06:25,426 and towns and villages, 151 00:06:25,450 --> 00:06:28,515 we look at them and say we want the proper balance of uses. 152 00:06:28,539 --> 00:06:30,674 So what is missing or underrepresented? 153 00:06:30,698 --> 00:06:34,358 And again, in the typical American cities in which most Americans live, 154 00:06:34,382 --> 00:06:36,392 it is housing that is lacking. 155 00:06:36,416 --> 00:06:38,606 The jobs-to-housing balance is off. 156 00:06:38,630 --> 00:06:40,813 And you find that when you bring housing back, 157 00:06:40,837 --> 00:06:42,903 these other things start to come back too, 158 00:06:42,927 --> 00:06:45,403 and housing is usually first among those things. 159 00:06:45,427 --> 00:06:48,531 And, of course, the thing that shows up last and eventually 160 00:06:48,555 --> 00:06:49,736 is the schools, 161 00:06:49,760 --> 00:06:52,080 because the people have to move in, 162 00:06:52,104 --> 00:06:56,925 the young pioneers have to move in, get older, have kids 163 00:06:56,949 --> 00:06:59,987 and fight, and then the schools get pretty good eventually. 164 00:07:00,011 --> 00:07:02,313 The other part of this part, 165 00:07:02,337 --> 00:07:05,828 the useful city part, 166 00:07:05,852 --> 00:07:07,157 is transit, 167 00:07:07,181 --> 00:07:10,546 and you can have a perfectly walkable neighborhood without it. 168 00:07:10,570 --> 00:07:13,875 But perfectly walkable cities require transit, 169 00:07:13,899 --> 00:07:17,340 because if you don't have access to the whole city as a pedestrian, 170 00:07:17,364 --> 00:07:18,525 then you get a car, 171 00:07:18,549 --> 00:07:19,704 and if you get a car, 172 00:07:19,728 --> 00:07:22,276 the city begins to reshape itself around your needs, 173 00:07:22,300 --> 00:07:24,982 and the streets get wider and the parking lots get bigger 174 00:07:25,006 --> 00:07:26,883 and you no longer have a walkable city. 175 00:07:26,907 --> 00:07:28,062 So transit is essential. 176 00:07:28,086 --> 00:07:30,487 But every transit experience, every transit trip, 177 00:07:30,511 --> 00:07:32,406 begins or ends as a walk, 178 00:07:32,430 --> 00:07:36,228 and so we have to remember to build walkability around our transit stations. 179 00:07:36,252 --> 00:07:38,997 Next category, the biggest one, is the safe walk. 180 00:07:39,021 --> 00:07:41,237 It's what most walkability experts talk about. 181 00:07:41,261 --> 00:07:45,302 It is essential, but alone not enough to get people to walk. 182 00:07:45,326 --> 00:07:48,469 And there are so many moving parts that add up to a walkable city. 183 00:07:48,493 --> 00:07:50,069 The first is block size. 184 00:07:50,093 --> 00:07:51,440 This is Portland, Oregon, 185 00:07:51,464 --> 00:07:55,030 famously 200-foot blocks, famously walkable. 186 00:07:55,054 --> 00:07:56,372 This is Salt Lake City, 187 00:07:56,396 --> 00:07:58,476 famously 600-foot blocks, 188 00:07:58,500 --> 00:07:59,869 famously unwalkable. 189 00:07:59,893 --> 00:08:02,899 If you look at the two, it's almost like two different planets, 190 00:08:02,923 --> 00:08:05,239 but these places were both built by humans 191 00:08:05,263 --> 00:08:08,903 and in fact, the story is that when you have a 200-foot block city, 192 00:08:08,927 --> 00:08:10,461 you can have a two-lane city, 193 00:08:10,485 --> 00:08:11,902 or a two-to-four lane city, 194 00:08:11,926 --> 00:08:15,951 and a 600-foot block city is a six-lane city, and that's a problem. 195 00:08:15,975 --> 00:08:17,453 These are the crash statistics. 196 00:08:17,477 --> 00:08:19,563 When you double the block size -- 197 00:08:19,587 --> 00:08:21,620 this was a study of 24 California cities -- 198 00:08:21,644 --> 00:08:23,136 when you double the block size, 199 00:08:23,160 --> 00:08:26,786 you almost quadruple the number of fatal accidents 200 00:08:26,810 --> 00:08:28,811 on non-highway streets. 201 00:08:28,835 --> 00:08:31,066 So how many lanes do we have? 202 00:08:31,090 --> 00:08:34,567 This is where I'm going to tell you what I tell every audience I meet, 203 00:08:34,591 --> 00:08:37,321 which is to remind you about induced demand. 204 00:08:37,345 --> 00:08:41,782 Induced demand applies both to highways and to city streets. 205 00:08:41,806 --> 00:08:45,291 And induced demand tells us that when we widen the streets 206 00:08:45,315 --> 00:08:48,413 to accept the congestion that we're anticipating, 207 00:08:48,437 --> 00:08:50,774 or the additional trips that we're anticipating 208 00:08:50,798 --> 00:08:54,711 in congested systems, it is principally that congestion 209 00:08:54,735 --> 00:08:56,728 that is constraining demand, 210 00:08:56,752 --> 00:08:58,514 and so that the widening comes, 211 00:08:58,538 --> 00:09:01,654 and there are all of these latent trips that are ready to happen. 212 00:09:01,678 --> 00:09:03,067 People move further from work 213 00:09:03,091 --> 00:09:05,324 and make other choices about when they commute, 214 00:09:05,348 --> 00:09:07,722 and those lanes fill up very quickly with traffic, 215 00:09:07,746 --> 00:09:10,247 so we widen the street again, and they fill up again. 216 00:09:10,271 --> 00:09:12,497 And we've learned that in congested systems, 217 00:09:12,521 --> 00:09:14,936 we cannot satisfy the automobile. 218 00:09:14,960 --> 00:09:18,410 This is from Newsweek Magazine -- hardly an esoteric publication: 219 00:09:18,434 --> 00:09:20,102 "Today's engineers acknowledge 220 00:09:20,126 --> 00:09:23,352 that building new roads usually makes traffic worse." 221 00:09:23,376 --> 00:09:26,939 My response to reading this was, may I please meet some of these engineers, 222 00:09:26,963 --> 00:09:29,029 because these are not the ones that I -- 223 00:09:29,053 --> 00:09:31,643 there are great exceptions that I'm working with now -- 224 00:09:31,667 --> 00:09:34,973 but these are not the engineers one typically meets working in a city, 225 00:09:34,997 --> 00:09:38,463 where they say, "Oh, that road is too crowded, we need to add a lane." 226 00:09:38,487 --> 00:09:40,647 So you add a lane, and the traffic comes, 227 00:09:40,671 --> 00:09:43,128 and they say, "See, I told you we needed that lane." 228 00:09:43,152 --> 00:09:46,944 This applies both to highways and to city streets if they're congested. 229 00:09:46,968 --> 00:09:50,003 But the amazing thing about most American cities that I work in, 230 00:09:50,027 --> 00:09:51,316 the more typical cities, 231 00:09:51,340 --> 00:09:54,372 is that they have a lot of streets that are actually oversized 232 00:09:54,396 --> 00:09:56,803 for the congestion they're currently experiencing. 233 00:09:56,827 --> 00:09:58,550 This was the case in Oklahoma City, 234 00:09:58,574 --> 00:10:01,093 when the mayor came running to me, very upset, 235 00:10:01,117 --> 00:10:03,521 because they were named in Prevention Magazine 236 00:10:03,545 --> 00:10:06,698 the worst city for pedestrians in the entire country. 237 00:10:06,722 --> 00:10:08,428 Now that can't possibly be true, 238 00:10:08,452 --> 00:10:11,581 but it certainly is enough to make a mayor do something about it. 239 00:10:11,605 --> 00:10:12,914 We did a walkability study, 240 00:10:12,938 --> 00:10:16,273 and what we found, looking at the car counts on the street -- 241 00:10:16,297 --> 00:10:19,972 these are 3,000-, 4,000-, 7,000-car counts 242 00:10:19,996 --> 00:10:23,943 and we know that two lanes can handle 10,000 cars per day. 243 00:10:23,967 --> 00:10:28,624 Look at these numbers -- they're all near or under 10,000 cars, 244 00:10:28,648 --> 00:10:31,222 and these were the streets that were designated 245 00:10:31,246 --> 00:10:33,458 in the new downtown plan 246 00:10:33,482 --> 00:10:36,116 to be four lanes to six lanes wide. 247 00:10:36,140 --> 00:10:39,385 So you had a fundamental disconnect between the number of lanes 248 00:10:39,409 --> 00:10:41,651 and the number of cars that wanted to use them. 249 00:10:41,675 --> 00:10:45,590 So it was my job to redesign every street in the downtown 250 00:10:45,614 --> 00:10:47,349 from curb face to curb face, 251 00:10:47,373 --> 00:10:49,375 and we did it for 50 blocks of streets, 252 00:10:49,399 --> 00:10:50,756 and we're rebuilding it now. 253 00:10:50,780 --> 00:10:53,820 So a typical oversized street to nowhere 254 00:10:53,844 --> 00:10:56,044 is being narrowed, and now under construction, 255 00:10:56,068 --> 00:10:57,708 and the project is half done. 256 00:10:57,732 --> 00:10:59,723 The typical street like this, you know, 257 00:10:59,747 --> 00:11:03,193 when you do that, you find room for medians. 258 00:11:03,217 --> 00:11:05,199 You find room for bike lanes. 259 00:11:05,223 --> 00:11:07,390 We've doubled the amount of on-street parking. 260 00:11:07,414 --> 00:11:11,363 We've added a full bike network where one didn't exist before. 261 00:11:11,387 --> 00:11:14,634 But not everyone has the money that Oklahoma City has, 262 00:11:14,658 --> 00:11:17,742 because they have an extraction economy that's doing quite well. 263 00:11:17,766 --> 00:11:19,818 The typical city is more like Cedar Rapids, 264 00:11:19,842 --> 00:11:23,832 where they have an all four-lane system, half one-way system. 265 00:11:23,856 --> 00:11:25,305 And it's a little hard to see, 266 00:11:25,329 --> 00:11:28,613 but what we've done -- what we're doing; it's in process right now, 267 00:11:28,637 --> 00:11:30,241 it's in engineering right now -- 268 00:11:30,265 --> 00:11:34,056 is turning an all four-lane system, half one-way 269 00:11:34,080 --> 00:11:37,657 into an all two-lane system, all two-way, 270 00:11:37,681 --> 00:11:40,922 and in so doing, we're adding 70 percent more on-street parking, 271 00:11:40,946 --> 00:11:42,305 which the merchants love, 272 00:11:42,329 --> 00:11:43,749 and it protects the sidewalk. 273 00:11:43,773 --> 00:11:45,535 That parking makes the sidewalk safe, 274 00:11:45,559 --> 00:11:49,237 and we're adding a much more robust bicycle network. 275 00:11:49,261 --> 00:11:51,842 Then the lanes themselves. How wide are they? 276 00:11:51,866 --> 00:11:53,076 That's really important. 277 00:11:53,100 --> 00:11:56,266 The standards have changed such that, as Andrés Duany says, 278 00:11:56,290 --> 00:11:58,384 the typical road to a subdivision in America 279 00:11:58,408 --> 00:12:00,600 allows you to see the curvature of the Earth. 280 00:12:00,624 --> 00:12:01,663 (Laughter) 281 00:12:01,687 --> 00:12:04,932 This is a subdivision outside of Washington from the 1960s. 282 00:12:04,956 --> 00:12:07,277 Look very carefully at the width of the streets. 283 00:12:07,301 --> 00:12:09,408 This is a subdivision from the 1980s. 284 00:12:09,432 --> 00:12:11,067 1960s, 1980s. 285 00:12:11,091 --> 00:12:13,115 The standards have changed to such a degree 286 00:12:13,139 --> 00:12:15,092 that my old neighborhood of South Beach, 287 00:12:15,116 --> 00:12:18,275 when it was time to fix the street that wasn't draining properly, 288 00:12:18,299 --> 00:12:20,843 they had to widen it and take away half our sidewalk, 289 00:12:20,867 --> 00:12:22,606 because the standards were wider. 290 00:12:22,630 --> 00:12:26,085 People go faster on wider streets. 291 00:12:26,109 --> 00:12:27,266 People know this. 292 00:12:27,290 --> 00:12:30,416 The engineers deny it, but the citizens know it, 293 00:12:30,440 --> 00:12:34,266 so that in Birmingham, Michigan, they fight for narrower streets. 294 00:12:34,290 --> 00:12:36,812 Portland, Oregon, famously walkable, 295 00:12:36,836 --> 00:12:40,381 instituted its "Skinny Streets" program in its residential neighborhood. 296 00:12:40,405 --> 00:12:42,255 We know that skinny streets are safer. 297 00:12:42,279 --> 00:12:45,325 The developer Vince Graham, in his project I'On, 298 00:12:45,349 --> 00:12:47,165 which we worked on in South Carolina, 299 00:12:47,189 --> 00:12:51,104 he goes to conferences and he shows his amazing 22-foot roads. 300 00:12:51,128 --> 00:12:53,541 These are two-way roads, very narrow rights of way, 301 00:12:53,565 --> 00:12:55,564 and he shows this well-known philosopher, 302 00:12:55,588 --> 00:12:58,458 who said, "Broad is the road that leads to destruction ... 303 00:12:58,482 --> 00:13:00,583 narrow is the road that leads to life." 304 00:13:00,607 --> 00:13:02,667 (Laughter) 305 00:13:02,691 --> 00:13:05,060 (Applause) 306 00:13:05,084 --> 00:13:07,143 This plays very well in the South. 307 00:13:07,167 --> 00:13:09,064 Now: bicycles. 308 00:13:09,929 --> 00:13:14,411 Bicycles and bicycling are the current revolution underway 309 00:13:14,435 --> 00:13:16,118 in only some American cities. 310 00:13:16,142 --> 00:13:17,783 But where you build it, they come. 311 00:13:17,807 --> 00:13:21,816 As a planner, I hate to say that, but the one thing I can say 312 00:13:21,840 --> 00:13:25,967 is that bicycle population is a function of bicycle infrastructure. 313 00:13:25,991 --> 00:13:29,406 I asked my friend Tom Brennan from Nelson\Nygaard in Portland 314 00:13:29,430 --> 00:13:32,010 to send me some pictures of the Portland bike commute. 315 00:13:32,034 --> 00:13:34,542 He sent me this. I said, "Was that bike to work day?" 316 00:13:34,566 --> 00:13:36,211 He said, "No, that was Tuesday." 317 00:13:36,235 --> 00:13:41,199 When you do what Portland did and spend money on bicycle infrastructure -- 318 00:13:41,223 --> 00:13:45,444 New York City has doubled the number of bikers in it several times now 319 00:13:45,468 --> 00:13:47,505 by painting these bright green lanes. 320 00:13:47,529 --> 00:13:51,095 Even automotive cities like Long Beach, California: 321 00:13:51,119 --> 00:13:55,198 vast uptick in the number of bikers based on the infrastructure. 322 00:13:55,222 --> 00:13:56,913 And of course, what really does it, 323 00:13:56,937 --> 00:13:59,313 if you know 15th Street here in Washington, DC -- 324 00:13:59,337 --> 00:14:02,314 please meet Rahm Emanuel's new bike lanes in Chicago, 325 00:14:02,338 --> 00:14:05,716 the buffered lane, the parallel parking pulled off the curb, 326 00:14:05,740 --> 00:14:09,742 the bikes between the parked cars and the curb -- 327 00:14:09,766 --> 00:14:11,687 these mint cyclists. 328 00:14:11,711 --> 00:14:15,262 If, however, as in Pasadena, every lane is a bike lane, 329 00:14:15,286 --> 00:14:17,247 then no lane is a bike lane. 330 00:14:17,271 --> 00:14:20,383 And this is the only bicyclist that I met in Pasadena, so ... 331 00:14:20,407 --> 00:14:22,012 (Laughter) 332 00:14:22,036 --> 00:14:23,727 The parallel parking I mentioned -- 333 00:14:23,751 --> 00:14:25,373 it's an essential barrier of steel 334 00:14:25,397 --> 00:14:29,183 that protects the curb and pedestrians from moving vehicles. 335 00:14:29,207 --> 00:14:32,803 This is Ft. Lauderdale; one side of the street, you can park, 336 00:14:32,827 --> 00:14:34,779 the other side of the street, you can't. 337 00:14:34,803 --> 00:14:36,828 This is happy hour on the parking side. 338 00:14:36,852 --> 00:14:39,543 This is sad hour on the other side. 339 00:14:39,567 --> 00:14:42,556 And then the trees themselves slow cars down. 340 00:14:42,580 --> 00:14:44,866 They move slower when trees are next to the road, 341 00:14:44,890 --> 00:14:47,445 and, of course, sometimes they slow down very quickly. 342 00:14:48,119 --> 00:14:51,071 All the little details -- the curb return radius. 343 00:14:51,095 --> 00:14:52,757 Is it one foot or is it 40 feet? 344 00:14:52,781 --> 00:14:56,227 How swoopy is that curb to determine how fast the car goes 345 00:14:56,251 --> 00:14:57,966 and how much room you have to cross. 346 00:14:57,990 --> 00:15:01,412 And then I love this, because this is objective journalism. 347 00:15:01,436 --> 00:15:05,515 "Some say the entrance to CityCenter is not inviting to pedestrians." 348 00:15:05,539 --> 00:15:07,997 When every aspect of the landscape is swoopy, 349 00:15:08,021 --> 00:15:10,694 is aerodynamic, is stream-form geometrics, 350 00:15:10,718 --> 00:15:13,035 it says: "This is a vehicular place." 351 00:15:13,059 --> 00:15:18,134 So no one detail, no one speciality, can be allowed to set the stage. 352 00:15:18,158 --> 00:15:19,722 And here, you know, this street: 353 00:15:19,746 --> 00:15:23,638 yes, it will drain within a minute of the hundred-year storm, 354 00:15:23,662 --> 00:15:26,454 but this poor woman has to mount the curb every day. 355 00:15:26,478 --> 00:15:29,424 So then quickly, the comfortable walk has to do with the fact 356 00:15:29,448 --> 00:15:34,401 that all animals seek, simultaneously, prospect and refuge. 357 00:15:34,425 --> 00:15:36,525 We want to be able to see our predators, 358 00:15:36,549 --> 00:15:39,068 but we also want to feel that our flanks are covered. 359 00:15:39,092 --> 00:15:41,583 And so we're drawn to places that have good edges, 360 00:15:41,607 --> 00:15:44,935 and if you don't supply the edges, people won't want to be there. 361 00:15:44,959 --> 00:15:47,098 What's the proper ratio of height to width? 362 00:15:47,122 --> 00:15:48,897 Is it one to one? Three to one? 363 00:15:48,921 --> 00:15:52,706 If you get beyond one to six, you're not very comfortable anymore. 364 00:15:52,730 --> 00:15:54,049 You don't feel enclosed. 365 00:15:54,073 --> 00:15:57,218 Now, six to one in Salzburg can be perfectly delightful. 366 00:15:57,242 --> 00:15:59,629 The opposite of Salzburg is Houston. 367 00:16:00,487 --> 00:16:04,087 The point being the parking lot is the principal problem here. 368 00:16:04,111 --> 00:16:07,686 However, missing teeth, those empty lots can be issues as well, 369 00:16:07,710 --> 00:16:10,955 and if you have a missing corner because of an outdated zoning code, 370 00:16:10,979 --> 00:16:13,887 then you could have a missing nose in your neighborhood. 371 00:16:13,911 --> 00:16:15,748 That's what we had in my neighborhood. 372 00:16:15,772 --> 00:16:18,848 This was the zoning code that said I couldn't build on that site. 373 00:16:18,872 --> 00:16:22,599 As you may know, Washington, DC is now changing its zoning 374 00:16:22,623 --> 00:16:25,753 to allow sites like this to become sites like this. 375 00:16:25,777 --> 00:16:27,943 We needed a lot of variances to do that. 376 00:16:27,967 --> 00:16:30,251 Triangular houses can be interesting to build, 377 00:16:30,275 --> 00:16:32,977 but if you get one built, people generally like it. 378 00:16:33,001 --> 00:16:35,454 So you've got to fill those missing noses. 379 00:16:35,478 --> 00:16:37,436 And then, finally, the interesting walk: 380 00:16:37,460 --> 00:16:39,132 signs of humanity. 381 00:16:39,156 --> 00:16:40,971 We are among the social primates. 382 00:16:40,995 --> 00:16:43,183 Nothing interests us more than other people. 383 00:16:43,207 --> 00:16:44,701 We want signs of people. 384 00:16:44,725 --> 00:16:47,728 So the perfect one-to-one ratio, it's a great thing. 385 00:16:47,752 --> 00:16:49,956 This is Grand Rapids, a very walkable city, 386 00:16:49,980 --> 00:16:51,622 but nobody walks on this street 387 00:16:51,646 --> 00:16:53,757 that connects the two best hotels together, 388 00:16:53,781 --> 00:16:58,149 because if on the left, you have an exposed parking deck, 389 00:16:58,173 --> 00:17:00,657 and on the right, you have a conference facility 390 00:17:00,681 --> 00:17:04,110 that was apparently designed in admiration for that parking deck, 391 00:17:04,134 --> 00:17:06,641 then you don't attract that many people. 392 00:17:06,665 --> 00:17:10,639 Mayor Joe Riley, in his 10th term, Mayor of Charleston, South Carolina, 393 00:17:10,663 --> 00:17:12,840 taught us it only takes 25 feet of building 394 00:17:12,864 --> 00:17:15,158 to hide 250 feet of garage. 395 00:17:15,182 --> 00:17:17,902 This one I call the Chia Pet Garage. It's in South Beach. 396 00:17:17,926 --> 00:17:19,370 That active ground floor. 397 00:17:19,394 --> 00:17:22,113 I want to end with this project that I love to show. 398 00:17:22,137 --> 00:17:24,648 It's by Meleca Architects. It's in Columbus, Ohio. 399 00:17:24,672 --> 00:17:28,362 To the left is the convention center neighborhood, full of pedestrians. 400 00:17:28,386 --> 00:17:31,050 To the right is the Short North neighborhood -- ethnic, 401 00:17:31,074 --> 00:17:33,771 great restaurants, great shops, struggling. 402 00:17:33,795 --> 00:17:36,349 It wasn't doing very well because this was the bridge, 403 00:17:36,373 --> 00:17:38,840 and no one was walking from the convention center 404 00:17:38,864 --> 00:17:40,213 into that neighborhood. 405 00:17:40,237 --> 00:17:44,530 Well, when they rebuilt the highway, they added an extra 80 feet to the bridge. 406 00:17:44,554 --> 00:17:47,028 Sorry -- they rebuilt the bridge over the highway. 407 00:17:47,052 --> 00:17:49,425 The city paid 1.9 million dollars, 408 00:17:49,449 --> 00:17:51,695 they gave the site to a developer, 409 00:17:51,719 --> 00:17:53,110 the developer built this 410 00:17:53,134 --> 00:17:55,453 and now the Short North has come back to life. 411 00:17:55,477 --> 00:17:58,693 And everyone says, the newspapers, not the planning magazines, 412 00:17:58,717 --> 00:18:00,938 the newspapers say it's because of that bridge. 413 00:18:00,962 --> 00:18:03,582 So that's it. That's the general theory of walkability. 414 00:18:03,606 --> 00:18:05,626 Think about your own cities. 415 00:18:05,650 --> 00:18:08,067 Think about how you can apply it. 416 00:18:08,091 --> 00:18:10,045 You've got to do all four things at once. 417 00:18:10,069 --> 00:18:12,378 So find those places where you have most of them 418 00:18:12,402 --> 00:18:14,307 and fix what you can, 419 00:18:14,331 --> 00:18:17,015 fix what still needs fixing in those places. 420 00:18:17,039 --> 00:18:18,807 I really appreciate your attention, 421 00:18:18,831 --> 00:18:21,507 and thank you for coming today. 422 00:18:21,531 --> 00:18:24,079 (Applause)