1 00:00:14,197 --> 00:00:16,601 So I'm here to talk to you about the walkable city. 2 00:00:16,810 --> 00:00:18,170 What is the walkable city? 3 00:00:18,194 --> 00:00:20,674 Well, for want of a better definition, 4 00:00:20,698 --> 00:00:26,026 it's a city in which the car is an optional instrument of freedom, 5 00:00:26,050 --> 00:00:27,934 rather than a prosthetic device. 6 00:00:27,958 --> 00:00:30,913 And I'd like to talk about why we need the walkable city, 7 00:00:30,937 --> 00:00:35,095 and I'd like to talk about how to do the walkable city. 8 00:00:35,219 --> 00:00:39,559 Most of the talks I give these days are about why we need it, 9 00:00:39,583 --> 00:00:42,679 but you guys are smart. 10 00:00:43,854 --> 00:00:47,101 And also I gave that talk exactly a month ago, 11 00:00:47,125 --> 00:00:49,192 and you can see it at TED.com. 12 00:00:49,216 --> 00:00:52,216 So today I want to talk about how to do it. 13 00:00:53,180 --> 00:00:55,119 In a lot of time thinking about this, 14 00:00:55,143 --> 00:00:58,243 I've come up with what I call the general theory of walkability. 15 00:00:58,267 --> 00:01:01,197 A bit of a pretentious term, it's a little tongue-in-cheek, 16 00:01:01,221 --> 00:01:03,795 but it's something I've thought about for a long time, 17 00:01:03,819 --> 00:01:07,203 and I'd like to share what I think I've figured out. 18 00:01:07,227 --> 00:01:10,066 In the American city, the typical American city -- 19 00:01:10,090 --> 00:01:12,550 the typical American city is not Washington, DC, 20 00:01:12,574 --> 00:01:14,882 or New York, or San Francisco; 21 00:01:14,906 --> 00:01:18,153 it's Grand Rapids or Cedar Rapids or Memphis -- 22 00:01:18,177 --> 00:01:21,288 in the typical American city in which most people own cars 23 00:01:21,312 --> 00:01:23,633 and the temptation is to drive them all the time, 24 00:01:23,657 --> 00:01:27,436 if you're going to get them to walk, then you have to offer a walk 25 00:01:27,460 --> 00:01:29,308 that's as good as a drive or better. 26 00:01:29,332 --> 00:01:30,483 What does that mean? 27 00:01:30,507 --> 00:01:33,048 It means you need to offer four things simultaneously: 28 00:01:33,072 --> 00:01:35,209 there needs to be a proper reason to walk, 29 00:01:35,233 --> 00:01:37,703 the walk has to be safe and feel safe, 30 00:01:37,727 --> 00:01:39,422 the walk has to be comfortable 31 00:01:39,446 --> 00:01:41,215 and the walk has to be interesting. 32 00:01:41,239 --> 00:01:43,849 You need to do all four of these things simultaneously, 33 00:01:43,873 --> 00:01:45,903 and that's the structure of my talk today, 34 00:01:45,927 --> 00:01:47,556 to take you through each of those. 35 00:01:47,580 --> 00:01:50,844 The reason to walk is a story I learned from my mentors, 36 00:01:50,868 --> 00:01:53,228 Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, 37 00:01:53,252 --> 00:01:55,253 the founders of the New Urbanism movement. 38 00:01:55,277 --> 00:01:59,100 And I should say half the slides and half of my talk today 39 00:01:59,124 --> 00:02:00,450 I learned from them. 40 00:02:00,474 --> 00:02:02,253 It's the story of planning, 41 00:02:02,277 --> 00:02:05,517 the story of the formation of the planning profession. 42 00:02:05,541 --> 00:02:08,271 When in the 19th century people were choking 43 00:02:08,295 --> 00:02:10,788 from the soot of the dark, satanic mills, 44 00:02:10,812 --> 00:02:15,189 the planners said, hey, let's move the housing away from the mills. 45 00:02:15,213 --> 00:02:18,680 And lifespans increased immediately, dramatically, 46 00:02:18,704 --> 00:02:19,855 and we like to say 47 00:02:19,879 --> 00:02:23,071 the planners have been trying to repeat that experience ever since. 48 00:02:23,095 --> 00:02:25,737 So there's the onset of what we call Euclidean zoning, 49 00:02:25,761 --> 00:02:29,836 the separation of the landscape into large areas of single use. 50 00:02:29,860 --> 00:02:32,337 And typically when I arrive in a city to do a plan, 51 00:02:32,361 --> 00:02:36,400 a plan like this already awaits me on the property that I'm looking at. 52 00:02:36,424 --> 00:02:38,126 And all a plan like this guarantees 53 00:02:38,150 --> 00:02:40,189 is that you will not have a walkable city, 54 00:02:40,213 --> 00:02:43,133 because nothing is located near anything else. 55 00:02:43,157 --> 00:02:46,797 The alternative, of course, is our most walkable city, 56 00:02:46,821 --> 00:02:49,351 and I like to say, you know, this is a Rothko, 57 00:02:49,375 --> 00:02:50,883 and this is a Seurat. 58 00:02:50,907 --> 00:02:52,740 it's a different way of making places. 59 00:02:52,764 --> 00:02:55,723 And even this map of Manhattan is a bit misleading 60 00:02:55,747 --> 00:02:59,322 because the red color is uses that are mixed vertically. 61 00:03:00,451 --> 00:03:03,155 So this is the big story of the New Urbanists -- 62 00:03:03,179 --> 00:03:05,691 to acknowledge that there are only two ways 63 00:03:05,715 --> 00:03:08,005 that have been tested by the thousands 64 00:03:08,029 --> 00:03:10,969 to build communities, in the world and throughout history. 65 00:03:10,993 --> 00:03:12,871 One is the traditional neighborhood. 66 00:03:12,895 --> 00:03:16,309 You see here several neighborhoods of Newburyport, Massachusetts, 67 00:03:16,333 --> 00:03:20,200 which is defined as being compact and being diverse -- 68 00:03:20,224 --> 00:03:24,366 places to live, work, shop, recreate, get educated -- 69 00:03:24,390 --> 00:03:26,269 all within walking distance. 70 00:03:26,293 --> 00:03:28,429 And it's defined as being walkable. 71 00:03:28,453 --> 00:03:29,987 There are lots of small streets. 72 00:03:30,011 --> 00:03:31,737 Each one is comfortable to walk on. 73 00:03:31,761 --> 00:03:34,275 And we contrast that to the other way, 74 00:03:34,299 --> 00:03:37,118 an invention that happened after the Second World War, 75 00:03:37,142 --> 00:03:38,400 suburban sprawl, 76 00:03:38,424 --> 00:03:43,001 clearly not compact, clearly not diverse, and it's not walkable, 77 00:03:43,025 --> 00:03:44,923 because so few of the streets connect, 78 00:03:44,947 --> 00:03:47,830 that those streets that do connect become overburdened, 79 00:03:47,854 --> 00:03:49,944 and you wouldn't let your kid out on them. 80 00:03:50,268 --> 00:03:53,119 And I want to thank Alex Maclean, the aerial photographer, 81 00:03:53,143 --> 00:03:56,198 for many of these beautiful pictures that I'm showing you today. 82 00:03:56,452 --> 00:03:57,918 He's an architect as well. 83 00:03:57,942 --> 00:04:01,562 So it's fun to break sprawl down into its constituent parts. 84 00:04:01,586 --> 00:04:03,163 It's so easy to understand, 85 00:04:03,187 --> 00:04:06,190 the places where you only live, the places where you only work, 86 00:04:07,044 --> 00:04:09,000 the places where you only shop, 87 00:04:09,024 --> 00:04:12,368 and our super-sized public institutions. 88 00:04:12,392 --> 00:04:13,832 Schools get bigger and bigger, 89 00:04:13,856 --> 00:04:16,252 and therefore, further and further from each other. 90 00:04:16,276 --> 00:04:19,404 And the ratio of the size of the parking lot 91 00:04:19,428 --> 00:04:20,644 to the size of the school 92 00:04:20,668 --> 00:04:22,285 tells you all you need to know, 93 00:04:22,309 --> 00:04:24,847 which is that no child has ever walked to this school, 94 00:04:24,871 --> 00:04:26,776 no child will ever walk to this school. 95 00:04:26,800 --> 00:04:30,640 The seniors and juniors are driving the freshmen and the sophomores, 96 00:04:30,664 --> 00:04:33,288 and of course we have the crash statistics to prove it. 97 00:04:33,312 --> 00:04:36,780 And then the super-sizing of our other civic institutions 98 00:04:36,804 --> 00:04:37,974 like playing fields -- 99 00:04:37,998 --> 00:04:41,871 it's wonderful that Westin in the Ft. Lauderdale area 100 00:04:41,895 --> 00:04:44,963 has eight soccer fields and eight baseball diamonds 101 00:04:44,987 --> 00:04:46,846 and 20 tennis courts, 102 00:04:46,870 --> 00:04:50,482 but look at the road that takes you to that location, 103 00:04:50,506 --> 00:04:52,452 and would you let your child bike on it? 104 00:04:52,476 --> 00:04:54,606 And this is why we have the soccer mom now. 105 00:04:54,630 --> 00:04:56,872 When I was young, I had one soccer field, 106 00:04:56,896 --> 00:04:58,921 one baseball diamond and one tennis court, 107 00:04:58,945 --> 00:05:01,803 but I could walk to it, because it was in my neighborhood. 108 00:05:01,827 --> 00:05:04,678 Then the final part of sprawl that everyone forgot to count: 109 00:05:04,702 --> 00:05:07,522 if you're going to separate everything from everything else 110 00:05:07,546 --> 00:05:10,080 and reconnect it only with automotive infrastructure, 111 00:05:10,104 --> 00:05:12,626 then this is what your landscape begins to look like. 112 00:05:12,650 --> 00:05:13,865 The main message here is: 113 00:05:13,889 --> 00:05:17,491 if you want to have a walkable city, you can't start with the sprawl model. 114 00:05:17,515 --> 00:05:19,586 you need the bones of an urban model. 115 00:05:19,610 --> 00:05:22,458 This is the outcome of that form of design, 116 00:05:22,482 --> 00:05:23,873 as is this. 117 00:05:23,897 --> 00:05:26,486 And this is something that a lot of Americans want. 118 00:05:26,510 --> 00:05:29,223 But we have to understand it's a two-part American dream. 119 00:05:29,247 --> 00:05:30,607 If you're dreaming for this, 120 00:05:30,631 --> 00:05:32,647 you're also going to be dreaming of this. 121 00:05:32,671 --> 00:05:35,151 That would be your nightmare, I suppose. 122 00:05:35,175 --> 00:05:37,272 Often to absurd extremes, 123 00:05:37,296 --> 00:05:39,913 when we build our landscape to accommodate cars first. 124 00:05:39,937 --> 00:05:42,178 And the experience of being in these places -- 125 00:05:42,202 --> 00:05:43,219 (Laughter) 126 00:05:43,243 --> 00:05:44,623 This is not Photoshopped. 127 00:05:44,647 --> 00:05:46,649 Walter Kulash took this slide. 128 00:05:46,673 --> 00:05:48,370 It's in Panama City. 129 00:05:48,394 --> 00:05:50,183 This is a real place. 130 00:05:50,947 --> 00:05:53,426 And being a driver can be a bit of a nuisance, 131 00:05:53,450 --> 00:05:55,916 and being a pedestrian can be a bit of a nuisance 132 00:05:55,940 --> 00:05:57,883 in these places. 133 00:05:58,367 --> 00:06:01,839 This is a slide that epidemiologists have been showing for some time now, 134 00:06:01,863 --> 00:06:03,159 (Laughter) 135 00:06:03,296 --> 00:06:06,537 The fact that we have a society where you drive to the parking lot 136 00:06:06,561 --> 00:06:08,735 to take the escalator to the treadmill 137 00:06:08,759 --> 00:06:10,687 shows that we're doing something wrong. 138 00:06:10,711 --> 00:06:12,283 But we know how to do it better. 139 00:06:12,307 --> 00:06:13,990 Here are the two models contrasted. 140 00:06:14,014 --> 00:06:15,169 I show this slide, 141 00:06:15,193 --> 00:06:17,979 which has been a formative document of the New Urbanism now 142 00:06:18,003 --> 00:06:19,407 for almost 30 years, 143 00:06:19,431 --> 00:06:23,590 to show that sprawl and the traditional neighborhood contain the same things. 144 00:06:23,614 --> 00:06:25,000 It's just how big are they, 145 00:06:25,024 --> 00:06:26,623 how close are they to each other, 146 00:06:26,647 --> 00:06:28,322 how are they interspersed together 147 00:06:28,346 --> 00:06:31,263 and do you have a street network, rather than a cul-de-sac 148 00:06:31,287 --> 00:06:33,322 or a collector system of streets? 149 00:06:33,346 --> 00:06:35,163 So when we look at a downtown area, 150 00:06:35,187 --> 00:06:37,322 at a place that has a hope of being walkable, 151 00:06:37,346 --> 00:06:39,904 and mostly that's our downtowns in America's cities 152 00:06:39,928 --> 00:06:41,696 and towns and villages, 153 00:06:41,720 --> 00:06:44,785 we look at them and say we want the proper balance of uses. 154 00:06:44,809 --> 00:06:46,944 So what is missing or underrepresented? 155 00:06:46,968 --> 00:06:50,628 And again, in the typical American cities in which most Americans live, 156 00:06:50,652 --> 00:06:52,662 it is housing that is lacking. 157 00:06:52,686 --> 00:06:54,876 The jobs-to-housing balance is off. 158 00:06:54,900 --> 00:06:57,083 And you find that when you bring housing back, 159 00:06:57,107 --> 00:06:59,173 these other things start to come back too, 160 00:06:59,197 --> 00:07:01,673 and housing is usually first among those things. 161 00:07:01,697 --> 00:07:04,801 And, of course, the thing that shows up last and eventually 162 00:07:04,825 --> 00:07:05,990 is the schools, 163 00:07:06,014 --> 00:07:10,835 because the young pioneers have to move in, get older, have kids 164 00:07:10,859 --> 00:07:13,897 and fight, and then the schools get pretty good eventually. 165 00:07:13,921 --> 00:07:16,398 The other part of this, the useful city part, 166 00:07:16,422 --> 00:07:17,727 is transit, 167 00:07:17,751 --> 00:07:21,116 and you can have a perfectly walkable neighborhood without it. 168 00:07:21,140 --> 00:07:24,445 But perfectly walkable cities require transit, 169 00:07:24,469 --> 00:07:27,910 because if you don't have access to the whole city as a pedestrian, 170 00:07:27,934 --> 00:07:29,095 then you get a car, 171 00:07:29,119 --> 00:07:30,274 and if you get a car, 172 00:07:30,298 --> 00:07:32,846 the city begins to reshape itself around your needs, 173 00:07:32,870 --> 00:07:35,552 and the streets get wider and the parking lots get bigger 174 00:07:35,576 --> 00:07:37,453 and you no longer have a walkable city. 175 00:07:37,477 --> 00:07:38,632 So transit is essential. 176 00:07:38,656 --> 00:07:41,057 But every transit experience, every transit trip, 177 00:07:41,081 --> 00:07:42,976 begins or ends as a walk, 178 00:07:43,000 --> 00:07:46,798 and so we have to remember to build walkability around our transit stations. 179 00:07:47,322 --> 00:07:50,067 Next category, the biggest one, is the safe walk. 180 00:07:50,091 --> 00:07:52,307 It's what most walkability experts talk about. 181 00:07:52,331 --> 00:07:56,372 It is essential, but alone not enough to get people to walk. 182 00:07:56,396 --> 00:07:59,539 And there are so many moving parts that add up to a walkable city. 183 00:07:59,563 --> 00:08:01,139 The first is block size. 184 00:08:01,163 --> 00:08:02,510 This is Portland, Oregon, 185 00:08:02,534 --> 00:08:06,100 famously 200-foot blocks, famously walkable. 186 00:08:06,124 --> 00:08:07,442 This is Salt Lake City, 187 00:08:07,466 --> 00:08:09,546 famously 600-foot blocks, 188 00:08:09,570 --> 00:08:10,939 famously unwalkable. 189 00:08:10,963 --> 00:08:13,969 If you look at the two, it's almost like two different planets, 190 00:08:13,993 --> 00:08:16,309 but these places were both built by humans 191 00:08:16,333 --> 00:08:19,973 and in fact, the story is that when you have a 200-foot block city, 192 00:08:19,997 --> 00:08:21,531 you can have a two-lane city, 193 00:08:21,555 --> 00:08:22,972 or a two-to-four lane city, 194 00:08:22,996 --> 00:08:27,021 and a 600-foot block city is a six-lane city, and that's a problem. 195 00:08:28,085 --> 00:08:29,563 These are the crash statistics. 196 00:08:29,677 --> 00:08:31,763 When you double the block size -- 197 00:08:31,787 --> 00:08:33,820 this was a study of 24 California cities -- 198 00:08:33,844 --> 00:08:35,336 when you double the block size, 199 00:08:35,360 --> 00:08:38,986 you almost quadruple the number of fatal accidents 200 00:08:39,010 --> 00:08:41,010 on non-highway streets. 201 00:08:41,595 --> 00:08:44,306 So how many lanes do we have? 202 00:08:44,330 --> 00:08:47,807 This is where I'm going to tell you what I tell every audience I meet, 203 00:08:47,831 --> 00:08:50,561 which is to remind you about induced demand. 204 00:08:50,585 --> 00:08:55,022 Induced demand applies both to highways and to city streets. 205 00:08:55,046 --> 00:08:58,531 And induced demand tells us that when we widen the streets 206 00:08:58,555 --> 00:09:01,653 to accept the congestion that we're anticipating, 207 00:09:01,677 --> 00:09:04,014 or the additional trips that we're anticipating 208 00:09:04,038 --> 00:09:07,951 in congested systems, it is principally that congestion 209 00:09:07,975 --> 00:09:09,968 that is constraining demand, 210 00:09:09,992 --> 00:09:11,754 and so that the widening comes, 211 00:09:11,778 --> 00:09:14,894 and there are all of these latent trips that are ready to happen. 212 00:09:14,918 --> 00:09:16,307 People move further from work 213 00:09:16,331 --> 00:09:18,564 and make other choices about when they commute, 214 00:09:18,588 --> 00:09:20,962 and those lanes fill up very quickly with traffic, 215 00:09:20,986 --> 00:09:23,487 so we widen the street again, and they fill up again. 216 00:09:23,511 --> 00:09:25,737 And we've learned that in congested systems, 217 00:09:25,761 --> 00:09:28,176 we cannot satisfy the automobile. 218 00:09:28,200 --> 00:09:31,650 This is from Newsweek Magazine -- hardly an esoteric publication: 219 00:09:31,674 --> 00:09:33,342 "Today's engineers acknowledge 220 00:09:33,366 --> 00:09:36,592 that building new roads usually makes traffic worse." 221 00:09:36,616 --> 00:09:40,179 My response to reading this was, may I please meet some of these engineers, 222 00:09:40,203 --> 00:09:42,269 because these are not the ones that I -- 223 00:09:42,293 --> 00:09:44,883 there are great exceptions that I'm working with now -- 224 00:09:44,907 --> 00:09:48,213 but these are not the engineers one typically meets working in a city, 225 00:09:48,237 --> 00:09:51,703 where they say, "Oh, that road is too crowded, we need to add a lane." 226 00:09:51,727 --> 00:09:53,887 So you add a lane, and the traffic comes, 227 00:09:53,911 --> 00:09:56,368 and they say, "See, I told you we needed that lane." 228 00:09:56,883 --> 00:10:00,675 This applies both to highways and to city streets if they're congested. 229 00:10:00,808 --> 00:10:03,843 But the amazing thing about most American cities that I work in, 230 00:10:03,867 --> 00:10:05,156 the more typical cities, 231 00:10:05,180 --> 00:10:08,212 is that they have a lot of streets that are actually oversized 232 00:10:08,236 --> 00:10:10,643 for the congestion they're currently experiencing. 233 00:10:10,667 --> 00:10:12,390 This was the case in Oklahoma City, 234 00:10:12,414 --> 00:10:14,933 when the mayor came running to me, very upset, 235 00:10:14,957 --> 00:10:17,361 because they were named in Prevention Magazine 236 00:10:17,385 --> 00:10:20,538 the worst city for pedestrians in the entire country. 237 00:10:20,562 --> 00:10:22,268 Now that can't possibly be true, 238 00:10:22,292 --> 00:10:25,421 but it certainly is enough to make a mayor do something about it. 239 00:10:25,445 --> 00:10:26,754 We did a walkability study, 240 00:10:26,778 --> 00:10:30,113 and what we found, looking at the car counts on the street -- 241 00:10:30,137 --> 00:10:33,812 these are 3,000-, 4,000-, 7,000-car counts 242 00:10:33,836 --> 00:10:37,783 and we know that two lanes can handle 10,000 cars per day. 243 00:10:38,207 --> 00:10:42,864 Look at these numbers -- they're all near or under 10,000 cars, 244 00:10:42,888 --> 00:10:45,162 and these were the streets that were designated 245 00:10:45,186 --> 00:10:47,068 in the new downtown plan 246 00:10:47,092 --> 00:10:49,726 to be four lanes to six lanes wide. 247 00:10:49,750 --> 00:10:52,995 So you had a fundamental disconnect between the number of lanes 248 00:10:53,019 --> 00:10:55,261 and the number of cars that wanted to use them. 249 00:10:55,285 --> 00:10:59,200 So it was my job to redesign every street in the downtown 250 00:10:59,224 --> 00:11:00,959 from curb face to curb face, 251 00:11:00,983 --> 00:11:02,985 and we did it for 50 blocks of streets, 252 00:11:03,009 --> 00:11:04,366 and we're rebuilding it now. 253 00:11:04,390 --> 00:11:07,430 So a typical oversized street to nowhere 254 00:11:07,454 --> 00:11:09,654 is being narrowed, and now under construction, 255 00:11:09,678 --> 00:11:11,318 and the project is half done. 256 00:11:11,342 --> 00:11:13,333 The typical street like this, you know, 257 00:11:13,357 --> 00:11:16,803 when you do that, you find room for medians. 258 00:11:16,827 --> 00:11:18,809 You find room for bike lanes. 259 00:11:18,833 --> 00:11:21,000 We've doubled the amount of on-street parking. 260 00:11:21,024 --> 00:11:24,973 We've added a full bike network where one didn't exist before. 261 00:11:24,997 --> 00:11:28,244 But not everyone has the money that Oklahoma City has, 262 00:11:28,268 --> 00:11:31,352 because they have an extraction economy that's doing quite well. 263 00:11:31,376 --> 00:11:33,428 The typical city is more like Cedar Rapids, 264 00:11:33,452 --> 00:11:37,442 where they have an all four-lane system, half one-way system. 265 00:11:37,466 --> 00:11:38,915 And it's a little hard to see, 266 00:11:38,939 --> 00:11:42,223 but what we've done -- what we're doing; it's in process right now, 267 00:11:42,247 --> 00:11:43,851 it's in engineering right now -- 268 00:11:43,875 --> 00:11:47,666 is turning an all four-lane system, half one-way 269 00:11:47,690 --> 00:11:51,267 into an all two-lane system, all two-way, 270 00:11:51,291 --> 00:11:54,532 and in so doing, we're adding 70 percent more on-street parking, 271 00:11:54,556 --> 00:11:55,915 which the merchants love, 272 00:11:55,939 --> 00:11:57,359 and it protects the sidewalk. 273 00:11:57,383 --> 00:11:59,145 That parking makes the sidewalk safe, 274 00:11:59,169 --> 00:12:02,375 and we're adding a much more robust bicycle network. 275 00:12:03,951 --> 00:12:06,532 Then the lanes themselves. How wide are they? 276 00:12:06,556 --> 00:12:07,766 That's really important. 277 00:12:07,790 --> 00:12:10,956 The standards have changed such that, as Andrés Duany says, 278 00:12:10,980 --> 00:12:13,074 the typical road to a subdivision in America 279 00:12:13,098 --> 00:12:15,290 allows you to see the curvature of the Earth. 280 00:12:15,314 --> 00:12:16,353 (Laughter) 281 00:12:16,377 --> 00:12:19,622 This is a subdivision outside of Washington from the 1960s. 282 00:12:19,646 --> 00:12:21,967 Look very carefully at the width of the streets. 283 00:12:21,991 --> 00:12:24,098 This is a subdivision from the 1980s. 284 00:12:24,122 --> 00:12:25,757 1960s, 1980s. 285 00:12:25,781 --> 00:12:27,805 The standards have changed to such a degree 286 00:12:27,829 --> 00:12:29,782 that my old neighborhood of South Beach, 287 00:12:29,806 --> 00:12:34,115 when it was time to fix the street that wasn't draining properly, 288 00:12:34,139 --> 00:12:36,683 they had to widen it and take away half our sidewalk, 289 00:12:36,707 --> 00:12:38,354 because the standards were wider. 290 00:12:38,378 --> 00:12:41,075 People go faster on wider streets. 291 00:12:41,099 --> 00:12:42,256 People know this. 292 00:12:42,280 --> 00:12:45,406 The engineers deny it, but the citizens know it, 293 00:12:45,430 --> 00:12:49,256 so that in Birmingham, Michigan, they fight for narrower streets. 294 00:12:49,280 --> 00:12:51,802 Portland, Oregon, famously walkable, 295 00:12:51,826 --> 00:12:55,371 instituted its "Skinny Streets" program in its residential neighborhood. 296 00:12:55,395 --> 00:12:57,245 We know that skinny streets are safer. 297 00:12:57,269 --> 00:13:00,315 The developer Vince Graham, in his project I'On, 298 00:13:00,339 --> 00:13:02,155 which we worked on in South Carolina, 299 00:13:02,179 --> 00:13:05,791 he goes to conferences and he shows his amazing 22-foot roads. 300 00:13:05,815 --> 00:13:08,531 These are two-way roads, very narrow rights of way, 301 00:13:08,555 --> 00:13:10,554 and he shows this well-known philosopher, 302 00:13:10,578 --> 00:13:13,448 who said, "Broad is the road that leads to destruction ... 303 00:13:13,472 --> 00:13:15,573 narrow is the road that leads to life." 304 00:13:15,597 --> 00:13:17,657 (Laughter) 305 00:13:17,681 --> 00:13:20,050 (Applause) 306 00:13:20,074 --> 00:13:21,866 This plays very well in the South. 307 00:13:21,890 --> 00:13:23,787 Now: bicycles. 308 00:13:24,709 --> 00:13:29,039 Bicycles and bicycling are the current revolution underway 309 00:13:29,063 --> 00:13:30,898 in only some American cities. 310 00:13:30,922 --> 00:13:32,563 But where you build it, they come. 311 00:13:32,587 --> 00:13:36,596 As a planner, I hate to say that, but the one thing I can say 312 00:13:36,620 --> 00:13:40,747 is that bicycle population is a function of bicycle infrastructure. 313 00:13:40,771 --> 00:13:44,186 I asked my friend Tom Brennan from Nelson\Nygaard in Portland 314 00:13:44,210 --> 00:13:46,790 to send me some pictures of the Portland bike commute. 315 00:13:46,814 --> 00:13:49,322 He sent me this. I said, "Was that bike to work day?" 316 00:13:49,346 --> 00:13:50,991 He said, "No, that was Tuesday." 317 00:13:51,015 --> 00:13:55,979 When you do what Portland did and spend money on bicycle infrastructure -- 318 00:13:56,003 --> 00:14:00,224 New York City has doubled the number of bikers in it several times now 319 00:14:00,248 --> 00:14:02,285 by painting these bright green lanes. 320 00:14:02,309 --> 00:14:06,575 Even automotive cities like Long Beach, California: 321 00:14:06,599 --> 00:14:10,678 vast uptick in the number of bikers based on the infrastructure. 322 00:14:10,702 --> 00:14:12,393 And of course, what really does it, 323 00:14:12,417 --> 00:14:15,093 if you know 15th Street here in Washington, DC -- 324 00:14:15,117 --> 00:14:18,344 please meet Rahm Emanuel's new bike lanes in Chicago, 325 00:14:18,368 --> 00:14:21,746 the buffered lane, the parallel parking pulled off the curb, 326 00:14:21,770 --> 00:14:25,772 the bikes between the parked cars and the curb -- 327 00:14:25,796 --> 00:14:27,717 these mint cyclists. 328 00:14:28,041 --> 00:14:31,592 If, however, as in Pasadena, every lane is a bike lane, 329 00:14:31,616 --> 00:14:33,577 then no lane is a bike lane. 330 00:14:33,601 --> 00:14:36,713 And this is the only bicyclist that I met in Pasadena, so ... 331 00:14:36,737 --> 00:14:38,342 (Laughter) 332 00:14:38,366 --> 00:14:40,057 The parallel parking I mentioned -- 333 00:14:40,081 --> 00:14:41,703 it's an essential barrier of steel 334 00:14:41,727 --> 00:14:45,513 that protects the curb and pedestrians from moving vehicles. 335 00:14:45,637 --> 00:14:49,233 This is Ft. Lauderdale; one side of the street, you can park, 336 00:14:49,257 --> 00:14:51,209 the other side of the street, you can't. 337 00:14:51,233 --> 00:14:53,258 This is happy hour on the parking side. 338 00:14:53,282 --> 00:14:55,973 This is sad hour on the other side. 339 00:14:55,997 --> 00:14:58,986 And then the trees themselves slow cars down. 340 00:14:59,010 --> 00:15:01,296 They move slower when trees are next to the road, 341 00:15:01,320 --> 00:15:03,875 and, of course, sometimes they slow down very quickly. 342 00:15:05,089 --> 00:15:08,041 All the little details -- the curb return radius. 343 00:15:08,065 --> 00:15:09,727 Is it one foot or is it 40 feet? 344 00:15:09,751 --> 00:15:13,197 How swoopy is that curb to determine how fast the car goes 345 00:15:13,221 --> 00:15:15,686 and how much room you have to cross. 346 00:15:15,710 --> 00:15:19,132 And then I love this, because this is objective journalism. 347 00:15:20,266 --> 00:15:24,345 "Some say the entrance to CityCenter is not inviting to pedestrians." 348 00:15:24,369 --> 00:15:26,827 When every aspect of the landscape is swoopy, 349 00:15:26,851 --> 00:15:29,524 is aerodynamic, is stream-form geometrics, 350 00:15:29,548 --> 00:15:31,865 it says: "This is a vehicular place." 351 00:15:31,889 --> 00:15:36,964 So no one detail, no one speciality, can be allowed to set the stage. 352 00:15:36,988 --> 00:15:38,552 And here, you know, this street: 353 00:15:38,576 --> 00:15:42,468 yes, it will drain within a minute of the hundred-year storm, 354 00:15:42,492 --> 00:15:45,284 but this poor woman has to mount the curb every day. 355 00:15:45,308 --> 00:15:48,254 So then quickly, the comfortable walk has to do with the fact 356 00:15:48,278 --> 00:15:53,231 that all animals seek, simultaneously, prospect and refuge. 357 00:15:53,255 --> 00:15:55,355 We want to be able to see our predators, 358 00:15:55,379 --> 00:15:57,898 but we also want to feel that our flanks are covered. 359 00:15:57,922 --> 00:16:00,413 And so we're drawn to places that have good edges, 360 00:16:00,437 --> 00:16:03,765 and if you don't supply the edges, people won't want to be there. 361 00:16:03,789 --> 00:16:05,928 What's the proper ratio of height to width? 362 00:16:05,952 --> 00:16:07,727 Is it one to one? Three to one? 363 00:16:07,851 --> 00:16:11,636 If you get beyond one to six, you're not very comfortable anymore. 364 00:16:11,660 --> 00:16:12,979 You don't feel enclosed. 365 00:16:13,103 --> 00:16:16,248 Now, six to one in Salzburg can be perfectly delightful. 366 00:16:16,372 --> 00:16:18,759 The opposite of Salzburg is Houston. 367 00:16:19,917 --> 00:16:23,517 The point being the parking lot is the principal problem here. 368 00:16:23,541 --> 00:16:27,116 However, missing teeth, those empty lots can be issues as well, 369 00:16:27,140 --> 00:16:30,385 and if you have a missing corner because of an outdated zoning code, 370 00:16:30,409 --> 00:16:33,317 then you could have a missing nose in your neighborhood. 371 00:16:33,341 --> 00:16:35,178 That's what we had in my neighborhood. 372 00:16:35,202 --> 00:16:38,278 This was the zoning code that said I couldn't build on that site. 373 00:16:38,302 --> 00:16:42,329 As you may know, Washington, DC is now changing its zoning 374 00:16:42,353 --> 00:16:45,483 to allow sites like this to become sites like this. 375 00:16:45,507 --> 00:16:47,673 We needed a lot of variances to do that. 376 00:16:47,697 --> 00:16:49,981 Triangular houses can be interesting to build, 377 00:16:50,005 --> 00:16:53,107 but if you get one built, people generally like it. 378 00:16:53,131 --> 00:16:55,584 So you've got to fill those missing noses. 379 00:16:55,738 --> 00:16:57,696 And then, finally, the interesting walk: 380 00:16:57,720 --> 00:16:59,392 signs of humanity. 381 00:16:59,416 --> 00:17:01,231 We are among the social primates. 382 00:17:01,255 --> 00:17:03,443 Nothing interests us more than other people. 383 00:17:03,467 --> 00:17:04,961 We want signs of people. 384 00:17:04,984 --> 00:17:07,988 So the perfect one-to-one ratio, it's a great thing. 385 00:17:08,012 --> 00:17:10,215 This is Grand Rapids, a very walkable city, 386 00:17:10,240 --> 00:17:12,082 but nobody walks on this street 387 00:17:12,106 --> 00:17:14,217 that connects the two best hotels together, 388 00:17:14,241 --> 00:17:18,608 because if on the left, you have an exposed parking deck, 389 00:17:18,633 --> 00:17:21,117 and on the right, you have a conference facility 390 00:17:21,141 --> 00:17:24,569 that was apparently designed in admiration for that parking deck, 391 00:17:24,594 --> 00:17:27,101 then you don't attract that many people. 392 00:17:27,125 --> 00:17:31,099 Mayor Joe Riley, in his 10th term, Mayor of Charleston, South Carolina, 393 00:17:31,123 --> 00:17:33,300 taught us it only takes 25 feet of building 394 00:17:33,324 --> 00:17:35,618 to hide 250 feet of garage. 395 00:17:35,642 --> 00:17:38,362 This one I call the Chia Pet Garage. It's in South Beach. 396 00:17:38,386 --> 00:17:39,830 That active ground floor. 397 00:17:39,854 --> 00:17:42,573 I want to end with this project that I love to show. 398 00:17:42,597 --> 00:17:45,108 It's by Meleca Architects. It's in Columbus, Ohio. 399 00:17:45,132 --> 00:17:48,822 To the left is the convention center neighborhood, full of pedestrians. 400 00:17:48,846 --> 00:17:51,510 To the right is the Short North neighborhood -- ethnic, 401 00:17:51,534 --> 00:17:54,231 great restaurants, great shops, struggling. 402 00:17:54,255 --> 00:17:56,809 It wasn't doing very well because this was the bridge, 403 00:17:56,833 --> 00:17:59,300 and no one was walking from the convention center 404 00:17:59,324 --> 00:18:00,533 into that neighborhood. 405 00:18:00,557 --> 00:18:04,850 Well, when they rebuilt the highway, they added an extra 80 feet to the bridge. 406 00:18:04,874 --> 00:18:07,348 Sorry -- they rebuilt the bridge over the highway. 407 00:18:07,372 --> 00:18:09,745 The city paid 1.9 million dollars, 408 00:18:09,769 --> 00:18:12,015 they gave the site to a developer, 409 00:18:12,039 --> 00:18:13,430 the developer built this 410 00:18:13,454 --> 00:18:15,773 and now the Short North has come back to life. 411 00:18:15,797 --> 00:18:19,013 And everyone says, the newspapers, not the planning magazines, 412 00:18:19,037 --> 00:18:21,258 the newspapers say it's because of that bridge. 413 00:18:21,282 --> 00:18:23,902 So that's it. That's the general theory of walkability. 414 00:18:23,926 --> 00:18:25,946 Think about your own cities. 415 00:18:25,970 --> 00:18:28,387 Think about how you can apply it. 416 00:18:28,411 --> 00:18:30,365 You've got to do all four things at once. 417 00:18:30,389 --> 00:18:32,698 So find those places where you have most of them 418 00:18:32,722 --> 00:18:34,627 and fix what you can, 419 00:18:34,651 --> 00:18:37,335 fix what still needs fixing in those places. 420 00:18:37,359 --> 00:18:39,127 I really appreciate your attention, 421 00:18:39,151 --> 00:18:41,215 and thank you for coming today. 422 00:18:41,239 --> 00:18:45,793 (Applause)