ok doing research for the office again and was hopeing somebody might have a few good examples of shared streets. Also if anyone has an idea as where to find metrics for some existing examples that would be awesome.
no what I am talking about is a much more specific planning movement, that is not about the current model of have a seperate car channel and a seperate pedestrian channel. It invovles the removal of street signage and some markings, thereby causing drivers to act more catiously and with social concern. The whoel point is about slowing the car down and promoting interaction between the motorist and the pedestrian.
These type of streets can be found in the Netherlands, the UK, Scandinavia, Germany, Austeralia, etc.
Woonerf (Dutch word which means "street for living") is common space shared by pedestrians, bicyclists, and low-speed motor vehicles. They are usually streets raised to the same grade as curbs and sidewalks. Vehicles are slowed by placing trees, planters, parking areas, and other obstacles in the street. Motorists are treated as the intruders and must travel at walking speed. This makes a street available for public use that is essentially only intended for local residents. A woonerf identification sign is placed at each street entrance.
Estimated cost: The cost to retrofit and create a woonerf may be quite high, but there would be no extra cost if part of original construction.
Used for
Residential or other local streets where volumes are low (under 1,000 ADT), limited use, and primarily local access streets.
Streets where there is a neighborhood desire to create a public space for social activities and play by local residents.
I remember reading something about this somewhere a while back (real helpful comment there, I know). I think it was in Wired, let me see if I can find it. I also remember something about a guy setting his living room up in the street, maybe in England? But that seems less useful.
Thanks for the article. I am familiar with the ideas and principles and all that good stuff. But I was hoping that I could find someone who knew of some good examples or had pictures or...well something.
Basically we know the idea behind all of it and are going to use it on a upcoming project and were hoping to find some existing examples or plans or codes/guildlines, etc... Sorry if that was not clear in my intial post
the LEED-ND guide discusses credit for woofnerts and other traffic calming measures - this is where I first encountered that beautiful word.
woofnert
WOOFnert
woofNERT
woof nert
w o o f n e r t
it just rolls of my tongue...
does it define any paved area with no separation between vehicle travel lanes and other hardscape zones? or is it solely for places that the streets easements have been narrowed with a sidewalk/yard eliminated in dense urban environments?
I recall trying a google image search last spring and not finding any good images- there may be some dutch planning books from the 1970's with images that just never made it onto the web.
yeah people are so cautious. i was driving to work the other morning and if i'd have been two seconds further up the street going through the green light i would have been t-boned by some idiot who went through a red that had been red at least a minute. we don't need less we need more ie speed bumps, cops, no cell phone in car laws etc. two weeks ago some kid took out half of the shrubbery along the front of our office and a street sign because he ran the light got clipped and lost control. oh he was watching a dvd apparently.
ok for those who arent quite familiar it would be a good idea to read the wired article linked above.
"Traffic engineers viewed vehicle movement the same way a hydraulics engineer approaches water moving through a pipe - to increase the flow, all you have to do is make the pipe fatter."
thats one of my favorite quotes from it and gets down to the point. One of the ideas of traffic calming/shared street/woonerf strategies is that by giving drivers less rules forces them to be more aware of whats around them. for example the huge roundabout in Rome in front of the Victorio Emanuelle II Monument, there are no traffic lights and several huge streets colliding.... should be a traffic jam everyday...but it always keeps moving and is a good bit faster than the typical american big city grid lock.
You should look up the theory of risk compesation to understand the intentions behind Hans Monderman and the shared street movement
People largely do the stupid things they do in their cars because they feel safe... the rules and regulations of the road are their safety nets. there is some interesting research on how safety belts and airbags and abs brakes have caused people to drive more unsafe than before, because they feel safer.
The more insecure people feel the more care they take in what they are doing, also consider these projects are usually intended to occur in secondary streets and neighborhood connections, not major throughofares or highways.
A woonerf is something ueber-Dutch I guess, I know them from my childhood and most of them are still there but I'm not aware of any books or examples.
The car addiction is also infecting nl so most woonerven have changed in recent years, the ongoing routes have been taken out and have been replaced with one way roads (2 way for bikes), so the woonerf-neighborhoods have become destination only, no longer part of a route to somewhere else. A bit like a neighborhood size cul-de-sac.
Are you doing research for a specific project or just in general?
we are about to begin on a 70 unit afforadble housing neighborhood that is going to be in a similar vain as ecological neighborhood that we just completed.
one of the main things we are interested in is slowing the car down to help allow an active communal space and integrate our open air water management strategies... also a couple of guys at the office have been fasinated with them for years.
I hadn't heard that they are falling out of favor in NL... it seems a car crazy culture would have a hard time existing there with all of the denisty that is present..well I guess outside of the largest cities sure....but wow didn't see that coming
The seventies and early eighties were the woonerf era in Dutch planning, now we live in the Vinex era. Vinex has a 2.5 car park/house ratio and still the biggest complaint of Vinex inhabitants is the lack of parking space. They are always located next to the highway, there is almost no public transport and the bike has been given some leftover space (or nothing), without a car it is impossible to live there. Vinex has become a national Dutch swearing word.
Back to the woonerf, j is right, hummers and other giant American size cars might be a problem.
I found some numbers in an old crap Dutch traffic book:
* Maximum straight road length 50-100 m
* Maximum speed=30 kilometers/hour (20 mph)
* One way road width minimal 2.80 meter (for firetrucks and such)
* Two way roads min 5 m
* Sidewalk 1.5 - 2.5 m (no curbs)
* Acceptable car density per (housing) street 200 moving cars/hour (during rush hour)
* visualize the conflict points (give the road a 'readable' warning for the cars, for example near a school or a footpath, causing them to slow down even more)
*Extra attention for space where people can walk and play without danger (=cars)
*roadcurve for cars min. 6 m, for trucks 9 m
*roadbumps (or whatever they are named), they slow down the traffic. Make sure the left and right side of the bumps are flattened so they don't bother the bicycles.
Two characteristic are crucial imo:
1 - NO ASPHALT!
Dutch woonerven are almost always paved with bricks (klinkers) or other alternatives for asphalt. For me this gives the woonerf atmosphere, it feels warm, comfortable and safe. Kids can safely play on the streets and parents don't have to fear the killer car.
2 - front gardens
Now I don't mean a lawn like in US suburbia, but a real garden facing the street. Doesn't have to be big, just like 2 m or so, can even be a elevation-garden with only one foot of space between the house and pavement. Just enough space to grow some ivy or flowers and to place a bench or some chairs. This brings life to the streets and makes the street a place to be. It also gives people freedom to shape their streets, you know like give it a personal touch (pimp your house). So it's not all about safety, a woonerf is a place where you know your neighbors and your neighborhood, the houses are usually small, the street/public space functions like a communal living room.
Hope you understand, there are some Dutch words that are hard to translate, some even untranslatable.
I did read the article and I do understand the logic of it; I just disagree that that's how humans would react. For example, I disagree with your sentence: "The more insecure people feel the more care they take in what they are doing". I find the opposite to be true; for example, new drivers, who are scared and unsure of what to do in most situations, behave unexpectedly in reaction to their fears; and drivers who do something unexpected, in response to stimuli that other drivers may not be aware of, cause accidents. If you've ever lived in a city with jumpy, defensive drivers, you know how terribly unsafe they are.
I understand the logic, however; I would just need to see it in practice to believe that people behave well in that situation! :)
i have seen conditions where this occurs in historic European cities and it can work very well...
unfortunately i didn't make it to terry avenue (see the metropolis link that i poster further up) on my trip to seattle earlier this year, as i would have loved to have seen an American example...
i do have a hard time seeing a woonerf really being successful in the US... i mean, most american drivers have a hard enough time dealing with one-way streets and small round-a-bouts... perhaps the average american is just too dumb to comprehend situations that are slightly out of the ordinary (at least in their suburban worlds)...
i think that the main problem is that (in america at least) most drivers think that they OWN the road... the automobile is just TOO dominant... drivers honk at pedestrians that are using crosswalks and crossing with the proper wall signs... as a result i've developed into a very aggressive walker... if i'm in a situation where i have the right-of-way i will walk in front of cars and force them to stop...
our street system in america has been overrun by the hydraulics engineer concept of design... the street system (with the possible exception of main thoroughfares and highways) should be designed with SPACE in mind, not FLOW... once upon a time streets were the heart of the neighborhood in a jane jacobsian sort of way... kids played in the streets (not cul-de-sacs) without getting run over... now kids can't even go near the street without worrying about getting hit...
rutger thank you very much that is exactly the kind of information we have trying to look for. If you have anyother ideas for where to look or hell even books to buy that would be awesome. Sounds like your problems with Vinex are quite similar to what we have here. The scary thing is that we have 70,000 people in cities that have one maybe two functional throughofares... suburbia is really a mess.
Hence why we are currently working on a series of projects that are about creating small networks that introduce connectivity and fabric to suburban and exurban enviroments. The installation on a sense of place is key to a successful neighborhood. For a great example of a neighborhood with character, that does incorporate some of the living street ideas look at the Methleys neighborhood in the UK, its in Leeds i think.
Myriam I do not disagree with you that for the majority of American streets, this pratice would be fool hardy, but if used as the juncture between the major suburban highway and the neghibrhood fabric, I believe that this approach could be very successful. Or hell even if it is just used in strategic locations like the front of big box stores maybe, or as the connecting parrt of a road between areas of mixed use. Then I believe that this approach could be very successful. The people who would drive there would be slowed down to the point that pedestrian interaction can occur and then the people who are unwilling to drive that slow will go around utilizing alternate routes.
A great example for the effect of altering the driving enviroment, look at when swenden (or maybe norway can't remember which) switched from driving on the left to driving on the right side of the road... accidents dropped 33% for a period of 18 years (when a new generation of drivers who were now comfortable driving on the right were driving) The point being that the more comfort or experience a person has with an enviroment, the more risk they feel they are able to take because this familiarity.
Was walking through Delft and suddenly realized there is a woonerf nearby. So I went there and remembered one of the downsides, it is a maze, the mailman's nightmare. Finding a street or a house is very time consuming and makes you curse the designers ; )
Architphil is referring to historic European cities and I think this is very wise. Like a woonerf the historic cities have been designed from a pedestrian point of view. Whereas suburbia and vinex are drivers seat urbanism; the car dictates almost everything.
One of the most genius things about historic Euro cities is the micro climate. Less cold in winter, less warm in summer, wind free walking (curvy streets). For example on a winter day like today, when I take my bike through the center it feels kinda cold yet nice but as soon as i reach the emptiness of modernism it is freezing like hell. The difference is really stunning. In the center the streets are alive, there are always people walking around, even in a snowstorm.
So it might be a good idea to study some historic cities. Maybe you can find some place in Europe with more or less the same climate as the project you are working on, and see what they did to make the streets a great place to be.
There's a good book titled Streets and the Shaping of Towns and Cities with a chapter or two on woonerfs. It also includes a discussion on the challenges of incorporating woonerf and shared street concepts into the North American context.
Myriam - the argument for increasing safety by increasing perceived risk is described by a book titled RISK by John Adams. Haven't had a chance to get to it yet though - but it would be interesting to hear the counter argument. I spent a couple of days with Hans Monderman last winter and he was crazy about this book.
a new "pedestrian-oriented" (sort-of) mall here tried it's hand at removing the spatial distinction between car roadway and sidewalk at the intersections & main roundabout.
here's what i thought after visiting one evening:
as an adult who drives and knows the rules and risks of mixing cars & pedestrians, i felt comfortable knowing how to assert my pedestrian rights when i wanted and enjoyed the freedom.
as a parent of two small children, i felt terrified because the kids don't yet know the rules and there aren't any obvious spatial clues to assist them in discerning when they're transgressing into a vehicular zone. i felt i had to be even more vigilant than a typical segregated street section.
i'm not saying the design is bad, just that there are unintended consequences.
Rococo, that is a pretty street--however it doesn't appear that cars are allowed on it?
Yes, el jeffe, that is how I feel--I enjoy the secure feeling of being on a sidewalk and knowing that you don't have to watch out for anything, you are in a pedestrian-only zone, nothing is going to come at you. This is partly why I get SO pissed at bikers who feel like they can just switch from road to sidewalk at will.
Likewise, when in a car I like knowing that the street is just for me--I don't *want* to have to constantly be scanning to see if something's going to jump out at me, be in my space where I don't expect it. I dislike driving down neighborhood streets because I am worried I'm going to miss the one little kid standing behind a parked car, and he's going to step out into the road right when I'm looking somewhere else. I would hate having even more of these unexpected items thrown at me.
If I can find the Risk book, I will check it out. Thanks for the tipoff.
(thanks AP) discusses NYC's efforts to reinvent the street including bringing woofert to the big apple.
Before there were traffic streets and pedestrian malls. Now there are:
-woofert/woonerfs
-play streets
-bicycle boulevards
-green grid
-mental speed bumps
-pavement hierarchy
-Swaled Streets (aka green pipes)
-lanescapes
-gentle congestion
- & urban accupuncture:
I think what helps out in Rome is that NONE of the motorist obey any of the traffic rules, and arent really required to, except for the one rule that states 'YOU CAN NOT RUN OVER PEOPLE.'
italian driving habits were explored in the NYT's review of the fiat 500. the old 500 had so little power, that you had to keep it floored all the time to keep from getting killed. now they just drive that way.
I experienced no difference in the driving of my host before or after going out clubbing (returning home at sunrise). maybe the italians are all drunk drivers...
There's an image I saw of a woonerf concept in Setagaya, Tokyo. Cross section: front yard, narrow street, water feature thingy with a narrow stream and a fountain and tiny bridges and street lights, pedestrian zone, landscaping. The street was paved with what looked like 6x6, with patterns in some places. The stream (that kids could play in) was buffered on both sides by a small, inverted-u shaped wall tiled in river rock. It had lots of bump-outs for plantings and steps for the bridges. The road meandered with the stream. Not garish, at all, just neutral colors and green landscaping (from what I could tell from the picture). Beautiful.
Small world neufert, thats who I was doing the research for. How do you know of them?
And actually while I'm here I want to thank rutger again for walking around Delft with me, especially on a cold rainy monday over a year ago... Thanks Man!
woonerfs, home zones, shared streets
ok doing research for the office again and was hopeing somebody might have a few good examples of shared streets. Also if anyone has an idea as where to find metrics for some existing examples that would be awesome.
Aren't the vast majority of streets shared?
I share my street everyday with a kid in a honda...with straight pipes....and one of these days I'm going to send him to the moon....
do mean shared as in multiple types of transporation? Cars, light rail, bike lanes, etc.?
no what I am talking about is a much more specific planning movement, that is not about the current model of have a seperate car channel and a seperate pedestrian channel. It invovles the removal of street signage and some markings, thereby causing drivers to act more catiously and with social concern. The whoel point is about slowing the car down and promoting interaction between the motorist and the pedestrian.
These type of streets can be found in the Netherlands, the UK, Scandinavia, Germany, Austeralia, etc.
refer to:
http://www.shared-space.org/
or wikipedias entries for woonerf or shared street or living street or home zone.
those will provide some good general information
heres a decent definition of the idea:
Woonerf
Woonerf (Dutch word which means "street for living") is common space shared by pedestrians, bicyclists, and low-speed motor vehicles. They are usually streets raised to the same grade as curbs and sidewalks. Vehicles are slowed by placing trees, planters, parking areas, and other obstacles in the street. Motorists are treated as the intruders and must travel at walking speed. This makes a street available for public use that is essentially only intended for local residents. A woonerf identification sign is placed at each street entrance.
Estimated cost: The cost to retrofit and create a woonerf may be quite high, but there would be no extra cost if part of original construction.
Used for
Residential or other local streets where volumes are low (under 1,000 ADT), limited use, and primarily local access streets.
Streets where there is a neighborhood desire to create a public space for social activities and play by local residents.
well, there you go...
not exactly but maybe zurich? la rambla in barcelona?...
I remember reading something about this somewhere a while back (real helpful comment there, I know). I think it was in Wired, let me see if I can find it. I also remember something about a guy setting his living room up in the street, maybe in England? But that seems less useful.
that was quick- heres the Wired article.
Thanks for the article. I am familiar with the ideas and principles and all that good stuff. But I was hoping that I could find someone who knew of some good examples or had pictures or...well something.
Basically we know the idea behind all of it and are going to use it on a upcoming project and were hoping to find some existing examples or plans or codes/guildlines, etc... Sorry if that was not clear in my intial post
the LEED-ND guide discusses credit for woofnerts and other traffic calming measures - this is where I first encountered that beautiful word.
woofnert
WOOFnert
woofNERT
woof nert
w o o f n e r t
it just rolls of my tongue...
does it define any paved area with no separation between vehicle travel lanes and other hardscape zones? or is it solely for places that the streets easements have been narrowed with a sidewalk/yard eliminated in dense urban environments?
I recall trying a google image search last spring and not finding any good images- there may be some dutch planning books from the 1970's with images that just never made it onto the web.
I use to share my street with transvestites and crack dealers on Bush Street in San Francisco. I had free entertainment 24x7.
This seems like it would make for very defensive and scared or confused drivers, which doesn't sound very safe to me at all.
yeah people are so cautious. i was driving to work the other morning and if i'd have been two seconds further up the street going through the green light i would have been t-boned by some idiot who went through a red that had been red at least a minute. we don't need less we need more ie speed bumps, cops, no cell phone in car laws etc. two weeks ago some kid took out half of the shrubbery along the front of our office and a street sign because he ran the light got clipped and lost control. oh he was watching a dvd apparently.
Wait, is it a "woofnert" or a "woonerf"?
although it might work in northern california, where the drivers all sit around at 4-way stop signs waiting for someone to make the first move.
i don't understand it, though, really--seems like a very inefficient and possibly even more dangerous model than the one we already have.
i think maybe i need to see a picture of this actually as it occurs.
, schmoofnert- yeah they are the same. I beg your pardon as dutch isn't my native tongue.
ok for those who arent quite familiar it would be a good idea to read the wired article linked above.
"Traffic engineers viewed vehicle movement the same way a hydraulics engineer approaches water moving through a pipe - to increase the flow, all you have to do is make the pipe fatter."
thats one of my favorite quotes from it and gets down to the point. One of the ideas of traffic calming/shared street/woonerf strategies is that by giving drivers less rules forces them to be more aware of whats around them. for example the huge roundabout in Rome in front of the Victorio Emanuelle II Monument, there are no traffic lights and several huge streets colliding.... should be a traffic jam everyday...but it always keeps moving and is a good bit faster than the typical american big city grid lock.
You should look up the theory of risk compesation to understand the intentions behind Hans Monderman and the shared street movement
People largely do the stupid things they do in their cars because they feel safe... the rules and regulations of the road are their safety nets. there is some interesting research on how safety belts and airbags and abs brakes have caused people to drive more unsafe than before, because they feel safer.
The more insecure people feel the more care they take in what they are doing, also consider these projects are usually intended to occur in secondary streets and neighborhood connections, not major throughofares or highways.
A woonerf is something ueber-Dutch I guess, I know them from my childhood and most of them are still there but I'm not aware of any books or examples.
The car addiction is also infecting nl so most woonerven have changed in recent years, the ongoing routes have been taken out and have been replaced with one way roads (2 way for bikes), so the woonerf-neighborhoods have become destination only, no longer part of a route to somewhere else. A bit like a neighborhood size cul-de-sac.
Are you doing research for a specific project or just in general?
Maybe you can find some info on carfree.com.
we are about to begin on a 70 unit afforadble housing neighborhood that is going to be in a similar vain as ecological neighborhood that we just completed.
link
one of the main things we are interested in is slowing the car down to help allow an active communal space and integrate our open air water management strategies... also a couple of guys at the office have been fasinated with them for years.
I hadn't heard that they are falling out of favor in NL... it seems a car crazy culture would have a hard time existing there with all of the denisty that is present..well I guess outside of the largest cities sure....but wow didn't see that coming
i believe that there was an article in Metropolis about a woonerf in seattle or portland a few months back...
yep, it was in april... here's the link
The seventies and early eighties were the woonerf era in Dutch planning, now we live in the Vinex era. Vinex has a 2.5 car park/house ratio and still the biggest complaint of Vinex inhabitants is the lack of parking space. They are always located next to the highway, there is almost no public transport and the bike has been given some leftover space (or nothing), without a car it is impossible to live there. Vinex has become a national Dutch swearing word.
Back to the woonerf, j is right, hummers and other giant American size cars might be a problem.
I found some numbers in an old crap Dutch traffic book:
* Maximum straight road length 50-100 m
* Maximum speed=30 kilometers/hour (20 mph)
* One way road width minimal 2.80 meter (for firetrucks and such)
* Two way roads min 5 m
* Sidewalk 1.5 - 2.5 m (no curbs)
* Acceptable car density per (housing) street 200 moving cars/hour (during rush hour)
* visualize the conflict points (give the road a 'readable' warning for the cars, for example near a school or a footpath, causing them to slow down even more)
*Extra attention for space where people can walk and play without danger (=cars)
*roadcurve for cars min. 6 m, for trucks 9 m
*roadbumps (or whatever they are named), they slow down the traffic. Make sure the left and right side of the bumps are flattened so they don't bother the bicycles.
Two characteristic are crucial imo:
1 - NO ASPHALT!
Dutch woonerven are almost always paved with bricks (klinkers) or other alternatives for asphalt. For me this gives the woonerf atmosphere, it feels warm, comfortable and safe. Kids can safely play on the streets and parents don't have to fear the killer car.
2 - front gardens
Now I don't mean a lawn like in US suburbia, but a real garden facing the street. Doesn't have to be big, just like 2 m or so, can even be a elevation-garden with only one foot of space between the house and pavement. Just enough space to grow some ivy or flowers and to place a bench or some chairs. This brings life to the streets and makes the street a place to be. It also gives people freedom to shape their streets, you know like give it a personal touch (pimp your house). So it's not all about safety, a woonerf is a place where you know your neighbors and your neighborhood, the houses are usually small, the street/public space functions like a communal living room.
Hope you understand, there are some Dutch words that are hard to translate, some even untranslatable.
I did read the article and I do understand the logic of it; I just disagree that that's how humans would react. For example, I disagree with your sentence: "The more insecure people feel the more care they take in what they are doing". I find the opposite to be true; for example, new drivers, who are scared and unsure of what to do in most situations, behave unexpectedly in reaction to their fears; and drivers who do something unexpected, in response to stimuli that other drivers may not be aware of, cause accidents. If you've ever lived in a city with jumpy, defensive drivers, you know how terribly unsafe they are.
I understand the logic, however; I would just need to see it in practice to believe that people behave well in that situation! :)
i have seen conditions where this occurs in historic European cities and it can work very well...
unfortunately i didn't make it to terry avenue (see the metropolis link that i poster further up) on my trip to seattle earlier this year, as i would have loved to have seen an American example...
i do have a hard time seeing a woonerf really being successful in the US... i mean, most american drivers have a hard enough time dealing with one-way streets and small round-a-bouts... perhaps the average american is just too dumb to comprehend situations that are slightly out of the ordinary (at least in their suburban worlds)...
i think that the main problem is that (in america at least) most drivers think that they OWN the road... the automobile is just TOO dominant... drivers honk at pedestrians that are using crosswalks and crossing with the proper wall signs... as a result i've developed into a very aggressive walker... if i'm in a situation where i have the right-of-way i will walk in front of cars and force them to stop...
our street system in america has been overrun by the hydraulics engineer concept of design... the street system (with the possible exception of main thoroughfares and highways) should be designed with SPACE in mind, not FLOW... once upon a time streets were the heart of the neighborhood in a jane jacobsian sort of way... kids played in the streets (not cul-de-sacs) without getting run over... now kids can't even go near the street without worrying about getting hit...
end rant... for now...
do suburbs make people stupid?
rutger thank you very much that is exactly the kind of information we have trying to look for. If you have anyother ideas for where to look or hell even books to buy that would be awesome. Sounds like your problems with Vinex are quite similar to what we have here. The scary thing is that we have 70,000 people in cities that have one maybe two functional throughofares... suburbia is really a mess.
Hence why we are currently working on a series of projects that are about creating small networks that introduce connectivity and fabric to suburban and exurban enviroments. The installation on a sense of place is key to a successful neighborhood. For a great example of a neighborhood with character, that does incorporate some of the living street ideas look at the Methleys neighborhood in the UK, its in Leeds i think.
Myriam I do not disagree with you that for the majority of American streets, this pratice would be fool hardy, but if used as the juncture between the major suburban highway and the neghibrhood fabric, I believe that this approach could be very successful. Or hell even if it is just used in strategic locations like the front of big box stores maybe, or as the connecting parrt of a road between areas of mixed use. Then I believe that this approach could be very successful. The people who would drive there would be slowed down to the point that pedestrian interaction can occur and then the people who are unwilling to drive that slow will go around utilizing alternate routes.
A great example for the effect of altering the driving enviroment, look at when swenden (or maybe norway can't remember which) switched from driving on the left to driving on the right side of the road... accidents dropped 33% for a period of 18 years (when a new generation of drivers who were now comfortable driving on the right were driving) The point being that the more comfort or experience a person has with an enviroment, the more risk they feel they are able to take because this familiarity.
here is a decent example:
the methleys home zone
[img]http://www.methleys.org.uk/homezones/images/DSC_0112a.jpg[img]
oops
Was walking through Delft and suddenly realized there is a woonerf nearby. So I went there and remembered one of the downsides, it is a maze, the mailman's nightmare. Finding a street or a house is very time consuming and makes you curse the designers ; )
Architphil is referring to historic European cities and I think this is very wise. Like a woonerf the historic cities have been designed from a pedestrian point of view. Whereas suburbia and vinex are drivers seat urbanism; the car dictates almost everything.
One of the most genius things about historic Euro cities is the micro climate. Less cold in winter, less warm in summer, wind free walking (curvy streets). For example on a winter day like today, when I take my bike through the center it feels kinda cold yet nice but as soon as i reach the emptiness of modernism it is freezing like hell. The difference is really stunning. In the center the streets are alive, there are always people walking around, even in a snowstorm.
So it might be a good idea to study some historic cities. Maybe you can find some place in Europe with more or less the same climate as the project you are working on, and see what they did to make the streets a great place to be.
link: Delft center on google maps
There's a good book titled Streets and the Shaping of Towns and Cities with a chapter or two on woonerfs. It also includes a discussion on the challenges of incorporating woonerf and shared street concepts into the North American context.
And along with www.shared-space.org (Hans Monderman), check out www.hamilton-baillie.co.uk (Ben Hamilton Baillie) for the shared space/naked street type stuff.
Myriam - the argument for increasing safety by increasing perceived risk is described by a book titled RISK by John Adams. Haven't had a chance to get to it yet though - but it would be interesting to hear the counter argument. I spent a couple of days with Hans Monderman last winter and he was crazy about this book.
i don't want these crazy los angeles drivers having freedom...
remember that incident where an old man drove through a farmer's market and killed a whole bunch of heads?...this is with laws already...
a new "pedestrian-oriented" (sort-of) mall here tried it's hand at removing the spatial distinction between car roadway and sidewalk at the intersections & main roundabout.
here's what i thought after visiting one evening:
as an adult who drives and knows the rules and risks of mixing cars & pedestrians, i felt comfortable knowing how to assert my pedestrian rights when i wanted and enjoyed the freedom.
as a parent of two small children, i felt terrified because the kids don't yet know the rules and there aren't any obvious spatial clues to assist them in discerning when they're transgressing into a vehicular zone. i felt i had to be even more vigilant than a typical segregated street section.
i'm not saying the design is bad, just that there are unintended consequences.
Rococo, that is a pretty street--however it doesn't appear that cars are allowed on it?
Yes, el jeffe, that is how I feel--I enjoy the secure feeling of being on a sidewalk and knowing that you don't have to watch out for anything, you are in a pedestrian-only zone, nothing is going to come at you. This is partly why I get SO pissed at bikers who feel like they can just switch from road to sidewalk at will.
Likewise, when in a car I like knowing that the street is just for me--I don't *want* to have to constantly be scanning to see if something's going to jump out at me, be in my space where I don't expect it. I dislike driving down neighborhood streets because I am worried I'm going to miss the one little kid standing behind a parked car, and he's going to step out into the road right when I'm looking somewhere else. I would hate having even more of these unexpected items thrown at me.
If I can find the Risk book, I will check it out. Thanks for the tipoff.
(thanks AP) discusses NYC's efforts to reinvent the street including bringing woofert to the big apple.
Before there were traffic streets and pedestrian malls. Now there are:
-woofert/woonerfs
-play streets
-bicycle boulevards
-green grid
-mental speed bumps
-pavement hierarchy
-Swaled Streets (aka green pipes)
-lanescapes
-gentle congestion
- & urban accupuncture:
how about the entire neighborhood of Trastevere in Rome?
I think what helps out in Rome is that NONE of the motorist obey any of the traffic rules, and arent really required to, except for the one rule that states 'YOU CAN NOT RUN OVER PEOPLE.'
not true ^ my 6th grade english teacher got run over by a car in Rome - true story
italian driving habits were explored in the NYT's review of the fiat 500. the old 500 had so little power, that you had to keep it floored all the time to keep from getting killed. now they just drive that way.
I experienced no difference in the driving of my host before or after going out clubbing (returning home at sunrise). maybe the italians are all drunk drivers...
check out the work of the University of Arkansas Community Design Center - they are specialists at shared streets.
There's an image I saw of a woonerf concept in Setagaya, Tokyo. Cross section: front yard, narrow street, water feature thingy with a narrow stream and a fountain and tiny bridges and street lights, pedestrian zone, landscaping. The street was paved with what looked like 6x6, with patterns in some places. The stream (that kids could play in) was buffered on both sides by a small, inverted-u shaped wall tiled in river rock. It had lots of bump-outs for plantings and steps for the bridges. The road meandered with the stream. Not garish, at all, just neutral colors and green landscaping (from what I could tell from the picture). Beautiful.
Hi Oysters :o)
Small world neufert, thats who I was doing the research for. How do you know of them?
And actually while I'm here I want to thank rutger again for walking around Delft with me, especially on a cold rainy monday over a year ago... Thanks Man!
you know me and i know you too. and your mom does as well.
damn she gets around doesn't she!
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