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This is part of a weekly series of posts about architecture in Austin by local architects. The views expressed in this post are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the outlook or beliefs of Austinist or anyone else in the IST network.
This column is by Sinclair Black, F.A.I.A. - Principal at Black + Vernooy. Sinclair Black is deeply involved in the community affairs of Austin and has achieved widespread recognition for his efforts on behalf of Austin's natural and man-made environment. The following column was included in the CNU publication, "Emergent Urbanism: Evolution in Urban Form" and has been reprinted here with his permission.
Great Streets: Downtown Austin
A city’s downtown comprises the heart of the community, and its streets form the primary public arena for interchange and commerce. Downtown Austin belongs to all of the city’s residents, and its streets serve as the primary public place. Although it has always represented the community culturally, economically, and politically, downtown Austin has traditionally lacked the vibrancy engendered by numerous pedestrian-dominant and multi-functional commercial corridors that define other cities.
The City of Austin selected Black + Vernooy along with Kinney Associates to articulate a vision for the development of the public space downtown Austin. With the tremendous growth and change Austin has experienced, the Master Plan conceived by this joint venture presented a timely opportunity to affect the livability, safety, and aesthetics of Austin’s downtown streets by synthesizing issues of street design and transportation into an integrated and harmonious system.
One goal of the resulting Great Streets Program has been to provide a master plan as an instrument to pursue a vision of streets for people. This vision stemmed from the Downtown Austin Design Guidelines, adopted by City Council in 2000. The design guidelines established a set of values for downtown development, including authenticity, history, safety, diversity, density, and economic vitality. These values are stated as civic values in the following user hierarchy for streets: pedestrians; transit; bicycles; and automobiles.
The Great Streets Master Plan is based upon six guiding principles:
Streets as Places: the Great Streets Program envisions downtown as a vital focus of city life and a primary destination. Our downtown streets are our most important and inclusive public space and common ground.
Interactive Streets: urban streets are the stages on which the public life of the community is acted out. Streets are urban rooms.
Managed Congestion: congestion is a fact of life in successful urban places. By definition, a place that supports great concentration of economic and social activities within a pedestrian-scaled environment is going to be congested.
Balanced Usage: downtown streets must balance the needs of pedestrians, transit, bicycles, and the automobile in creating an attractive and viable urban core.
Pride of Place: visible care and upkeep are critical to the vitality of urban street life.
Public art: art in the public environment can help establish a stronger sense of place and continuity between the past, present and future.
The Great Streets Master Plan consists of a few simple but profound objectives:
• Recognizing the primacy of the grid in the downtown and optimizing its use.
• Changing the space and scale of the street to create a sense of place for the individual.
• Creating a safe environment, one generous enough for multiple uses sheltered from the Texas sun.
• Recognizing the inherent need for balance between automobiles and pedestrians within the finite limits of the street right-of-ways and the transportation corridors that feed traffic into downtown.
• Implementing traffic-calming elements in down town through symbols of pedestrian dominance, traffic management in a two-way street system, and rigorous enforcement of traffic lanes to promote and protect pedestrian safety.
• Creating an equitable balance of space usage between sidewalks and streets. Currently, a typical downtown Austin street has an 80 foot right-of-way with 60 feet (75 percent) dedicated to automobiles, leaving the remaining 20 feet (25 percent) for pedestrians. The typical “Great Street” of Austin’s future envisions dedicating 44 feet to the auto (55 percent),allowing 36 feet (45 percent) of the street to be used for the pedestrian with 18 feet dedicated to sidewalks on each side of the street. This reallocation of space results in a 75 percent increase in pedestrian territory.
• Occupying the wider sidewalk zone with an array of well designed, functional objects such as trees and canopies for shade, among other amenities, lights, benches, and waste receptacles.
• Allowing space for private sector initiatives to occupy and animate the street scene with sidewalk cafes, kiosks, and newsstands.
• Accommodating automobile traffic to downtown and discouraging traffic through downtown.
Two-way Street Systems
Throughout the 1990s and lastly in December 2000, the Regional/Urban Design Assistance Team (R/UDAT) visited Austin and gave advice regarding the improvement of its downtown. This American Institute of Architect’s team has repeatedly recommended returning the Central Business District street system to two-way in order to enhance the pedestrian experience and thus enhance economic development opportunities. And now Austin leadership is recognizing that “Great Streets” is in fact a very powerful cost-effective economic development strategy.
The very first project to implement and benefit from Great Streets was the AMLI Downtown Residential Development, located on 2nd Street.
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Two-way street systems do nothing to help pedestrians - they actually HURT, all else being equal. It's been pushed for years as a con-job by street merchants who want more drivers to go right in front of their window displays.
Don't do the typical mistake next and compare 2-way 2nd street with narrow streets and wide sidewalks to a 1-way intersection of 2 4-lane streets. Note the "all else being equal" above. Better comparison is the 2-way intersection at, say, Lamar and Barton Springs with the 1-way intersections downtown - which one would you rather cross as a pedestrian and why?
Thanks, google:
http://groups.google.com/group/austin.general/msg/b669ee37a217d1e3?hl=en
This is a thread way back in the 90s - the guy selling the 2-way Kool-Aid with the misleading chart back then owned an art gallery on 6th street and wanted more cars to be able to drive by. It required substantial cognitive dissonance - but he actually had found somebody peddling a poster that insisted there were more potential auto-ped conflicts at an intersection of two 1-way streets than at an intersection of two 2-way streets.
Since then, the traffic engineers have finally fought back in defense of basic logic:
http://www.portlandonline.com/transportation/index.cfm?a=186776&c=46461
(see chart on page 4. Yes, O'Toole. Shudder. Sometimes even the Devil is right).
For instance, both Manhattan and London are replete with many one-way streets, as are most good pedestrian cities. You can have a skinny one-way street with a big wide sidewalk just as easily as you can a two-way street; but the one-way street has the extra advantage of fewer turning conflicts for crossing pedestrians to deal with.
Seriously M1EK, it's time to consider another run at civil service. Maybe not the transportation commission but surely there are other outlets in City Government that could use your analysis.