What's up with sidewalks?

Dr. Jekyll lives on the left.
Poorly lit sidewalks with sodium streetlights meant for cars, not people

by Greg Saville

What’s up with sidewalks? Walkability might be the gateway to a friendlier and safer city, but it requires a high-quality place to walk with interesting destinations. My walks of late uncovered some big-time flops. What are designers thinking when they create sidewalks?

Shrubs 1. Sidewalk 0
Too narrow and obstructed by private landscaping

Some sidewalks are inappropriate for people with disabilities. Others have street signs in the middle of the sidewalk forcing walkers onto the street. Yet others are dark at night, in disrepair, too small or are encroached by yard landscaping.

Salvation lies elsewhere.
This church dismisses walkers by fencing front stairways

Some municipalities require homeowners to keep sidewalks clean in front of their home and, in winter cities, free of snow. That is reasonable. But cities often expect too much, such as when public sidewalks are worn or damaged and homeowners are required to pay thousands for repairs.

Too often sidewalks are poorly designed and they end with no destination.

Logic lost!
Warning walkers of a crosswalk, but forcing them to walk
onto the street to avoid the sign

SMART GROWTH 

In the planning movement called Smart Growth, walkability plays an important role. One attempt to measure walkability is The Walk Score, but it is far from ideal (try it).

Activating a sidewalk with lighting, benches, and a night-time economy

My current address has a measly Walk Score of 46, making it car dependent. Yet, nearby are trails, a lake, park, and mountain views. My former address scored a dazzling 84; In one direction there were great restaurants, parks, a library, coffee shops, school, and trails. Yet, in another, you could just as easily get caught between gang shootings. Obviously, Walk Scores say nothing about neighborhood quality.

Interesting design, colors & lighting attracts people

Recent Smart Growth designs include the SmartCode concept, an attempt to replace restrictive zoning practices of the past. As yet, it’s unclear SmartCode prescriptions are any better at triggering the creative, bottom-up placemaking shown in a few of these photos. But it’s a starting place.

Street artists at night bring culture to dead streets

The walkability breakthrough in New York

7 minutes to Court Square (NYTimes photo)

Navigation, for most humans, isn't by GPS. At least not yet.

For most of us it is just a matter of getting around by looking where we are going. Sometimes maps help. Sometimes we ask for directions (even males do this occasionally)!

Designers call this wayfinding. In CPTED we call it "movement predictors". When it comes to urban safety and what people feel about a street, it matters. A lot.

A year ago I blogged on walkability, Jane's Walks, and the Walk Score to measure the walkability of your neighborhood.

This week a CPTED friend sent this NY Times article about City Signs to Help Pedestrians (they aren't just for tourists).

My favorite part is NY TImes writer Michael M Grynbaum's description: "One feature is novel for city maps: concentric circles that represent an approximate walking time."

Woo hoo! Honoring pedestrians over the car. A breakthrough!

One way out

Boundary route in Winnipeg. Deserted and car friendly.

What, I wonder, do public spaces have to do with livability and crime?

A week ago I spent a few days walking downtown Winnipeg. Some streets seemed very walkable. Others, not so much. Some streets, occupied by the indigent and homeless, reflected a nasty social distress. Other arterial streets functioned as links between areas - boundary routes - little curb appeal, no adjacent shops, poor walkability. They are public spaces where territorial control and eyes on the street don't exist. Boundary routes are for cars, not walkers.

When I was there people were everywhere on downtown Winnipeg streets (in daytime at least)! All this in spite of Winnipeg's ranking in the top crime rate cities in Canada. Then I thought about walking downtown Houston a year ago where people were far more scarce. City comparisons are always risky, especially crime comparisons. But they are interesting.

Houston is a vast, sprawling city of many millions. It has crime problems, placing in the top 10% of high crime cities in the US.

Winnipeg also sprawls, but it has less than a million. It too has crime problems, ranking in the top 5 highest crime cities in Canada.

Houston is valiantly attempting to bring more people downtown and increase walkability, especially in the Theatre District and with the new light rail. Winnipeg has plenty of downtown walkers in summer (my visit coincided with a public celebration), and extensive elevated walkways for winter. Then I noticed traffic flow.

Houston's downtown is more or less a 20 street by 11 street span between I-45 and the Easter Freeway. In spite of extensive expressways about 80% of downtown streets are one-ways.

Winnipeg's downtown is more or less a 15 by 20 street span from the CPR rail yard to the Trans-Canada Hwy and between the river and Route 62. With no expressways to speak of, over 30% of those downtown streets are one-ways.

Is that why walkability seems more palatable in Winnipeg?

Great signage, but few people to read

Walkability is more than parking the car to walk or jog. Walkability is useful destinations within reasonable walking distance - corner stores, schools, food stores, library's and other community activities. Walkability won't stop crime on it's own. However, it's an excellent place to start.

The Houston story is by no means written, as I wrote in a SafeGrowth blog entry last year. Houston has outstanding preventive efforts by many groups, such as Houston's LISC, to build local capacity with programs like their SafeGrowth strategy.

In Winnipeg too there are exceptional preventive efforts, such as community groups tackling crime and award winning problem-solvers cutting auto theft

All those are marvelous and necessary.

Still, I wonder. If downtowns were dominated by people and walkable public spaces versus one-way streets and boundary routes, how many more wins would our preventive efforts celebrate?

Walkability - the first step to safety

Discovering fun things during Jane's Walks

I spent a few days this week enjoying the fascinating streets of Toronto where dozens of neighborhoods flourish in ethnic and class diversity. Treed sitting areas, fruit and vegetable stands and street performers of all kinds; thriving streets in famed Jane Jacobs' hometown (at least in the non-suburban, bicycle friendly neighborhoods between the expressways).

Every first weekend in May the Jane's Walk event shows up in streets across the city. Starting in 2007 in Toronto, the Jane's Walk phenomenon has gone viral. Over 400 Jane's Walks now occur in 70 cities around the world. They are named after Jacobs, who was the CPTED pioneer before CPTED existed (she would probably not acknowledge that). Jacobs believed that the best way to get to know a neighborhood is on foot. I think she was right.

HOW WALKABLE IS YOUR HOOD?
Check out how walkable your own neighborhood is using the Walk Score. The Walk Score website allows you to type in your own home address (no spams result later on) and find out how your own neighborhood walkability compares to other cities around the world.

You can rate walkability to amenities such as grocery and hardware stores, restaurants and coffee shops, transit stops, schools, drug stores, parks and other destinations one might actually want to walk to.

HOW ACCURATE IS IT?
I typed in my former addresses to see if it worked. For example homes in Port Moody, British Columbia and Tallahassee, Florida both rated a Car Dependent 15 - a very poor walkability score. It's true that the Tallahassee neighborhood offered nothing of walkable interest though the Port Moody home did have a beautiful bike trail near the ocean. Still, I think they both deserved low walkability scores.

My current home in a small town in Washington State scored a Very Walkable 75 which I figure is about right. It is across from a seaside park, near a bus stop and less than a 15 minute walk to restaurants, library, drug stores, and coffee shops. In fact, all but one amenity here is less than a mile away. No wonder it scores high.

Walkability alone doesn't determine safety. The website rated some highly walkable neighborhoods very accurately, such as obvious choices like Soho and Greenwich Village in New York (same as when Jacob's lived there), the University District in Seattle, and downtown Portland. Unfortunately it rated others less accurately. While Seattle's Pioneer Square scores high, my own SafeGrowth students discovered walkability there is safe in daytime but far less so in nighttime. There are other questionable choices on the walkable cities list.

Obviously, walkability alone does not determine safety. It is, however, an excellent place to start creating it.

Click here for and rate your home on The Walk Score website.