Archive for traditional neighborhood

« Older Entries

Benefits of the Front Porch Extend Beyond Function and Architecture

Posted in Town Planning, Urban Planning and Design, Urbanism with tags , , , on August 15, 2011 by John Olson

Steve Mouzon's graphic illustrating the relationship between porch height, depth and comfort.

The front porch may be one of the greatest gifts from the architecture profession. The benefits of the front porch continue to amaze me. If you are a devout reader of this blog, you may recall that I wrote about the front porch over a year ago, see The Front Porch and What Makes It Function. As a parent, the porch evolves as a place for play, gathering and relaxation. When my youngest child was a baby, I spent many hours of the day swinging on the porch swing. This was an amazing mechanism for soothing her to sleep, and a great way to meet the neighbors.

As I write this, I am relaxing on the porch while my kids explore the wide sidewalk lining the homes. The porch, its dimensions, and details are critical elements to a functional porch, but at least equally important is how the porch addresses the street. I mentioned the sidewalk earlier, it is a six-foot wide sidewalk that is located between eighteen-inches and forty-eight-inches horizontally from the front porch. The porches are typically elevated at least eighteen-inches and have a suitable depth for seating. While these dimensions are not optimum according to Steve Mouzon’s graphic for porch dimensions, they are effective.  To read Steve’s insight on Front Porch setbacks, height, etc., read Porches, Walkability and Sustainability.

The sidewalk’s depth is critical for an appropriate amount of play area and for social interactions. A comfortable buffer from the flow of traffic is also important. My street has a seven-foot wide “tree lawn” with 3-foot tall shrubs and street trees spaced thirty-feet on center. This buffer along with on-street parking provides a comfortable place for kids to play or ride scooters and bikes without the fears of traffic.

One more note about on-street parking, it is only as effective as the actual use of the parking. On-street parking is a premium element in traditional neighborhoods. An empty parking space in front of your home is often a point of contention. Residents in traditional neighborhoods complain about parking as much as they complain about dog poop. Personally, I don’t mind walking an additional 100-feet, which is the most that I have had to walk, for the luxury of having a street full of cars. For me, a street full of cars is the best traffic calming device that you can have on a residential street. If the only caveat is 100-feet of exercise, I will take it 364 days of the 365.

Leave A Comment »

South Main New Urban Neighborhood Now Has A Blog

Posted in Urban Planning and Design, Urbanism with tags , , , , , on June 2, 2010 by John Olson

Rendering by Dover-Kohl Partners of the vision for South Main.

 Earlier today, South Main Co. released a new blog titled “Live from South Main“.  South Main is a fantastic traditional neighborhood with beautiful architecture and a fantastic setting.  The following is an article I wrote for the Colorado Urbanist in Fall, 2008: 

The tour of South Main began at the offices of South Main, Inc. in downtown Buena Vista, where participants followed hosts Jed Selby and Katie Selby Urban to the project site. The knowledgeable hosts spent the day explaining the different facets and aspects of the project to the group. Katie graciously opened her South Main home for a lunch and brief presentation, which concluded the day’s events.

 While South Main officially sits on 41 acres, the young and ambitious brother and sister team have purchased additional blocks of land including parcels along the existing Main Street in downtown Buena Vista. South Main is situated along the headwaters of the Arkansas River and surrounded by thousands of acres of preserved open space across the river. According to Katie, the headwaters of the Arkansas River attract 600,000 visitors each year who visit the beautiful setting to enjoy whitewater rafting, kayaking, and fishing.

An all-star cast of architects and new urbanist designers were involved in the creation of South Main including Victor Dover, Steve Mouzon, Peter Swift, Allison Ramsey Architects, Opticos (Architects), and Kenny Craft and Minet Mahoney. Currently, Craft and Mahoney serve as architects for South Main Development Company, which streamlines the architectural process and makes the costs to the consumer more economical. In addition, in January 2008 the team started their own construction company for the South Main project to further save costs. In the past, buyers purchased lots with the intention of construction within two years. Now consumers can actually purchase lots with immediate access to architectural and construction services reducing the total time and cost required. 

As with many new urbanist communities, charrettes were held at the beginning of the process. Organizers achieved a high level of public participation through advertising in local newspapers and news stations. The meetings helped formulate a vision and gave opposition a chance to articulate their concerns. Certain parameters of the project were established at this time with public officials in attendance in order to minimize later conflict. In initial charrettes, local Longmont Civil Engineer, Peter Swift laid out the street types and asked for the City to sign off on the street design to mitigate future surprises. Sustainability is a major aspect of new urbanist communities with a focus on pedestrian circulation and creating community. This is definately true of South Main.   

Photo of South Main Courtesy of South Main Co.

 Not only will residents of South Main be able to easily walk to the retail and live/work options in their immediate neighborhood, they will also be just a short walk away from supporting downtown businesses. South Main structures are also sustainable and are all required to meet “Built Green” standards. According to Katie, the architecture is timeless, and the homes will not seem dated in the future. Many of the goals and objectives of South Main will blend into the existing fabric of downtown Buena Vista. Development on the newly purchased land between current South Main site and downtown Buena Vista will add to the fabric.  

  Re-use and sustainable practices at South Main include the recycling and grinding of excess wood and drywall to be used for mulch. The site also has an abundance of large boulders which have been used in several ways including the creative approach to flatten the central park along the Arkansas River. Boulders have also been broken down and used for the road base for the site as well.

The kayak park in South Main, which is of course a central focus of a community created by professional kayakers, includes three kayak surf waves and a great river pedestrian trail. State funded grants were given to South Main, Inc. for the rehabilitation of the riverfront. The team took great advantage of the grants and helped mold a once forgotten and neglected piece of riverfront into fantastic amenity for Buena Vista. During the tour, it was obvious that these natural settings are certainly utilized by neighborhood and surrounding residents. Future plans for the riverfront park include Eddyline Restaurant and Brewery, which officially broke ground on the first of November. The restaurant will include walk-out views of a whitewater wave feature. Future plans include an artificial rock climbing wall along the river as well as an additional surf wave.  

 

Careful planning went into South Main’s street design. Terminated vistas in South Main include the courthouse tower in downtown Buena Vista, the natural beauty of the Arkansas River Valley and, of course, the Collegiate Peaks. Upright trees enhance and complement the major view corridors with the alteration of Lanceleaf Poplar and Patmore Green Ash. The alteration of the upright trees creates a rhythm along the streets and preserves views of the mountain region. Cottonwoods have been installed along other streets due to their quick growth and shade assets. One of most recognizable streets in South Main is also one of the narrowest. The parkway measures 10’ from the face of the curb to the edge of the road and includes a median. Vehicles may park between the trees on the outside (or oncurb) of the parkway. Swift Circle, though not currently fully developed, will be one of the more intimate streets in South Main. Coincidentally, Katie has made this street her home address. A proposal for the street to utilize 6-12” rock from the river was mocked up for the City, but not approved. A decision on paving material is still to be determined for this street, but undoubtedly its character is likely to be first-class.

I enjoyed the tour of South Main and am especially thankful to Katie and Jed for providing insight and history on the project. The team is obviously passionate about this project, its objectives and their commitment to creating community. A personal favorite of my visit to South Main is the village park. A lot of care and detail considerations have already gone into the park. Future possibilities for this space are remarkable. I would encourage everyone to take a road trip to Buena Vista this upcoming spring to see the progress firsthand.

I have heard many good things about South Main’s progress since the tour in the summer of 2008 with the opening of Eddyline Brewery, art galleries, festivals, etc.  I can not wait to make it back to South Main to see the progress and its evolution.

2 Comments »

Safe Routes To School: A Band-Aid for the Last 60 Years of Planning Around the Vehicle

Posted in Comprehensive Planning and Codes, Town Planning, Urban Planning and Design, Urbanism with tags , , , , , , , , , , on May 24, 2010 by John Olson

Safe Routes To School is a government initiative created in 2006 that “assists communities in enabling and encouraging children to safely walk and bike to school.”  There are very good reasons for this initiative because for most schools, children walking to school is like rolling the dice with safety.  Part of the problem is the nature of the schools themselves and their desire to have frontage on not one, but TWO collector streets for access and visibility.

Diagram created by Tom Low of DPZ Charlotte illustrating a traditional connected grid on the top in contrast to typical suburban sprawl's disconnected street classification.

The primary issue that I see happens to also be one of the fundamental contributors to sprawl, our road classification system.  Our classification system in the United States was created in an effort to reduce congestion.  It creates a series of loops and lollipops for the “local” streets in subdivisions with typically two options for getting in and out of the subdivision.  Instead of the historic grid and network of streets where there were multiple ways to get in and out of a neighborhood, we funnel all of the traffic from the subdivision to two points.  These two points are almost always to a “collector” street which by definition, collects all of the traffic from the “local” streets and distributes them to the “arterials“.  The “arterials” are our fastest streets which usually are set up on a grid about one mile from each other.  From there, our arterials funnel the traffic to another classification, the highway or “expressway“.  This funneling of streets creates an increasing amount of traffic as you move up the classification system.  On top of that, when you locate the schools along these vehicular sewers (with greater speeds by the way), of course they are unsafe for children.  I won’t get into the effects of the classification system when street repairs or a major accident occur on a collector, arterial or highway, but you’ve experienced it if you live adjacent to the suburbs.  (Remember it was that time that you were late for something).

I remember when I was growing up (which was not that long ago by the way), walking to my elementary school was very easy and my parents did not think twice about it (great parents by the way that cared very much for the safety of my brother and I).  Incredibly enough, I remember walking to Kindergarten with friends (not parents).  There was nothing special about the route that I walked to school, through a neighborhood, through multiple intersections and there I was, 5 minutes later, at school.  The difference was the high amount of connectivity in the streets, thereby decreasing the amount of traffic on one particular street.  My school (still there today by the way) was not located on an arterial or a collector, but surrounded by four local streets.  There were not any collectors or arterials abutting the school, just a neighborhood.  I would be surprised if there were even any “School Zone” signs (another band-aid) around the school because the streets were not designed to be traveled at excessive speeds.

Image from RisingTide.org.uk.

Was there a need to have “Safe Routes to School” in the 50′s and beforehand?  No, our hierarchy of streets were not as “sophisticated” at that point as it is today.  Today, we have specialists who are very good at making it faster to get from one place to another.  However, they are so good at designing for the automobile that the pedestrian is, more often than not, an after thought so we end up with these band-aid fixes, like safe routes to school.  We need to become more cognizant as a civilization of what we are doing to our children in how we plan our cities.  As we require, or desire, our schools to be located on arterials and collectors, we should realize that the effects trickle down to our children’s health and safety.  Most adults who are designing these systems today should reflect back on their youth and consider if today’s children are given the same opportunities.

Put yourself in the mind of a parent with a child going to elementary or middle school, or maybe you are one, even easier.  How many of you would or do feel safe sending your child to their school by walking on a nice 70 degree day?  If you said yes, my guess is that you live in a neighborhood constructed before World War II or you live in a neo-traditional neighborhood.  Now let’s consider the predominant population who says no, never, not going to happen.  You probably either drive your child to school each day, have someone else carpool your child or send them on a bus to school.  The health factor comes in because the short amount of time that it takes your child to walk to and from school, may keep your child very healthy because they are getting necessary exercise that they might not otherwise get.  When I think back to my childhood, I remember my walks (or bike rides) to and from school with my friends fondly.  I had a lot of fun during those moments and gained a lot of independence, and more often than not it took me a lot longer than 5 minutes because I would find something fun to do on the way.  My daughter just got out of school for the summer, but I enjoyed walking my daughter to and from school.  It is a great chance to have a conversation with her, enjoy some fresh air and believe it or not, but it was actually much faster than driving.

I would like to see our governments think about what they are doing when they plan for growth and speed of our vehicles.  Is it more important to get from one place to another swiftly or is our civilizations health and safety more important?  Until our society can consider how much we are hurting ourselves with our road classification systems, we are unfortunately going to have more auto accidents, higher obesity rates and greater risks for diabetes.

2 Comments »

« Older Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 1,366 other followers