Jefferson tries Streetmix

Saturday, 31 August 2013 by payton

In 1803, Thomas Jefferson suggested to D.C.’s government that the broad Pennsylvania Avenue be lined with trees, in the manner of the elegant French gardens that he admired. The original street-section schemes, drawn by Nicholas King, are in the LOC’s collection, and thanks to Streetmix I’ve taken the liberty of updating them to imagine how they’d have evolved since then. Today’s configuration of Pennsylvania Avenue NW has wide sidewalks and double/triple rows of trees, and was designed and redesigned by various urban renewal commissions from the Nathaniel Owings Plan of 1964 through the the PADC up into the mid-1990s.

Option #1 was the then-road, a narrow dirt path.

Option #2 has a center gravel passage for horseback riders (today, cyclists?) flanked by two carriageways. I’m not sure how many roads of the day separated solo horse riders from carriages; perhaps the idea of having a separate center track was because an unburdened horse could travel considerably faster, and therefore should stay to the left of carriages. Nonetheless, the idea of a center track isn’t exactly new.

Option #3 has a broad carriageway flanked by two gravel footpaths, here reinterpreted as tree-lined cycletracks. Although this carriageway looks far too wide, today’s asphalt expanse is pretty much this wide — and ensures a relatively clear vista down the middle towards the Capitol (and Treasury, I guess).

I’ve illustrated Option #4 with a center transitway, although that seems like it would result in many conflicts between pedestrians/transit riders and cyclists.

The lights aren’t broken, but the design is

Monday, 12 August 2013 by payton

Uplighting, a photo by Payton Chung on Flickr.

L’Enfant Promenade is so badly designed that it accomplishes the rare feat of making something darker by applying light. Lots and lots of lights, actually, which instead of illuminating the street surface instead just spill their coal-fired power as light pollution. This is just one of many things about this streetscape that are objectively wrong, as described by GGW commenter “Moose”:

L’Enfant Promenade is miserable. I work down there, and it’s too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter. No vegetation to help mitigate the effect of the wind canyon created by the buildings. The paving stones they used for both the road and the sidewalks are rough, and difficult for bikes and pedestrians. The “lights” they have on it don’t shed enough light at night to actually illuminate the sidewalks or road, but they do put out enough light to not let your eyes adjust to darkness (when they’re not blinking on and off, that is – there seems to be a short in the sensor or switch used to turn them on at dusk).

Yet somehow, the notion that this could be a landscape worthy of immortality (a supposedly rare privilege, as it places stewardship obligations upon future generations) actually exists out there in someone’s brain, and therefore tax money needs to be spent investigating that specious claim (perhaps at the DC Historic Preservation Review Board, if the GSA is to be believed about claims regarding Banneker Circle). Perhaps not since the SF Bike Plan has such a quantity of money been spent for planners to prove the obvious.

It’s no better by day, either. Nor is our jaundiced view just because it’s one generation old; it was hardly beloved even when it was shiny and new, if press and eyewitness reports are to be believed.

Thankfully, this 1980s bulbs-and-brass interior was recently ripped away because again, it was objectively wrong — it never succeeded at being attractive, otherwise the shops around it might have done okay. Otherwise, surely someone would rush in and “rescue” it with some obviously-well-deserved historic protection.

Two steps to a longer life

Thursday, 8 August 2013 by payton

1. Walk: “Time spent walking, then, is utterly free. It’s time you would have spent dead.” [Alan Durning]

2. Better yet, wander. Peter Bosselmann writes in Urban Transformation that complex routes feel longer, more enjoyable, and more satisfying. The study design used two short routes on the Berkeley campus of the same length, the same time, the same climb, the same number of passerby: one up the City Beautiful mall, the other winding behind the same buildings. Bosselmann quotes William James’s 1892 text on Psychology: “A time filled with varied and interesting experiences seems short in passing, but long as we look back. On the other hand a tract of time empty of experiences seems long in passing, but in retrospect short.”

(The discussion is on pages 187-189, citing Emelie Cheng and Yu Cao, “Time on Campus: A Study of Visual Elements,” 2004, and a map of the two routes is at Planetizen.)

Park[erings]plats, flat-packed kit edition

Monday, 5 August 2013 by payton

The new IKEA catalog includes this reminder that there are now just 52 shopping days left until Park(ing) Day 2013 on 20 September. Having documented a few similar installations in the past, I’ll say that the practiced tiny-room-builders get these elements right:

Floor: define the horizontal space with “symbolic groundcover.” A large green rug is great because it’s relatively light and quickly rolled out, but for reuse purposes, keep in mind that it might get dirty. I tried hauling remnant sod to our site, but it turns out that live plants are terribly heavy. Even lighter-weight: chalk!
Walls 1: stake out the corners with vertical elements. Not necessarily as high as the fabric screens shown, but enough to…
Walls 2: structure the space so that the “backs” face cars and the “front” faces the sidewalk. They could have done a better job with sheltering the street face of this one, but that would’ve blocked the camera’s view in.
Ceiling: define the space above with a shading element; the umbrella shown is again a very lightweight answer.
Weight: A temporary installation should be literally lightweight and easy to pack in & pack out — particularly if you’re committed to a car-free Park(ing).

That said, it’ll cost more than $320 to furnish a Park(ing) Space at IKEA: a typical American parallel parking space is 9′ x 20′: large enough for four of those HAMPEN rugs, laid perpendicular to the curb, not just one laid parallel. Also, this seems like a great chance to show off some of their outdoor collection: a potted tree on a plant stand, for instance.

More resources: the official Park(ing) Day Manual, plenty of photos, and even more Flickr photos.