6 Common Mistakes Made By Cities and Towns in Urban Renewal
- indotplace
- Dec 15, 2016
- 2 min read
by Bill Adams
For the last half century, cities have attempted to repair the damage to their urban cores from migration to suburbs and exurbs. Redevelopment has evolved into smart growth, transit oriented development, and complete streets. In the last 15 years or so, the urban renewal efforts have had a receptive audience as people, tired of the car oriented lifestyle of the suburbs, are returning to urban cores and older urban neighborhoods. However, while cities get the big picture, too often in my 25 years as a land use attorney, I have seen the same mistakes repeated.
1) Failing to Understand How to Provide for Pedestrian and Other Active Transit:
Too often, cities and towns seem to think that all pedestrians need are sidewalks to walk on and greenery to look at. The same goes for bikes and bikelanes. It goes without saying that pedestrians and bikes work differently than cars, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. For example, a newish residential development near my home provides ample sidewalks along its curving streets. Much of the development is only a stones throw from a park and three public schools comprising K – 12.
Cars can drive there in a few minutes, but pedestrians must take the same circuitous route as cars, which of course takes much longer. A simple narrow walkway or stairs down the slope, to steep for cars but easily traversed by pedestrians , could have been a boon to walkers in the area. What makes this oversight particularly tragic is that in the adjacent older neighborhood where I reside, there are three sets of stairs that do exactly that, and which should have served as a model for the new development. Another example is in the downtown area in which my office is located.
The city has 200? x 300? blocks, which many planners, influenced more by conventional urban planning wisdom than practical walking experience, believe make the city particularly pedestrian oriented. However, my experience, corroborated by european visitors, is that walkers are forced to stop for cars and traffic lights every 200 or 300 feet. There are no pedestrian corridors in the downtown in which walkers need not stop so often. Each of these circumstances indicates a situation where thought was given to providing pedestrians safe walking space without much thought being given to the many pedestrians with destinations at which they would like to arrive in the shortest amount of time and with the least amount of effort.
The lesson: Pedestrians and active transit users need routes designed specifically for them, not simply as an add-on to routes designed for cars. Route planning should seek shortcuts and other opportunities that give walking or biking advantages over the automobile.
2) Safe and Exotic Trees
3) No Net Parking Loss
4) Wide Streets
5) Large Lot Development
6) Failing to Protect Existing Building Stock and Property Uses
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