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These California designers and their imaginations. Steve Price shows people what their towns might look like if they were rebuilt along Smart Growth principles. At Narrow Streets: Los Angeles, David Yoon takes comically overbuilt streets in L.A. and Photoshops them down to a human scale. Here’s his reinvention of Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park:
On Yoon’s site, when you click the fat version of a street the skinny image pops out alongside. It’s fun. He also takes location requests.
“I'm not saying that Narrow Streets is meant to be taken literally,” Yoon says. “I think of it as concept art, and like all concept art it's meant to provoke discussion about the city, not as a foregone conclusion, but as a series of design choices. Sure, it's a do-over fantasy. But hopefully it sparks the imagination to also wonder: are the rules of the city really set in concrete? We're accustomed to our age of extreme makeovers when it comes to faces, bodies, and homes, but not our own urban environments. Time to ask: how can we re-invent what we have now?”
What we need now is some sort of giant street-squoosher to mash these monstrosities down to size. And a permit. Then again, if you have a squoosher, nobody’s gonna hassle you about permits.
Here’s the intersection of Van Nuys Street and Oxnard Boulevard:
Here’s First Street in Japantown:
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This was a waste of my time. So, some bored guys in L.A. photoshopped some streets, why is this newsworthy? Skinny streets make it hard for bicycles and pedestrians to co-exist so the idea has no merit. Grist is slipping.
Hmmm...kind of a strange concept. This article is a little "light" on content, too... I was expecting to read more about what else we could be doing with our city streets...I like the idea of showcasing what is possible...but really, these options aren't possible. The sqooshed images might inspire future city streets to be smaller, but there I see no inherent value in simply having a street be more narrow. If anything, it would probably be noisier for those apartment dwellers, certainly darker, and also less private. Streets would look like tunnels if they existed like this. I think of it NOT as concept art, but merely a demonstration of what is possible with Photoshop. What is more practical, and actually possible to retrofit on existing streets, would be to show some amazing pedestrian zones, where cars are not the focus, or perhaps not even permitted at all. The streets could be the same width, but there could be more biking lanes and green areas, with trees and native vegetation. People could be walking their dogs, biking to work, carrying our business as usual, wit maybe the occasional, small, slow car, appropriate for the city.
Here's a link to another Grist article, albeit a short one. It links to a video that shows what streets used to look like, and what they look like now that the car is the focus of urban planning. It is much more in line with a Grist topic, than the Photoshop advertisement seen above.
http://www.grist.org/article/2010-03-11-streetfilms-fixing-the-great-mistake-of-autocentric-development/
There is a very important point here, and that is how much space is devoted to cars in our cities. In some cities as much as 25% of the land is devoted to cars and car infrastructure. Many of the streets in these cities could have a whole row of building down the middle of them and still have room for streets on either side.
If you are worried about the apartment dwellers, go talk to someone who has lived in the old part of a medieval city, such as Venice. Many of those lanes and streets are narrower than these, and people love them.
The smaller the city the less the cost of getting infrastructure to each dwelling (ie, sewage, water, electricity, sidewalks etc.). This is a vital issue and perhaps needed to be highlighted in the article.
My only comment on some of the pictures - why waste space by allowing car parking on both sides of the new narrower street? The only thing worse than a moving car in a street is a parked car in a street. What a waste of useful space that could be free to allow more bikes, public transportation and pedestrians to get where they wanted to go...
You know... commenters like 'Wrightsfd' are a big reason our environmental community is often accused of being out of touch. Wrightsfd - your comment is so blindly off base; you clearly have no idea what you're talking about.
Quality, livable, compact design and development of places and spaces for human habitation are fundamental to the nurturing and conservation of our environment. One of the biggest factors in improving our built environment is finding ways to stop wasting space (land) the way we do in the US. We absolutely, positively, without a doubt over-engineer our streets and we waste immense space as a result and in doing so we create inhospitable, unwalkable (not just undesirable, but far too spread out to encourage walking) environments.
While I'll agree that this article might be somewhat "light on content" it serves an important purpose. This is what sites like grist are good for. They're not just for you - 'mr. or mrs. I know everything of value to the environment and this ain't it' - they're for those who might learn something about the built environment and how to improve it. The proven BEST way to change people's minds about the design of the built world and, well, anything else... is through visualization. Someone created a simple tool for that, and you come here and crap on it.
Best of all, you had this to say: "Skinny streets make it hard for bicycles and pedestrians to co-exist so the idea has no merit." If that's not the most ...read more
@jaked0x I like your take on my comment, however it is quite a personal attack. I didn't attack you personally did I? Admittedly my comments were negative but I'm no troll looking to piss people off. I commented on this article and the subject matter it dealt with, and my comment had very little to do with urban planning and more to do with a puff piece in Grist wasting my time. You bring up some interesting points and I would like to respond. First I'll start out with your last point: You state "you contributed nothing positive to a lively and interesting discussion" however since I was the first person to post there was no lively discussion. The article was, and still is, a waste of space on such a fine website as Grist. I've been reading Grist since the beginning and have volunteered at events as well as given lots of money to the organization so I feel that my comments are valid. Grist has been slipping lately and is pretty much only surviving to give Umbra a place to go every day.
In terms of urban planning I'll say that no I'm not an engineer pushing for sprawl, I'm a layman who lives in the BEST planned city in the USA, Chicago, IL; home of Daniel Burnham the father of modern city planning. I've read and studied much of his work and while it is not directly translatable to 2010 society (for example he wanted wide boulevards for the rich to cruise in their horseless carriages) it is still an interesting introduction to what can and can't ...read more
Oh, and to Yaz - I agree with almost everything you posted. The only thing I would say that street parking is actually an excellent move (though I completely agree that double-side street parking is unnecessary and probably just a factor in the photoshopping here). We need more street parking in the US and less surface lots. Garages are best, but not always the best option. And street parking is shown to slow down traffic, and reduce fatalities in pedestrian/car and bike/car accidents thanks to slower speeds.