City 2.0 by TED Books

Author:TED Books [Books, Curator, TED]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TED Conferences

One example among many

In 2008, Prevention Magazine put Oklahoma City at the top of its list for “10 Worst U.S. Walking Cities.”21 While most other poorly ranked communities did nothing, the city and its leading institutions responded to this wake-up call in an unprecedented way. The outcome of this effort constitutes nothing less that the complete rebuilding of all streets in the city’s downtown core around the criteria of walkability.

Prior circumstances were certainly bleak. Most streets were multilane one-ways, which encourage more speeding than two-ways, due to the absence of opposing traffic and the ability of drivers to jockey from lane to lane. Many curbs had lost their parallel parking, that all-important barrier of steel that protects the sidewalk from moving cars. Street trees, which shelter and further protect pedestrians — as well as absorb storm water and carbon dioxide while reducing urban heat islands — were in short supply. Bike lanes were nonexistent, and traffic moved too fast for bikes to share the road or for pedestrians to feel comfortable on sidewalks, as oversized traffic lanes encouraged speeding. Most intersections had overlong left-hand and right-hand turn lanes, further discomfiting pedestrians.

All of this is changing. As planned, and now under construction, a mostly two-way system is replacing the mostly one-way system, and most turn lanes are gone. Lane widths are narrower, significantly reducing speeds. A comprehensive bicycle network now shares the road. Several thousand street trees are being planted.

In addition, the parallel parking count has been doubled, adding more than 800 spaces, all of them extracted from existing roadway dimensions. According to the National Main Street Program, each parking space removed from a street costs an adjacent business about $10,000 per year in sales. Although that process won’t work exactly the same in reverse, it is easy to see the likely benefit of turning excess driving lanes into 800 parking spaces.

Perhaps most significant, all of this change is happening with the blessing of a conservative public works department, in a culture where the car is king. Unavoidably, this was as much a political effort as a design effort, in which the planners — this author included — had to overcome initial recommendations against our pro-pedestrian proposals. Sometimes we still pinch ourselves to make sure this is really happening.

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