Yesterday I went to a forum on walkable design sponsored by PEDS (www.peds.org). A few of the more interesting points:
*The mayor of Decatur claimed that Decatur vehicle counts were lower now than in the 1990s.
*Lots of people pointed out the importance of street design. Uses and transportation facilities change, but streets are forever; for example, Attilla the Hun sacked Rome, but the Roman street pattern survived him. Unfortunately, this means bad streets are hard to change.
*Long blocks are unpleasant for pedestrians; for example, Manhattan's long avenues are unpleasant, its short north-south streets much more pleasant.
*Too few streets means low connectivity (i.e. very few ways for pedestrians to get around): for example, one big-box Whole Foods takes up 11 Manhattan blocks.
*Sally Flocks showed a table with an alarming correlation between street width and pedestrian fatalities. Once a street got more than about 24 feet wide, fatalities started to rise.
*Grass can be bad (e.g. a lawn that sets back a building from the street); asphalt can be good (e.g. sidewalks).
All common sense when you think about it.
