Yes, but how?

Daylighting Melbourne: how we can transform our cities, street by street

Let us Not-Plan. Instead, let’s break urban transformation into a series of small, progressive steps, enabling people, technology, place, and environment to be aligned a little more carefully, and unlocking better streets as we go

Cars have laid waste to our cities. The sister article to this piece lays out how, but also what some cities are beginning to do about it. Not all cars, and not all of the time, but generally, at the ‘greater than the sum of the parts’ level that cities embody, the systemic impact of reorienting the city around the car has been deleterious. Within the article above is a note pointing to a particular design strategy for unpicking the car-dominated street, bit by bit. This piece expands upon that, working as a kind of extended footnote. Note: as a playbook entry, it’s detailed; so perhaps read it in pieces.

The street is the basic unit of city. It is where the city comes together. It is unique to the city, in a way that other roads, or buildings, are not. It is not the freeway (despite some transport planners’ best efforts) nor is it the residential cul-de-sac or country lane. It is where we live, work and play, where the…