Designed for Living, Engineered to Last
How a slogan used to sell cars could describe our future communities.
Since the onset of the automobile, American communities have been rebuilt and new cities and towns designed for our auto-centric culture. Roads were widened, vital public space devoted to storage for the family automobile that sat largely idle for 95% of its lifespan. While commuting times increase and space in cities devoted to car storage proves costlier every day, many American cities and towns are finding ways to push back against the car-dominance with small changes that are proving to have MAJOR impacts.
How our “Car First Approach” hurts our cities and towns
“Designed for Living. Engineered to Last” is an iconic slogan of one of America’s oldest car companies, Ford. However, the infrastructure needed to support the American automobile is massive and unsustainable for many communities. The roads cost money to expand and repair, the cars themselves cost the average American consumer over $10,000/ year (car payments, maintenance/ repairs, tolls, fuel, parking, insurance etc.) and the environmental impacts of these vehicles are only now being fully realized by scientists as one of the leading causes of climate change. In many cities, replacement costs of street lanes per mile can top $1 million and leave many cities holding the bag on massive geographic expansions away from their traditional downtowns. These factors have left many communities designed for driving. Engineered to collapse.
People Focused Communities on a Grand Scale
Enter Culdesac and their recent announcement of plans to develop an entire community of 1,000 residents without a single residential car in mind. In many communities, the space between buildings is reserved for automobiles and vehicle access with minimal yard and sidewalk space devoted to the pedestrian. In Culdesac Tempe, the space traditionally reserved for car storage and vehicle access is now communal space.
According to it’s designers at Opticos Design; “because the project does not have to accommodate the car, the Opticos team shifted the design focus to great urbanism and placemaking. It is similar in character to a Greek, Italian, or French historic village with irregular, narrow meandering paseos, a hierarchy of public spaces, and thoughtfully placed buildings and building elements that deliver a sense of discovery as you make your way through the project.”
When you don’t design your community to accommodate the automobile, it opens up a world of design possibilities similar to the most attractive tourist destinations in Europe. Communities built with this type of human-centric design are “built for living.” With the wealth of vibrant public spaces and open plazas, they are designed to foster community that is “engineered to last.”
Applying “Culdesac’s” human first design principles to today’s cities and towns
While Culdesac is working with a blank slate on land in the Arizona desert, thinking about your city or town’s roadway redundancies can present ample opportunity to create a new, vibrant streetscape that’s no longer just a place to move and store cars but a place to enjoy the day, engage with neighbors, watch the kids play with new friends and so much more!
In many cities and towns, nearly half of the total land area is devoted, in some way, to automobiles (parking lots, roads, driveways etc). What many are finding today is that these “roadway redundancies” provide a great opportunity to build a new, vibrant public space like a few of the examples listed below.
TONTINE CRESCENT- Boston, MA: The City of Boston partnered with the Downtown Boston Business Improvement District, Millennium Partners Development, Howard Stein Hudson and Ground, Inc. a local Boston based design firm to reinvent this far too wide one-way street into a new pedestrian plaza with minimal investment.
The plaza above is the second iteration which followed a day long intervention on the site to gather community feedback about what area workers and residents wanted to see here. Strategically, instead of hosting a community meeting in a far off City Building, designers and City Officials spread out tables, chairs and planters on the site inviting the public in, then surveying folks as to what they’d like to see. Letting residents exist in the new space while thinking about its future is a great way to not only engage new folks but also spur new and creative reuse ideas. Future plans for the site include a more permanent pedestrian plaza informed by studying the use patterns of visitors to the more tactical version in place today.
BATES ALLEY- Kalamazoo, MI: Bates Alley was a too wide vehicle alley way that exists in the heart of Downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan. Many residents who lived in the City for decades said “they’d walk right past and never even thought twice about it.” With the help of the MEDC’s Public Spaces, Community Places program which paired matching grant dollars with a successful crowdfunding campaign hosted on Patronicity, Downtown Kalamzoo was able to turn the alley into a vibrant destination for the entire City. Area businesses were able to create new outdoor seating options and local artists were able to share their passion and work with neighbors turning this once blighted, neglected alley into a destination and a model for future activation work.
THE EAGLE STREET INITIATIVE- North Adams, MA:
In North Adams, residents recognized the latent opportunities that existed on their historic downtown Main Street, Eagle Street. Once a year, thousands of area residents returned to the street to attend a massive beach party, but the rest of the year the street sat fairly quiet. Many of the stores were vacant and some of the buildings on the street had long sat underutilized. Parking was readily available on the street but there wasn’t really much public space between the densely packed buildings.
Utilizing just 2 parking spaces on the street, a new parklet become a hub for activity on the street, hosting coffee Friday’s drawing dozens of residents from the surrounding community drawing new life to the street. The parklet was built by local tiny home builders B&B Micro and funded through MassDevelopment’s Commonwealth Places program with Patronicity. Today, plans are in the works to turn Eagle Street into the regions first Woonerf, a shared pedestrian street and numerous buildings on the newly revitalized street have seen new investment from regional developers.
Street Playgrounds of Amsterdam
“Small interventions often evoke bigger changes. Local involvement in a design for a street in the city of Amsterdam became the stage for public participation. Potgieterstraat is situated in inner Amsterdam, in a context of 19th century buildings dating back to the first big enlargement of Amsterdam. The block typology of that time appears to the disadvantage of today’s public life, since the inner courtyards of these blocks are not open to public use and the streets were never designed for today’s traffic. In general there is a lack of public squares and public green.
The true benefit of this design is not obvious on a first glimpse. It is rather the reclaiming of local urban realm by its community. Parents but also citizens without children interact and relax here on wooden benches and around a little kiosk. The location becomes an anchor for neighborhood interaction and interlocks as well its surrounding blocks as well as helping to get together people of different backgrounds and ages. The basis of the success of this public domain was a side-product of this design. Whereas the main attraction is surely an exciting, unique playground, it succeeds in attracting a large percentage of locals, helping the neighborhood to lose its anonymity by stimulating neighborhood chats.”
Designed for Living. Engineered to Last
Culdesac has hit on a growing trend sweeping the globe. We’ve designed our cities to accommodate for something that spends 95% of its lifetime stagnant, parked in one place, taking up valuable space that could be used for far greater purposes. Today, cities and towns around the world are designing their own versions of Culdesac, adapting their streetscapes to people-first design and uses again. Building plazas and parklets across the Globe while also closing streets to cars and opening them to pedestrians, creating new opportunities for public space by reclaiming those spaces once overlooked, freely given over to the automobile’s dominance. We crave cities and towns designed for people. Designed for living an active lifestyle. Designed for fostering connection, building a community engineered to last.
