One of the characteristics of streets is that once you lay them out, they tend to be fairly permanent. This can be a benefit when you get it right, like in the case of Manhattan’s celebrated grid plan. But it can be a real challenge when you get it wrong, or when you’ve designed them around a particular use and you then later decide that you want something different. In my view, one of the greatest city building challenges around is trying to take a place that was designed exclusively for cars and turn it into a place that is designed for pedestrians. That said, the above video by Spin is a great reminder that there are lots of things that can be done, and in some cases they don’t necessarily need to cost a lot of money. In this video, they transform an intersection in Salt Lake City into a safer and more enjoyable place for pedestrians and for people riding bikes and scooters.
Category: Urbanism
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Proximity matters for knowledge spillovers
I am at my most creative when I’m in the same room with other people and we are bouncing ideas around. There’s a compounding effect that takes place. One person says something and that then triggers a new idea. I find the whole experience very rewarding and, for me, it’s a reminder that creativity can be a process. It is also a reminder that proximity is important for those of us who have jobs that deal in creativity.
We have spoken a lot about this on the blog, but here is an interesting and recent study that looked at knowledge transfers across different tech startups within one of the largest co-working spaces in the US. For context, the co-working space itself consisted of five floors, about 100,000 square feet, and housed 251 different startups. To measure knowledge transfer, the researchers looked at instances of a startup adopting a component of a peer’s technology stack.
What they found was the following:
- Knowledge exchange is greater amongst startups that are dissimilar
- Close physical proximity greatly influences the chance of knowledge spillovers; however, this effect quickly falls off
- After 20 meters or so, there’s almost no difference between being down the hall or being on a separate floor within the building
- One of the ways you can counteract this last finding is to create shared spaces; startups with overlapping common areas, such as a kitchen, saw greater distances of influence
In short: proximity matters.
If you’d like to download a full copy of the study, click here.
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Stairs and balconies
Perhaps the two most distinctive features of Montreal’s low-rise architectural landscape are (1) lots of exterior stairs and (2) lots of balconies. (Their density is, of course, also noteworthy, particularly in a North American context.)
The exterior stairs are somewhat curious to outsiders given all the snow the city gets. But it’s maybe a good case study and follow-up to yesterday’s post about 1925 Victoria Park Road and its proposed exterior corridors.
As for the second feature, the Globe and Mail recently published this wonderful little ode to the Montreal balcony. It is a great reminder that, when designed well, people really do love balconies and exterior spaces.
This is an ongoing debate in the world of multi-family development, and the outcomes often vary by city and sometimes by housing tenure. But at the end of the day, I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t appreciate getting outside in the summer.
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Optimizing for cars
Vox recently profiled what they are calling the deadliest road in America — a certain section of US-19 running along the Gulf Coast of Florida. It is generally an 8-lane road — 9 at most intersections — and so as you might expect, it is place that was designed for cars.
From 2017 to 2022, US-19 saw 34 pedestrian fatalities involving a car for every 100 miles. Indeed, this stat makes it the deadliest highway in the state of Florida for people on foot.
The other telling stat for me is the road’s crosswalk spacing. This is a place that is lined with restaurants, hotels, and many other commercial uses, and yet the crosswalks are sometimes spaced miles apart.
This kind of street scale is mind boggling for pedestrians. No one in their right mind is going to go out of their way a mile or two just to cross a road, and so it’s no wonder that people are jaywalking and that too many people are getting hit.
I know that our tendency is to try and solve these problems with things like flashing lights, speed radars, and orange flags that people can unceremoniously waive as they cross the street. But at the end of the day, this is an urban design problem.
Spaces that are optimized for cars are, by definition, not optimized for pedestrians. The choice is ours.
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Introducing 100 Lombard
Earlier this week, Slate Asset Management and Forum Asset Management submitted a new development proposal for 100 Lombard Street in downtown Toronto.
At the time of writing this post, the applications (zoning by-law amendment and site plan control) hadn’t yet hit the city’s website. So here’s some information about the project, including its big moves:
- This is the first mixed-use residential project in Toronto designed by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). The proposal includes residential, office, and retail spaces.
- Architecture by OMA and WZMH Architects. Heritage by ERA Architects. Landscape and public realm by Claude Cormier + Associés. Planning by Urban Strategies. Structure by Stephenson Engineering.
- The principal architectural idea is to create a vertical urban village through a series of “urban rooms” interspersed throughout the tower. These spaces would serve as amenities for the building and house a variety of different functions. See above rendering.
- The proposal introduces three important public realm moves: (1) a new public plaza that pays homage to the site’s former neighbor to the east — Second City; (2) a new mid-block pedestrian connection running north-south from Richmond Street East to Lombard Street; and (3) an outdoor public art gallery featuring oversized art tableaus.
- The site currently houses one designated heritage building (86 Lombard Street), and the design contemplates relocating and fully retaining this building on the eastern edge of the site. Once you see the drawings, you’ll fully understand why this was the most logical move.
The entire project team is very excited to get this proposal out and into the world. And we hope that you will see it as being representative of our ongoing and lasting commitment to elevating architecture, sustainability, culture, and city building in Toronto.
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Turns out, pedestrianization actually increases retail sales volumes
As many of you know, I have been keeping a close eye on the pedestrian-only pilot that is currently underway on Market Street. And judging from all the engagement that my tweets usually get, a lot of you would love to see a lot more of this kind of urbanism both here in Toronto and elsewhere. (When Kensington Market?) The below photo was taken on Friday evening and Cirillo’s Academy, which is a culinary event space at the foot of the pedestrian-only stretch, was running some sort of event. All of the tables were filled with diners and it was basically a full fledged restaurant in the middle of the street. It was great to see.
But the question that always comes up with these sort of initiatives, particularly here in North America, is: Will it hurt the businesses? To answer that, here’s a study that @economistcarson shared with me on Twitter that looks at the economic impact of street pedestrianization in Spanish cities. What the researchers did was essentially look at card transaction data from a major Spanish bank and then overlay it on top of land-use changes from an Open Street Map dataset. In doing so, they discovered some pretty important takeaways.
Here’s what they found:
- Pedestrianization actually increases retail sales volumes
- Geographic location within a city tends to be insignificant
- The two key factors for driving revenue are: (1) store density and (2) store category
- For store category, the largest positive effect was observed for cafes, restaurants, bars, and other non-tradeable, local consumption activities
What this last point is saying is that people, at least in Spanish cities, tend to prefer pedestrian-friendly environments when it comes to experience-based activities. And that makes complete sense. On the other hand, if you’re just running out for a little toilet paper and hemorrhoid cream, having a nice pedestrian-first experience is less critical. And this also makes sense.
Some of you, I’m sure, will correctly point out that Spain has, on average, better weather compared to a place like Canada. And that their store densities and overall densities are likely higher, and that they have deep historic urban fabrics to rely on. All of these things are certainly factors. But I don’t think any of this should stop us from working to better optimize our cities for pedestrians. There are lots of successful examples all across Canada. It can work. Just look at Market Street.
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Casey Neistat needs to make a YouTube video about cycling in High Park
I love High Park. It’s the second largest green space in the City of Toronto and right beside the Junction neighborhood. But there are some problems. Despite having a subway line on its northern boundary, we’ve gotten the built form along its edges all wrong.
There’s very little functioning retail. The densities and heights are not nearly high enough. The streets aren’t great walking streets. And we’ve even gone and created undignified bus stops like this one here.
On top of all this, we’re now doing this silly thing where police are ticketing cyclists for riding around the park with too much vigor and enthusiasm. I’m sure somebody called to complain and this is all reactionary politics, but an even bigger reaction has now been set off.
For those of you who haven’t been following or aren’t from Toronto, hundreds of cyclists took to the streets this week to peacefully protest what has been going on in High Park.
The Globe & Mail then followed it up with this important piece calling for an end to cars inside the park. The boundaries currently house about 5 km of roads and almost 600 parking spots.
Given all this, I figured now is probably a good time to revive one of Casey Neistat’s original YouTube videos called “bike lanes.” The story is that he gets a ticket for not riding in a bike lane. And so he films a video of himself only riding in bike lanes — even if there are obstacles in his way.
It’s an awesome video with nearly 30 million views. And I’m sure that many of you have felt like doing exactly what he does when faced with this same situation. I know I have.
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Manhattan is still looking at a congestion charge for south of 60th Street
We talk a lot about congestion charges and road pricing on this blog. Here’s a list of some of those posts. I found 46 that were tagged with “road pricing.”
I continue to believe that it’s the only way that big cities can effectively solve the problem of traffic congestion. It’s not being caused by the bicycle lanes that were just added to your street. It’s not the new COVID street patios. And it’s not the new apartment that was just built with too many parking spots.
The problem is mispricing.
If you want free roads, then you don’t get free-flowing traffic. That’s how this equation works, which is why I have always thought it a good idea to dynamically price roads based on demand, and then to direct those funds toward more efficient forms of mobility — such as transit.
Despite all this, it’s not a very popular approach in this part of the world. Toronto looked at road pricing back in 2016, but we got nervous and backed away from it. New York City has also been looking at a congestion charge for Manhattan south of 60th Street for at least 4-5 years. But this one appears to still be on the table.
According to this recent CityLab article, New York’s congestion prices could look something like this (note that this chart includes other pre-existing tolls):
But with some exceptions (I think this is an interesting approach):
Primary residents of the Manhattan central business district, which is south of 60th Street, and New York State residents with adjusted gross income of less than $60,000 would be eligible for a state tax credit equal to the amount of the new tolls, paid during the taxable year.
In total, this current pricing scheme is expected to generate an additional $1 billion in annual revenue for the city’s transportation authority. The MTA also plans to bond against this revenue and raise an additional $15 billion for new transit projects.
This sounds like a reasonable approach to me.
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New Taipei Performing Arts Center by OMA
The new OMA-designed Taipei Performing Arts Center opened up last Sunday and so you’ll now find lots of articles, photos, and drone videos circulating around online. The two partners-in-charge, Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten, were also on this Monocle on Design episode talking about the genesis of the project and how they worked to optimize the various theater spaces.
My favorite part of the whole story is how they actually won the design competition. The site is located next to Taipei’s renowned Shilin Night Market. And I can attest to this fame because I spent a summer living in Taipei while I was in university. This night market was the thing I was immediately told I needed to visit as soon as I stepped off the plane. And they weren’t wrong. I spent many a nights with those stinky tofu dishes that smell like feet but actually taste pretty good.
But for whatever reason, the competition brief stipulated that the night market was to be torn down in order to make way for this new performing arts center. And since it was in the brief, almost everyone took it as a non-negotiable given. The only firm that didn’t — out of 140 bidders — was OMA. They questioned why the city couldn’t have both: a new performing arts center and their wildly successful night market.
So that’s how OMA — at least partially — won the competition. And I’m certain that Taipei is better for it.
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A case study in urban resiliency
One of the most exciting city building projects going on in Toronto right now is the revitalization of the 715-acre Port Lands area (here’s a map if you’d like to get situated). Despite its massive scale, it doesn’t seem to be receiving a lot of attention. And that’s probably because, at this stage, it’s mostly infrastructure work. It’s just a lot of soil being moved around.
But it’s of course important work. The mouth of the Don River (where it meets Lake Ontario) was never properly engineered for resiliency, and so the entire area is at risk of flooding. That’s why this $1.25 billion effort to re-naturalize its interface is currently underway. The above video does a good job explaining just what that entails.
At the same time, it is creating a wonderful city building opportunity — new parks for the illegal drinking of craft beers, new wildlife habitat, new meandering rivers for kayaking, and of course new housing and new jobs. But when you look at what’s planned, it’s hard not to feel like we’re missing the mark in terms of density.
The plan for Villiers Island calls for some 4,900 homes (according to this Globe and Mail article). And the plan for the entire area calls for only about 20,000 homes (according to this recent Bloomberg article). Surely there’s room for at least a few more — especially if we’re hoping to support a new LRT line to the area.
