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Messy street patterns boost city's walkability

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Messy street patterns boost city's walkability


October 5, 2011

By Gerry Bellett

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Read More: http://www.vancouversun.com/touch/story.html?id=5504490


When novelist Charles Dickens went out for a walk, it was nothing unusual for him to cover more than a dozen miles in a night through the streets of London. And while no one at the Walk21 conference taking place this week in downtown Vancouver likely expects the average person to top that, the conference is providing information on how fostering walking can improve modern cities.

- Allan Jacobs, author of Great Streets, a consultant on urban design and a former director of San Francisco's city planning department, gave a presentation Tuesday entitled The Magic of Messing it Up: Making Automobile Streets More Walkable. Jacobs argued that cities that have the most complex and messy street patterns provide the most walkable and enjoyable experiences for visitors and residents. He listed cities that have numerous intersections per square mile as a guide to their walkability.

- For example, San Francisco has 300 intersections in the Market Street area, making that street almost a non-vehicle street, he said, along with Paris (281), Tokyo (988), Savannah, Ga., (538) and Portland (341). Venice, from which cars and bicycles are banned, has 1,725 intersections per square mile, he said. "It's very complex, it's very messy and people walk," he said.

- "Brasilia has 92 intersections and you don't walk there. Irvine, California is the classic automobile city. It has just 15 intersections, the lowest I've ever counted," he said. When it comes to walkability, Jacobs gives Vancouver two thumbs up for what the city has done so far. Following his presentation, he said he didn't have any advice for Vancouver's planners.

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Vancouver's seawall is 'probably the best walkability waterfront in the world,' according to a respected urban planning consultant, who is in the city for the Walk21 conference on how to foster walking in a modern city.

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