My Built Environment: Good, Bad, and Really Ugly

Okay, I will admit, this is not fugly, just plain dumb. It also isn’t often I give a fugly award to a project that I just gave high accolades too (see previous post). But as part of the Seventh Street reconstruction project, the planners decided to add diaganol parking, that you have to BACK INTO! I can only imagine the fender benders that are going to occur with someone stopping in traffic, starting to back up into the parking spot, only to have the person behind them not notice and running into them. This parking situation has had such an outcry against it, that the planners have decided to never do it again. Don’t get me wrong, I think diagonal parking is a great idea, and should be encouraged on more streets, but done the traditional way with pulling in forwards, and then backing out. A lot less dangerous in my opinion.

Recently, Grand Junction, Colorado has been spending a lot of time and money rebuilding its external downtown streets, and generally doing an excellent job. Basically, they are continuing the successful reworking of Main Street that was completed in the early 1960’s and was nationally acclaimed. This is also one of the first downtown streetscapes that I have seen that constructed a round-a-bout in an existing downtown intersection, and done very successfully.

Also included with this reconstruction was a lot of attention paid to the pedestrian environment. Sidewalks were widened, outdoor dining areas created, pedestrian scale lighting, and enhanced crosswalks. Low brick walls have also been incorporated to provide additional seating, and to separate pedestrians from street traffic.

The particular project these photos are from is 7th Street. This involved a reconstruction of approximately six blocks of a four lane street. Since then, they have also reconstructed five blocks of Colorado Avenue in a similar fashion.

On both of these, the City of Grand Junction has done a fabulous job, and this will serve as a model for other cities to look to as they rebuild their downtown streets. Downtown Grand Junction also has a lot of land that is begging to be redeveloped. If you know of anyone who would be interested in a long term investment, let me know!

One of my readers, lostfortcollins.com, directed me to this fabulous video on nature returning to the abandoned neighborhoods of Detroit. Now my curiosity is really piqued, and I will add to my plate doing some further research and reporting on Detroit.

The original video is on Current.com

http://current.com/e/76380402/en_US

View Larger Map
I will admit that I have never been to Detroit, nor have I ever had any inkling too, but with all the recent press that Detroit has been getting with regards to the automobile industry, and the state of the housing economy there, I thought I would make a Google visit. As with most of my tours, I start with the downtown area. I immediately became intrigued with Detroit with the overall layout of downtown. All the major streets are broad parkways that are heavily landscaped, and all of these parkways pinwheel out from a central park. Very nice indeed, and a classic layout seen in many great cities. I also like the fact that the ballparks are oriented to the adjacent streets. The whole downtown area is very pedestrian friendly (at least from bird’s eye), and extraordinarily well laid out.

Of course, from the air, you also see the downside. There is a tremendous amount of surface parking lots, and a fair amount of empty space between buildings. This provides opportunity for infill, with a good structure already in place. This of course, ignores the current economic climate of Detroit.

View Larger Map

Now one of the things that amazed me even more, was traveling less than a mile and a half outside of downtown, and there are blocks and blocks and blocks of vacant land…street are there, but few structures. I have to ask myself, what happened here? In most cities, you see very dense neighborhoods fairly close to the city core. And this isn’t unique to this one area of Detroit, cruising around, this goes on for miles.

But why? Is there environmental pollution? Were these neighborhoods intentionally torn down, was there some kind of great fire? If you go miles out from the city core, you can find all kinds of new home development going on (or at least there was). So why has the city core all but been abandoned?

With all the talk these days about sustainability and redevelopment, this is an area where redevelopment should be strongly encouraged, in and orderly fashion. Why is the development in the suburbs, eating up raw land and having to extend utilities, when there is all this land close in, with all the infrastructure in place to support new development? I realize I am taking a rather simplistic view of this, as there are all kinds of other factors such as crime rates, environmental concerns, economic concerns etc. But these kinds of issues have been overcome in other areas, so why not here? I think as a society, we need to take a hard look at our priorities, and take a harder look at sprawl and urban development.

If anybody has any insight as to what happened in these neighborhoods of Detroit, I would love to here them!

Last month, ASLA’s blog, The Dirt, posted a ditty on Back Alley Walkability. I posted a comment that I would write about what Fort Collins has done recently to create walkable alleys, so here it is!

Like Architect David Winslow, Fort Collins downtown alleys are also widely used by pedestrians. In 2004 The City of Fort Collins, in conjunction with the Downtown Development Authority (DDA) embarked on a plan to improve two of the alleys that had been widely used by pedestrians for years as mid-block shortcuts. One of the alleys, Trimble Court, (pictured to the left) was a mid-block shortcut between the main drag of College Avenue and Old Town Square, a pedestrian mall. This alley already had a well established artists studio on it. The other alley, Tenney Court, became a widely used pedestrian shortcut after the construction of the Civic Center Parking Structure.

Both alleys had numerous trash dumpsters, utility boxes, poor lighting, and were generally unattractive. The goals of the city and the DDA was to consolidate trash dumpsters, screen and/or relocate utility boxes, vastly improve lighting and other pedestrian amenities such as providing benches, planters, new paving, and the improve the drainage and more.

As can be seen in the photos, all this has been achieved and more. The picture shown to the left, Tenney Alley, was in terrible shape prior to redevelopment. There were numerous trash dumpsters, graffitti, and a severely sloping pavement to accomodate the drainage. This carried through all the way to the public street. Prior to the year 2000, this alley was mostly a service alley. However, in 2000, the civic center parking structure was completed within this block, and therefor this alley became a pedestrian shortcut between the parking garage and the downtown shopping district. This parking garage also has liner stores and offices (of which our office is located), so a lot of employees also used this alley.

The major issue that was solved with this alley reconstruction, was the drainage. They installed a new drain line, leveled off the alley, and installed new modular pavers that really give the alley life. In addition, new light fixtures and planters were added. The light fixtures dramatically improved the nighttime safety of the alley, while the planters add a lot of summer color.However something else happened after this alley was completed that the DDA hoped would happen…a local businees owner reconstructed the alley facade of there building to create an inviting entrance off Tenney Court. Hopefully this will be the first of many revitalizations of Fort Collins Alleys. Another fun aspect of this particular alley, through the art in public places program, the utility boxes were turned into public art! A local artist has been painstakintly painting these boxes with a bubble motif…Note, that she is doing this by hand!

Both of these alleys recently won an urban design award from the City of Fort Collins, issued to the designers, EDAW and BHA designs.