COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

Signs of the Times
Creating pedestrian and cyclist friendly communities

By Fanis Grammenos

To drive around town, you need to comprehend a new language: sign language. There are literally hundreds of signs that tell you what you can’t do or warn you of impending risk; they keep proliferating and, at times, are quite confusing: no left turn, no right turn, no through movement (even though you stare at a street straight ahead), bump ahead (invisible under snow), detour and so on. These are the signs of our transition times.
When on foot, these signs matter little. But there is one very new sign that means a lot to a pedestrian and it stirs anticipation and pleasure: exclusive pedestrian route ahead. This preferential treatment draws the same reaction from cyclists. This sign proclaims the start of a new era.
Cyclists, it seems, started us on the road-sign path back in the 1870s, before cars showed up. Being the only ones to travel at twice plus the speed of horse-drawn wagons, they raised the need for added caution and safety diligence, particularly with their rudimentary brakes and wheels prone to malfunctioning. More than a century later, the new sign spells out who really drives the change in planning communities: pedestrians and bikes. In some countries bike plus walk trips have overtaken car trips and this trend is universal and accelerating. Planners are urgently re-tooling for the new wave.
For over three generations city streets have been overtaken by cars, trucks, trams, buses and all manner of motorized transport; we need them and love them. But mechanized wheels gobble up street space with their size and speed and leave little room for the undersized, slow pedestrian or bicycle; they squeeze them to the side and put them at high risk, not to mention the constant, sometimes deafening, noise and exhaust fumes.

Filtered Permeability
What happened to the leisurely, pleasant, chatty stroll down a main or neighbourhood street? Where are the kids playing games on it? Simple: eclipsed and forbidden. But new light is starting to sweep the streets again and render them not only usable but also enjoyable. In Germany first (2009) and now in other European countries, the road sign dictionary has officially accepted a newcomer, one that means: “connected, though it may not seem so, for muscle-powered movement only. Kids are welcome.”
This stems from the innovative planning techniques. Since the 1970s, developers started to lay out communities that catered to pedestrians and bicycles like Milton Keynes in the UK, Village Homes in the US, Vauban in Germany, Houten in the Netherlands and Saddlestone in Canada.
What these places have in common is a simple design feature: connected cul-de-sacs and crescents. Cleverly, what seems to be the end of a road is only so for the driver; the pedestrian or cyclist can move past, sometimes for many blocks, to reach other neighbourhoods, schools, gyms, shops and parks. This simple configuration produces two desirable effects with one stroke: safe and sociable neighbourhoods and fully accessible districts by foot and bike with lower risk.
Recent research (2012) confirms these outcomes and more. One study concluded that traffic calming alone on a through street will not increase children’s play or adult socializing. The street that does it best is a connected cul-de-sac. A second study showed that when counting the paths that are separate from the roads, the community is far more accessible than when merely looking at road intersections. A third study showed that people will walk and bike more, even compared to a scenario where these paths became roads.
Academics call this idea “filtered permeability” to express the fact that a network layout filters out cars and filters through pedestrians and bikes. In practice it means that when you draw the highly popular cul-de-sac street you must also draw a link to another street or a park via a pedestrian and bicycle path in order to harvest these benefits. It is also necessary to ensure that such a path connection continues beyond to adjacent blocks and neighbourhoods.
Having used this technique, you can now proudly raise the sign of the coming times, when walking and biking would be a true (and safe) pleasure.

Fanis Grammenos heads Urban Pattern Associates, a planning consultancy, following a 20-year research career at CMHC. He can be reached at fanis.grammenos@gmail.com and his work viewed at: http://blog.fusedgrid.ca.