What Makes Walkable Communities Work

[M II A II R II K]

What Makes Walkable Communities Work


JUNE 26, 2018

By NEAL TEMPLIN

Read More: https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-ma...ork-1530065220

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Since construction began on Seaside, Fla., and other communities in the 1980s, developers have built hundreds of towns where residents can live, play and sometimes work without pulling their cars out of the garage. Many destinations that matter to residents—stores, parks, schools, restaurants and churches—are within a five-minute walk.

- Many new developments are stand-alone, like the first wave of walkable projects. But planners have also been using the same principles in recent years to help reinvigorate an estimated 750 aging suburbs or dying shopping centers. — In the meantime, architects, developers and city planners have learned a lot about what works and doesn’t work when it comes to creating walkable communities—whether stand-alone or not.

- In most conventional subdivisions, traffic engineers aim to create road systems that quickly move cars out of the neighborhood. By contrast, town planner Susan Henderson, of Albuquerque, N.M., wants to slow down traffic speeds so that streets become safer and more walkable. — “I want it safe for the kids to play in the street,” says Ms. Henderson, who has planned communities including The Waters, located near Montgomery, Ala.

Ms. Henderson designs streets as “skinny” as possible so that drivers aren’t comfortable going over 15 miles an hour, and pedestrians are more at ease walking near traffic. She doesn’t use speed bumps, saying that they aren’t necessary in such properly designed streets. — Ideally, Ms. Henderson says, streets in walkable communities are kept to a mere 32 feet across—compared with 38 to 40 feet for a typical suburban road.

- Main streets with retail shops are tougher to gauge simply by width. These streets can be as wide as comparable suburban thoroughfares, but they are redesigned to make them more pedestrian-friendly, such as putting parking lanes on the sides or maybe grassy medians down the middle. — Another common tactic to make walkers feel more comfortable around traffic: trees that separate the sidewalk from the street.

- Block length must also be finely calibrated to encourage walking. If blocks are longer than 300 feet—about the length of a Manhattan block—Ms. Henderson says, pedestrians have trouble taking an efficient, direct route to destinations. — Every building in a walkable community should have “a gift to the street”—that is, something that captures a walker’s attention, says Miami-based urban planner Steve Mouzon.

- For houses, the gift can be as simple as a flower garden or a bench in the front for walkers. For commercial buildings, it might be an interesting window display. The village of Providence in Huntsville, Ala., where Mr. Mouzon is the town architect, encourages builders to use gates that are set back 3 or 4 feet from fences around homes to give a more welcoming feel, and create variety in the architecture.

- Another town where Mr. Mouzon is the architect—Beachtown, near Galveston, Texas—takes a different approach. The homes are built on stilts because hurricanes scour the area, so when homes have fences the town encourages builders to construct arbors over the gates. — The goal is to fill space between the houses—which are as high as 16 or 17 feet in the air—so that the buildings fit together pleasingly, and thus encourage walking.

- In addition, there were fears that the home height would cut the connection between occupants and those passing by. So, the developer required all homes to have front porches that were set back the right distance so that people on the street could talk to people above without straining their neck, says Beachtown founder Tofigh Shirazi. — Resident Sally Greer says that she and her husband were sitting on the porch the other day when a neighbor walked by. “He heard our voices and came over, and we chatted for a while,” she says.

- Every block in Seaside is designed to give the walker a destination within sight. Many of the streets end in pavilions leading to the beach, and the town nestles around a central square with bustling restaurants, a grocery store and other commercial uses. — Of course, such commercial destinations can’t spring up from the outset. Rather, the gestation period can be decades, as villages build up a critical mass of residents to support retailers.

- Carlton Landing in Oklahoma plans to have 3,000 homes but will take 30 years to complete. For now, it has 180 completed homes—enough to support a small pizza restaurant, two food trucks, plus 10 pop-up shops that open on weekends. — “We see retailing as something you have to incubate,” says town founder Grant Humphreys. Architect Andrés Martin Duany, who designed both Seaside and Carlton Landing, says that it takes around 25 years before walkable communities are “hitting on all cylinders.”

- Cities and urban planners are turning their focus from walkable neighborhoods to walkable cities. But they’re learning that for the idea to work, they must build in links to mass transit—or else people will eventually need cars to get around. Southern California adopted a plan in 2016 that includes $550 billion in mass-transit spending through 2040 while subsidizing high-density developments. The hope is to create communities that use walking and biking for short commutes and mass transit for longer ones.

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In Seaside, Fla., narrow streets keep traffic speeds down, and short blocks encourage residents to walk. Photo: DPZ






Homes elevated to weather hurricanes in Beachtown, near Galveston, Texas, have front porches set back so that people on the street can talk to people above. Photo: Beachtown





Seaside is full of destinations for people on foot, including this public space where food vendors gather. Photo: DPZ





Beachtown and other walkable communities have much greater housing density than most suburbs, enabling them to support retailers within walking distance of residents. Photo: Beachtown






A rendering of the kind of development planners hope to achieve along the Metro Blue Line in Long Beach, Calif., as part of a regional push toward higher-density, transit-oriented communities. Photo: Fregonese Associates