Required Reading

articles, websites, books and more - here's a heap of reading on various street reinvention issues

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ON STREETS & STREET DESIGN

Website: Livable Streets Initiative
The Livable Streets Initiative is an online community for people working to create sustainable cities through sensible urban planning, design, and transportation policy.

Website: Streetsblog
Streetsblog is a daily news source, online community and political mobilizer for the global Livable Streets movement. Launched in New York City in 2006, Streetsblog is building a Network of Livable Streets bloggers throughout North America and around the world.

Website: Streetfilms
Streetfilms is the video arm of the Livable Streets Initiative: producing educational, entertaining, and inspiring films for a sustainable urban environment. Short, on-line videos,

Website: Streets Education
Livable Streets Education helps classroom teachers and schools weave pertinent ideas about urban livability and advocacy into their curriculum.

Website: National Complete Streets Coalition
Complete streets are designed and operated to enable safe access for all users. Pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and transit riders of all ages and abilities must be able to safely move along and across a complete street.

Blog: Narrow Streets Los Angeles
a fantasy urban makeover in photographs

Info: What's a "Bollard?"
A bollard is a short vertical post. Originally it only meant a post[1] used on a quay for mooring. The word now also describes a variety of structures to control or direct road traffic ...

Info: What's a "Chicane?"
A chicane is an artificial feature creating extra turns in a roadway (usually a straight one), used in motor racing and on city streets to calm traffic.

Info: What's a "Toucan crossing?"
A toucan crossing is a type of pedestrian crossing found in the UK that also allows bicycles to be ridden across.

Info: What's a "Puffin crossing?"
A pedestrian user-friendly intelligent crossing (puffin crossing) is a type of pedestrian crossing. It differs from a pelican crossing in that the lights controlling the pedestrians are on the near side of the road …

ON PEDESTRIAN LIFE

Info: City of Eau Claire Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan
The City of Eau Claire adopted a Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan on March 23, 2010 recognizing the need for an increased awareness in pedestrian and bicyclist's needs.

Web Post: Pedestrian movement accelerates in '09
The attitude among creatives is increasingly becoming aligned with the notion that Cars are the new smoking. What's more interesting is the growing evidence...

Web Post: Public squares making a comeback in a big way
How can a city best create a strong identity for itself, provide that place one can count on for weekend entertainment, set the stage for public gatherings and pass the postcard test?

Web Post: Maryland's first pedestrian-only district
Ok, so those who've been down Silver Spring's Ellsworth Drive in Downtown Silver Spring feel like they're in Downtown Disney, but the takeaway here is that this is Maryland's first successful pedestrian-only district (on weekends) in decades.

Web Post: Trendsetting cities, neighborhoods looking at pedestrian-only streets
So what's the latest sign of things to come? Weekend pedestrian-only streets. Spurred by an international movement to close major urban thoroughfares to cars and allowing only pedestrians and bike …

Web Post: Montreal pedestrianizes 12 blocks for the summer
For those who relish the pedestrian-only districts that are prevalent in Europe, one need venture a little north to Montreal in the summers.

ON CAR PARKING

Article: Downtown loves diagonal parking
Diagonal or slanted parking spaces were added during the latest round of downtown street construction in order to lessen the burden on businesses.

Web Post: Back-In, Diagonal Parking
Columbia is planning to try back-in parking. The purpose of this experimental treatment is to increase safety for bicyclists and motorists on the roadway.

Article: Council approves diagonal parking plan
The city's rationale for changing downtown Main Street parking is pretty simple. "It gets us 13 more parking spaces in the business core, for the cost of paint," said Mayor Andrew Halverson.

Web Post: On-street Parking Enhancements
On-street parking can be both a benefit and a detriment to pedestrians. On-street parking increases positive "friction" along a street and can narrow the effective crossing width, both of which encourage slower speeds.

ON COMMUNITIES & PLACEMAKING

Website: CoolTownStudios
A 'weekdaily' newsite blog committed toward building inspiring "triple-bottom-line" places to live, work, learn and play.

Website: Project for Public Spaces (PPS)
Project for Public Spaces (PPS) is a nonprofit planning, design and educational organization dedicated to helping people create and sustain public spaces that build stronger communities.

Article: Home from Nowhere
Can the momentum of sprawl be halted? America's zoning laws, intended to control the baneful effects of industry, have mutated, in the view of one architecture critic, into a system that corrodes civic life, outlaws the human scale, defeats tradition and authenticity, and confounds our yearning for an everyday environment worthy of our affection.

ON MONEY MATTERS

Web Post: 'Angelic Crowdsourcing'
This is for when you're ready to invest $ collectively as a future community of tenants to develop a common product, such as that affordable, green-built, downtown loft building ...

Web Post: Establishing an investment network
There's no better way to present the kinds of communities, buildings and venues that the creative class, cultural creatives, influentials, and free agents want than to actually build or revitalize them. There is an emerging group of innovative developers ...

Web Post: Investing in 'Entrepreneur Villages'
With limited resources, a talent-producing university and recognition that a vibrant, affordable, 24-hour* urban center attracts entrepreneurs, municipalities and universities may find it in their best interests to consolidate their resources ...

SOME GOOD BOOKS

The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape
by James Howard Kunstler

The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
by William Whyte

Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream
by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck

The Death and Life of Great American Cities
by Jane Jacobs

Send your suggestions to mike [at] volumeone [dot] org