Broken Sidewalk Archives
Posts Tagged Urban Design
If you can't find what you are looking for, try searching for it below:
Tag Archives: Urban Design
What About Cobblestone Streets?
Many of Louisville’s streets were originally paved in brick or cobblestone. Today, we occasionally can find a patch of cobblestones poking through damaged asphalt, but there are very few actual brick or cobblestone streets left in the city. It seems most will either love or hate cobblestone streets. One stretch of Fourth Street near Broadway had its cobblestones ripped up several years ago allegedly after theater-going ladies couldn’t walk across them with high heels. We say some streets won’t work with cobblestones, but others are just waiting to be restored.
There are definite pros and cons with a cobbled street. They help with traffic calming as the texture keeps cars going at a manageable pace and they definitely help create a sort of historic charm, but they are expensive to set correctly and can present challenges for biking. Proper design could take care of this, however.
A properly installed and well maintained cobblestone street can be pretty smooth, too. In one Brooklyn neighborhood in New York, the city is spending over $20 million to restore and repave dilapidated cobblestone streets back to their original condition. Our cobblestone streets are still there, just inches below the asphalt surface. From major roads like Market Street to minor alleys, there are tens of thousands of stones sitting idle.
Not every street should be cobbled. Smaller neighborhood streets where traffic speeds should be less are ideal candidates. Guthrie or Armory Street downtown or Washington or Franklin Streets in Butchertown or any number of narrow streets in Louisville historic neighborhoods come to mind. Should we re-cobble Louisville? What streets are the best candidates for restoration or why should we stick with our smooth blacktop roads? Send in your opinions in the comments.
PrintNew Sidewalks: Fleur-de-Lis Construction Fence Removed
Construction fence removed from the Fleur-de-Lis
The construction fences have been removed from the Fleur-de-Lis condos on the corner of Preston and Main Streets, revealing a streetscape long barred from pedestrians. The last time we remember walking along this stretch of Main Street, the old Brinley-Hardey complex was still standing and boarded up. We had forgotten what the town looks like from this particular angle, and as it turns out: not bad.
This intersection is one of the most transformed in all of Louisville with Slugger Field and a new condo building across Preston. The Preston Pointe building across Main Street (by the same architect as the FDL, Potter & Associates), shows off its shiny steel angles pretty well, too, from the new sidewalk. The sidewalk design follows what has been done elsewhere in the area surrounding the ballpark: red and black bricks with street trees. This stretch, though, features granite curbs and of course, a new luxury mixed-use building.
New sidewalks at the Fleur-de-Lis
The work on the exterior of the building is all but done (some steps and a few metal panels aren’t finished). Beginning next year, work will resume finishing the interior spaces including two landscaped courtyards. Waterproofing should be done in the coming weeks and planting medium and some plants will be installed shortly after that. Other cold-sensitive plants will be installed in the spring.
Before any plants hit the building, though, we should be seeing actual human life on the property. The first condo will close next Wednesday and moving trucks will soon be parked along the street. 33 of the building’s 82 units have been sold so far and a model unit is open for tours on Sundays. One last note we don’t really know much about: is Preston Street soon to be two-directional between Main and Market? New street lights were installed a little while back facing both ways, so maybe the street’s in for a change.
- Snapshot: Fleur-de-Lis Update: November 2008 (Broken Sidewalk)
- Snapshot: Fleur-de-Lis Update: October 2008 (Broken Sidewalk)
Learning To Speak Bardstown Road’s Urban Language
Built Form Along Bardstown Road
Bardstown Road is hands down our readers’ favorite Louisville street. It’s the birthplace of Keep Louisville Weird, seems to twist and turn endlessly with more and more stuff to see and do, and probably has the highest pedestrian counts in all of the River City. Wikipedia gives us a little history lesson on the street:
“Bardstown Road was originally a turnpike (with a macadamized surface), and tolls were collected at toll gates along the way. The portion of the road nearest to Louisville was free, so as Louisville grew, the first gatehouse moved further out. The earliest was at Beargrass Creek; it then moved to what is now the intersection of Broadway and Baxter, and subsequently to what is today Patterson and Bardstown, then to Eastern Parkway and Bardstown by 1873. It was at Speed Avenue by 1901, when the turnpike was sold to the city. The second tollgate was permanently located near today’s Bashford Manor Lane and Bardstown.”
Early development on the street was residential. Many of the original houses still line the strip, but have now mostly become commercial or mixed-use, often with urban projections meeting the sidewalk. This slow and incremental growth pattern still dominates the urban form of Bardstown Road and is in some ways what helps to make the thoroughfare so unique.
Built Form Along Bardstown Road
You can see in the above diagram how early property subdivision created oddly shaped parcels. As the road stretch out away from the city, houses were built on the narrow lots but did not necessarily face the street directly. As new buildings and additions emerged, a jagged, saw-tooth “urban edge” began to form creating small pockets of public space now used for outdoor dining and the like.
This pattern was unplanned, but fulfills a direct need for space in the crowded city. There are dozens of examples of this “urban notch” along the road. We hope that future planned development can learn from the accidental successes of the past and incorporate small yet nuanced public space into their design. While old houses built with layer upon layer of sequential growth are often obscured beyond recognition, the physical history of the street is preserved like a layer cake.
Click through for more photos of Bardstown Road’s ‘urban notch.’
Street Parking Done Right at Liberty Green
Parking lanes at Liberty Green
Liberty Green is moving right along on the former site of the Clarksdale Housing projects. Grassy fields are being filled in with new apartments playing off the notion of “traditional” historic Louisville architecture. We’ll try to get a more comprehensive post on the development later, but today it’s all about the details. One of the best details in the entire development, though, has nothing to do with urban infill or architecture, but with good urban design: parking lanes.
We’ve been advocating this type of well-designed parking lane for some time and it’s good to see it finally built in Louisville. As far as we know, this lane is the first of its kind in town. (And, really, it’s not all that special.) Instead of simply paving over the parking lane like just about everywhere else, at Liberty Green, the parking lanes are paved in porous pavers. The material and color change help shrink the road’s overall width perception and improve the scale of the pedestrian environment.
The pavers used for this parking lane on Clay Street feature small voids at their corners that allow water to return to the water table without inundating the sewer system and in time, small plants will grow up through them, making the city that much greener. We appreciate the concrete “flush curb” at the driving lane to create a permanent stripe and keep the pavers in place.
We’d like to see this trend take off all over the city, not only does it help the environment and the pedestrian, it could potentially be part of the wayfinding system in the city. We suggest taking the concept one step further: multiple colors in paving. In other applications, a yellow paver could signal a no parking zone, say near a fire hydrant. Without any signs littering the sidewalk, a motorist knows exactly where he or she can and cannot park. Logically, more colors and patterns could differentiate other lane uses such as loading zones or bus zones or handicapped spaces.
- Looking Down On Liberty Green (Broken Sidewalk)
ZirMed Gateway Towers Terminate 9th Street
Terminated Vista on Ninth Street
One of our favorite urban design techniques is the terminated vista. It’s that rare occurrence where a road’s view ends on a focal point, often a church or a monument. It’s difficult to achieve in a grid where streets tend not to dead-end, and near impossible in the suburbs. There’s a newly terminated vista in downtown, though.
If you travel north on Ninth Street / Roy Wilkins Avenue, you will see that a bend in the road allows the new ZirMed Gateway Towers to stand tall at the focal point of the tree-lined street. Now that the towers have topped off, we can see the full effect of the building keeping watch over the street.
The perspective allows for a heightened architectural effect and helps to close off the “infinite view” of a really long, straight, linear street with no end. For a view looking from inside the tower back down Ninth Street, you may want to check out these photos from the 8th floor.
- Topping Off At The ZirMed Gateway Towers (Broken Sidewalk)
- Special Report: Inside The ZirMed Tower (Broken Sidewalk)
Terminated Vista on Ninth Street
Broken Sidewalks: Doing It In The Road
Poorly Planned Sidewalk in Phoenix Hill
One of the many problems with transportation design is the obvious lack of regard for getting around without a car. We mean, come on. Who in their right mind builds a sidewalk like that? Is there a hidden camera waiting to capture inattentive pedestrians running into the pole?
It’s not just the pole (although that’s a huge part of it), its the rest of the sidewalk, too. The 3-4 foot wide sidewalk most commonly built today is really only wide enough for walking single file. At most you could try walking with a friend, but it can be tough sometimes. Nevermind groups of pedestrians walking in opposite directions. (And forget the handicapped population.) This is one pedestrian lane. There’s a 4-6 lane vehicular road right next to it. How about a 4 lane sidewalk?
Why Don't We Do It In The Road?
Let’s see what happens if we reverse roles here. This certainly could make the morning commute more exciting. The sidewalk isn’t just an area on the side of the road to stick telephone poles and random signs. It’s more than a pretty idea or a government regulation. Sidewalks are where city life happens. Louisville must pay more attention to its public infrastructure and not pull ridiculous stunts like the pole in the road.
A Case For Bollards: Motorist Smashes Bench
Accident Scene at 6th & Main Streets
Sometime between Wednesday night and Friday morning, a motorist ran a car onto the West Main Street sidewalk near the corner of 6th Street destroying a metal bench and damaging other street art. The angle at which the motorist must have driven onto the sidewalk to create the apparent path of destruction is quite severe, almost as if making a 90-degree turn onto the sidewalk. But hey, if you don’t have control of your vehicle, anything is possible.
Today, the city carried the damaged bench away, along with another seemingly undamaged bench and one of those fancy new way-finding signs that were recently installed. The iron tree guard bent in the accident was not removed for repair and will probably be deformed for quite some time. It features the profile of the Whitestone Building it sits in front of. After all, the limestone bench on the same block damaged last June during construction of offices on Main Street is still sitting broken (though the stone shards have been swept away).
It’s times like these that we would like to see steel bollards installed around corners, especially where pedestrian seating comes into play. One can frequently see drivers run up on the curb making turns or speeding through a red light. To make things worse, the lane stripes don’t match up evenly from one side of the intersection to the other. With a few bollards here and there, we wouldn’t worry about cars running into buildings or benches (or pedestrians…) and the like. The feeling of safety while standing behind protective steel spikes separating you from oncoming vehicles also contributes to enjoying the urban environment.
- West Main Street Bench Art Casualty (Broken Sidewalk)
This Bench Is Totalled
West Main Street Apparently Great
West Main Street Among America
Yesterday it was announced that Louisville’s West Main Street was selected as one of the Top Ten Great Streets in America, and what a great designation. But is Main Street really there yet? Does it currently have what it takes to be a truly great street? It depends what your criteria are. According to the American Planning Association who hands out the awards:
“APA has singled out West Main as one of the Great Streets in America for 2008 given the street’s rich architectural legacy, unique sense of place, and contributions to downtown Louisville’s redevelopment, which has attracted $1.8 billion in reinvestment since 1992.”
Looking at West Main that way, it certainly deserved its spot on the top ten list. The architecture is definitely unparalleled and with the help of a high-quality street-scape does provide a real sense of place. It is also true the reemergence of West Main Street signaled a renewed interest in downtown and has been the poster-child of what downtown Louisville can be. There are now more people and activities on the street than ever before, from restaurants, to some of the most creative industries in the city, to museums and a few small shops. There are even a few people living on West Main in buildings like the Harbison Condos. But is the place ‘real’ yet. Does it exude that urban vitality that all great streets have. To an extent, yes, but West Main is still fairly dead after 5:00 pm except during a few programmed events every year. Retail shops still can’t stay in business long and no one could live a walkable lifestyle here: all the daily necessities simply cannot be walked to.
We’re not down on West Main Street, it is destined to become Louisville’s greatest street. Just don’t rest on our laurels too long and forget all the work that needs to be done to transform the street from a museum district into a living community. Not just a destination but a place.
For content usage questions, please review our Copyright Policy or contact bs [at] brokensidewalk [dot] com.
