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Livability means a pedestrian scale

Frequently in my posts and in opinion pieces I suggest we should organize our thinking about growth as a city into three distinct domains: affordability, livability and sustainability.

I am continuing to think through these domains and defining them in more detail. But when I think of livability the first thing that comes to my mind is pedestrian scale.

If Seattle did one thing to support livability as we work toward accommodating more growth, it would be prioritizing pedestrian travel. The pedestrian would be at the top of the hierarchy followed in descending order by bicycles, scooters, transit, freight, shared vehicles and at the very, very bottom single passenger cars.

Two examples come to mind of what I mean by pedestrian scale and they are at extreme ends of the continuum. The National Mall in Washington D.C. stands out as an example of being out of scale with pedestrian travel. Although it was designed before the rise of the automobile it represents the kind of Brobdingnagian scale that lends itself to cars rather than people. It’s just too damn big.

At the other end is 12^th and Thomas, shown above and at left. A look at these pictures might lead you to think that this is in someone’s back yard or perhaps a park. But the fact that this little oasis is part of a sidewalk near a busy street can teach us something.

Building Seattle as if we had to walk everywhere will make our city more livable. It doesn’t just have to be more sidewalks and gutters.

Instead, humanizing our walkscape means less pavement and more landscaping, less impervious surface and more unpaved amenities. The oasis at 12^th and Thomas won’t save the world but you really can’t appreciate it driving by in a car.

Tags: Downtown, sidewalks, South Lake Union, walkability

This entry was posted by Roger Valdez on Monday, November 3rd, 2008 at 4:30 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Brice Maryman

Roger, you know I’ve got nothing but love for you, but as a Washington DC boy, I must quibble with your national mall analogy. Yes, it is big, but that’s the point. As officious as lawns are to me generally, the reaching out from the Capitol, the People’s House, (not, mind you, from the White House), toward the rest of the country is both an act of embrace and of reception.

This is a particularly American spin on it, because, of course, the Mall was planned by our French friends, particularly Pierre L’Enfant. In the French manner, this was still a pedestrian scale landscape, but the pedestrian experience of it was meant to make you feel small…insignificant to the god-given authority of le roi. This is a feeling that you do not feel zipping along the old canals of Independence and Constitution Avenue. To be a pedestrian is the only way to experience the scale, magesty and power of the Mall. It’s like going to St. Peters and only having a little church. It needs to be an experience, a processional, part of our civic religion.

Yes it’s huge, yes it’s monumental, yes it may not be the highest and best use of urban real estate, yes, it gobbled up wetlands to make it a reality, but in all those things, it is also American. Now, you want non-pedestrian scale without a point, let’s talk freeways, viaducts, etc.
mhays

What’s good for monumentalism isn’t necessarily good for walkability. On a windy or hot day, massive open spaces can be oppressive. To be people-friendly it needs trees.

Also, the roads are too wide (some) and too many, from a pedestrian perspective.
Roger Valdez

Love you too Brice. And great job on the Parks Levy.

I appreciate the fact that you brought up the continental European use of landscape architecture. I think its true that scale was used there, as in medieval cathedrals, to dwarf the individual. God and the King were bigger than you and don’t forget it.

But our revolution is a good place to peg most of our challenges with land use. The Capitol is a reflection of the unresolved and long running dispute about whether our country was set up to protect the individuals right to be left alone or whether it was designed to create the maximum opportunities for freedom expressed through the community.

Also, remember, that the Mall as we know it didn’t look like it does 200 years ago. It is a relatively recent (last 125 years) phenomenon. Many of the monuments and buildings like the Washington Memorial (1888) and the Lincoln Memorial (1922) were dedicated at a time when our country was trying to make a big statement.

Most Americans probably think the monuments sprung up when Franklin struck the ground with his electric lightning stick.

In the end the mall is what it is: a testament to a new country’s efforts to catch up with the rest of the worlds great monuments. It doesn’t work. Instead it makes us look like what we are; a teenager among nations still working out our identity.

Let’s hope the new leadership in our country finds a road map that leads us down the road of Hamilton and Adams and out of the thicket of individualism and isolationism that Jefferson led us into. Perhaps then we might have a perspective that values public space as much or more than private space.
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