180 degree reversal: auto strip arterial to walkable main street. Has it been done?

I was giving a talk in Florida. The Town Manager helped me focus by asking a question about her town: "How do we reverse an existing auto-oriented strip into walkable urbanism — as we already have here?" It's a profound question. The difficulties are severe. How to do it? (I take for granted that of course it would be nice it can be done.)

I was considering the issue and I fell back to my normal procedure: "What can I copy? Who has already done the same thing?" 

If I want to learn to give a better public presentation I think of Edward Tufte and wonder what can I learn (i.e. copy) from him?  

Thusly,  I asked myself "What community has been able to do a 180 degree reversal? Transforming auto-strip arterial into walkable main street? Where? When? And How?"

Certainly I personally have never been involved with such a task. And I have been observing Seattle-area planning for decades and cannot think of even one strip arterial which has been reversed.  And the through arterial,  traversing a number of human activity centers,  (I hesitate to call them towns), is an overwhelmingly central factor.

So I asked people of genuine expertise. But none, too, could cite a strip arterial into walkable main street which has already been completed. There is much thinking and planning and work is being done. (I'll cite some work-in-progress.) But, I guess, the scale of the task is so enormous, with so much social inertia at so many levels —from individual consciousness to Federal policy — that it is not surprising that it's yet to be done. There is wonderful urban design — maintenance to hold the line, or reestablish the good bones of traditional town form, or to create new walkable villages. But the 180 degree reversal? Reversing 60 years of tragic development? Sorry, no.

It does still astonish me that not even one rich suburb has not been able to do anything serious i.e. reverse course. Towns have been able to prevent bad things, or to stabilize, or to improve the horrific appearance of strip development with good landscaping, underground wiring etc etc. I see scenarios. But no 180 degree reversal. So it appears? I will be happy to be wrong and to learn that some community has been able to a good 180 and to use it as a model.

•••

However in our conversation, I mentioned the redevelopment of Mercer Island,  (MI) Washington.
via maps.google.com
Though it is not on a strip arterial — an absolutely crucial element it lacks, thankfully — MI has attempted and does represent, I believe, substantial progress toward walkable urbanism and offers much to learn. It doesn't give a direct lesson to the strip arterial problem but it says a lot in terms of suburban retrofit in general.

I'll post more in the coming days with pictures and comments from astute observers. It's by no means any sort of study, But the comments I received were compelling and I thought demanded some degree of permanence for others to share.

 

Comments

[john]

David,

I know you think it's not far enough along, but I think Dover Kohl's work in Arlington is worth citing, because the design is done, work has been started and progress is made every day.

John

[David Sucher]

I have no judgment on Arlington as I honestly don't know enough; I know that it is a huge problem, like every other arterial, and saw it once some ten years ago. And the comments I received yesterday -- including Victor, if I am not mistaken -- gave me the sense that while Arlington/Columbia Pike had a good start, it was just a start.

But I want to bring up something else which is sometimes lost: the need for support by a constituency who will back "urban action," for want of a better term. Efforts like Dover Kohl's work needs an ongoing core of citizen supporters (including business people) in order to raise the enormous oil tanker of strip arterial development and push it over the farthest edge of the ocean. Judging from Seattle, I am not convinced that the supporters are clear enough and conflate walkable urbanism with a whole host of issues — a very fleet of oil tankers — like peak oil, sustainability, global climate change and so forth. Such complexity does not, I believe, help political support. It is just too complex.

[Michael Lewyn]

It seems to me that to start with, you can change the street itself. Just put a big grassy median to narrow the street, slowing down traffic and making walking easier.

Then you start the process of bringing the shops closer to the street. If you were a dictator, you could just tear down everything. But in the real world, you'll have to settle for eliminating minimum parking and setback requirements for existing buildings, and requiring new structures to be closer to the street. How's that for a start?

[David Sucher]

Michael,
What you say is totally reasonable.
But has it been done? That's my question. Has it been done? In fact? In reality? Actually done or at least significantly being done?

The politics are enormously difficult. It's simply not that easy to "Just put a big grassy median to narrow the street, slowing down traffic..." on a through-arterial under State jurisdiction. Where has it been done?

The problem of the arterial is the holy grail of urban planning.