Archive for September, 2006
“The increasing deployment of sensors and hand-held electronics in recent years is allowing a new approach to the study of the built environment. The way we describe and understand cities is being radically transformed - alongside the tools we use to design them and impact on their physical structure.
Studying these changes from a critical point of view and anticipating them is the goal of the SENSEable City Laboratory, a new research initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”
“[This] project (Real-Time Rome) aggregated data from cell phones, buses and taxis in Rome to better understand urban dynamics in real time. By revealing the pulse of the city, the project aims to show how technology can help individuals make more informed decisions about their environment.”
LINK: http://senseable.mit.edu/
RELATED POSTS: Personal Paths Through Cities
September 25th, 2006
Hooray for cities that actually practice the people-centered place design process! The Nashville Civic Design Center recognizes that creating public gathering places that attract groups of people is essential to keeping a downtown alive.
Through surveys (to assess people’s perception of places), observation (including behavioral mapping of which parts of the park are used throughout the day and how), and pedestrian counts, they studied Church Street Park’s…
…sociability (are people seen in groups there? is it a good place to meet)
…access and linkages (does the park draw people in? does it have clear entrances?)
…activities (are there good gathering points? are there enough places to sit?)
…and image (how do people perceive this park?).
Check out their preliminary findings (6.6mb PDF, best to right click and download).
LINK: http://www.civicdesigncenter.org/projects-streetlife.html
September 24th, 2006
“Community Planning Centers are customized websites designed by Project for Public Spaces whose purpose is to involve local people more directly and effectively in a public space project.”
These websites make information about planning projects publicly available and invite community participation and feedback. Their example sites…
The principle is excellent, but I’d like to see sites like these take the interactive dimension even further, making it easier for people to share their experiences with places (and not just their feedback, which these sites seem to primarily solicit, because not everyone knows they even have opinions!)
Food for thought: How can a community website engage ordinary, busy, everyday residents? What engages YOU?
- Google’s gotten people to tag their images by turning it into an addicting and relatively mindless game (Google Image Labeler).
- The City of Pittsburgh’s Map Hub has gotten resident cyclists posting their bike accidents and bike resources on a collaborative map.
- An interesting enough flickr photo pool can get thousands of people to expose their habits under the guise of self-expression (while unwittingly providing valuable insights for designers!)
How can urban planners take advantage of collaborative web technologies to understand people’s experiences and needs and in turn create places that succeed?
LINK: About Community Planning Centers
September 18th, 2006
Part of the vision behind “This Place Is…” is to encourage ordinary people (not just urbanists and planners) to think critically about the places around them. I haven’t seen a better resource for getting started than the excellent primers from the Project for Public Spaces:
Why Many Public Spaces Fail
William H. Whyte once said, “It is difficult to design a space that will not attract people - what is remarkable is how often this has been accomplished.” Today, many public spaces seem to be intentionally designed to be looked at but not touched. They are neat, clean, and empty - as if to say, “no people, no problem!” But to us, when a public space is empty, vandalized, or used chiefly by undesirables, this is generally an indication that something is very wrong with its design, or its management, or both.
The following pairs of photographs illustrate some of the most common problems of public spaces.
Lack of places to sit - Many public spaces don’t even provide a place to sit. So, in their protracted quest just to be comfortable, people are often forced to adapt to the situation in their own way. Sometimes they simply give up (below), or have to sit on briefcases (second image below).
A lack of good places to sit is an equally important issue. For example, a choice of seats in sun or shade can make all the difference in a place’s success, depending on its climate and location. Allowing people to sit near a playground or within view of other activities is also crucial.
Lack of gathering points - This includes features people want or need, such as playgrounds, or places where varying elements–bus stop, vending cart, outdoor seating–combine to create a gathering point. Food is often a critical component of a successful gathering point.
Paris’ Parc de la Villette (top) has seats that force people to sit in unsociable ways, and signs that ask them not to climb on the sculpture. Though located along a stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway, this park at Laguna Beach (near top) has loads of activities, food, and places to sit. It is a busy, healthy gathering place.
Poor entrances and visually inaccessible spaces - If a space is to be used, people need to see it and they need to be able to get to it.
A dark or narrow entrance such as those that used to be at New York City’s Bryant Park (top) keeps people out instead of inviting them in. The same entrance (near top), redesigned to be more inviting and open, has kiosks that sell coffee and sandwiches, and the interior of the park is visible from the street.
Dysfunctional features - Oftentimes features are designed simply to punctuate the space, serving a use more visual than functional, instead of encouraging activity to occur around them - as at this waterfront park in Barcelona, below.
Good features, such as the friendly gorilla at the Berlin Zoo (above), encourage activity to occur around them.
Paths that don’t go where people want to go
Paths that lead to nowhere are useless, as demonstrated at this Phoenix, Arizona park (top). The Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, however (near top), show the art of making a path that pulls people along it, or allows them to stop and relax.
Domination of a space by vehicles - There may be a lack of crosswalks, or streets that are too wide, or lacking sidewalks.
A main street is not a highway. One should not fear crossing the street so much that the activity needs to occur in groups, as on George Street in Sydney, Australia (top). Crossing the street should be an easy, comfortable activity. Even if you have to wait (near top, Paris, France)
Blank walls or dead zones around the edges of a place - The area around a space is as important to its success as the design and management of the space itself.
The blank wall (near top) contributes nothing to the activity of the street. In fact, it doesn’t even seem real.
Inconveniently located transit stops - Bus or train stops located in places where no one wants to use them are a good recipe for failure.
A transit stop located in a busy, active place can not only make that place better, but also increase transit use.
From the Project for Public Spaces’ article, Why Many Public Spaces Fail
So do you know of any places that make these mistakes (or that do these things well)? We’d love to see (and post!) your snapshots on This Place Is!
Ready for more? Now that you’ve thought about what makes a place fail…
The Project for Public Spaces is at the forefront of people-centered place design. The PPS is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting a people-centric rather than project-centric approach to creating places. Their website is rich in resources for those interested in this subject. We’ll be posting other highlights soon.
September 12th, 2006
Is it a coincidence that millions more Americans travel by car and plane than bus or train? “The very word ‘lost’ in our language means much more than simple geographic uncertainty,” wrote Kevin Lynch, who cleared a path for the modern art and science of wayfinding in his landmark work, The Image of the City. “[I]t carries overtones of utter disaster.” Getting lost on public transportation may not be disastrous for passengers, but when tourists are turned off by the experience, it’s a disaster for cities; when new users aren’t turned into repeat customers, it’s a disaster for transit agencies and for society; and even regular riders sometimes require reinforcement.
We all know that being lost is a bad experience. Wayfinding design, for those unfamiliar with it, is about creating creating comforting experiences through designing understandable spaces that make people feel in control of their surroundings and choices.
For many, unfortunately, public transportation represents the opposite of a comforting experience.
Thus, I’m excited about San Francisco’s Wayfinding Project and the steps they’re taking towards enhancing the wayfinding experience of transportation users. Their recommendations are simple but practical, and include….
Recommendations for Busses and Streetcars:
• Include Transfer Information on Signs
• Add Signs Featuring Destination Information
• Improve Shelters and Provide Basic Information at All Stops
• Simplify Destination Descriptions
Recommendations for Subways and Commuter Rails:
• Color-Code BART Lines
• Remove Outdated, Damaged and Non-Standard Maps and Signs
• Clearly Differentiate BART and Muni Entrances
• Streamline and Enhance Station- and Platform-Identification Signs
• Add and Upgrade Directional Signage
• List and Give Directions to Destinations Near BART
• Add Signs Along Pedestrian Pathways to BART
• Clearly Designate Pathways to Connecting Transit
Food for thought… What have your public transportation experiences been like? Do you have any suggestions for ways that your local transportation system’s wayfinding experience could be improved?
LINK: The San Francisco Wayfinding Project [via Adventures in Urban Living]
RELATED: Rethinking the Library Experience
September 9th, 2006
The author calls his collection of panoramas, “suburban sprawl and other calamities,” but I’m curious whether everyone looking at these photos would see “calamity” captured therein.
I’ll admit — my first reaction was that some of these look like beautiful, safe places to live (some people who live there must have thought so) — and that it’s got to be debatable how bad all of this is.
To tie this back into the purpose of this site… I’ll pose the question, exactly what are the effects of sprawl from a user experience perspective? Do people choose to live there because there’s something positive about the experience, or do they see living there as a necessary evil? (And does it even matter if it’s not sustainable?)
LINK: Suburban Sprawl Panoramas (left side)
LINK: East Bay Sprawl Panoramas
Thanks for the link, Jess!
September 7th, 2006
U.C. Berkeley’s
Transportation
Seminar Series
September 8, 2006
4:00 to 5:00 p.m. in 240 Bechtel Hall
Donald Shoup, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Urban Planning, UCLA
The High Cost of Free Parking
About 87 percent of all trips in the U.S. are made by personal motor vehicles, and drivers park free for 99 percent of these trips.
If drivers don’t pay for parking, who does? Everyone does, even if they don’t drive. Minimum parking requirements in zoning ordinances explain why free parking is so plentiful in the United States.
Initially the developer pays for the required parking, but soon the tenants do, and then their customers, and so on, until the cost of parking has diffused everywhere in the economy. When we shop in a store, eat in a restaurant, or see a movie, we pay for parking indirectly because its cost is included in the prices of merchandise, meals, and theater tickets.
We unknowingly support our cars with almost every commercial transaction we make, because a small share of the money changing hands pays for parking. We don’t pay for parking in our role as motorists, but in all our other roles-as consumers, investors, workers, residents, and taxpayers-we pay dearly.
Even those without cars have to pay for “free” parking. Donald Shoup will explain how faulty data from the Institute of Transportation Engineers helped get us into this mess, and how we can get out of it.
September 6th, 2006
What images and feelings does the word “library” bring to mind? Quiet? Quaint? Confusing? Dusty? Old? Academic? Even if you love libraries, how easy is it really for an average person to find their way around?
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh recognized that it would take more than an aesthetic facelift to convey the welcoming experience exuded by user-friendly environs like Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com. Enlisting the help of Maya Design, they dared to walk in their users’ shoes and discovered insights that lead to a user-centered overhaul of the library’s organization:
People are generally in a hurry. “To remain relevant, libraries must get patrons in the door and in front of the materials they want quickly and easily.”
Library lingo makes users feel like strangers in a strange land, a land that cannot be navigated without an insider’s help. Libraries label things in jargon (”reference desk”) and use complicated numeric systems to organize resources (a la Dewey Decimals).
People look for the “Cookbooks” section, not the 600’s. This may not sound shocking, but when’s the last time you saw a library marked with strategically placed signs like those obvious ones used by their retail counterparts: “Cookbooks” and “Health & Fitness?”
The library experience should be consistent regardless of how it’s accessed, from the web to in person and from one section to another. “If users can interact with one small part of the library experience and predict how other parts work, it makes them feel powerful.”
For more food for thought on how library design affects user experience and to learn how Carnegie and other libraries have addressed these issues, check out…
Link: Library Journal: Transforming the Library Experience
Link: Maya Design’s Carnegie Library Case Study
September 5th, 2006
When most of us urbanites drive to wherever we’re going, our trip process may look something like this:
local street>main artery>main artery>freeway>main artery>local street
You do this because even though it may not be the most direct route, it’s fastest and fairly easy to understand.
But a transit trip requires us to think in a completely new system of wayfinding. Many bus routes are designed to snake through every neighborhood and activity center so that people only have to hop on one bus to get to their destination.
walk>transit route>walk
As an example:
But while it may be easy for a person to say “I just hop on the 93 and it will take me there”, the route is a tremendous waste of time. A 10 minute drive or 30 minute bike ride can easily take an hour on transit.
People already have the street hierarchy wayfinding system etched in their brain. Why not create a bus system that mirrors our mental maps and stop wasting our time?
Alexa’s comment:
I asked Seth, “So what would a bus system look like that mirrors our mental maps?” He said he was just curious what a transportation system would look like where busses run up and down single streets (e.g. the High Street bus, the 8th street bus) and where you don’t have to pay for transfers.
So to get from place A to place B you’d get on the high street bus, then get off and get on the 8th street bus, etc… the way you do when driving or walking and taking the most direct route. Something like that.
I agree that busses take a lot of time which is a big deterrent to using them, but I wonder if it might be more annoying to have to get on and off all the time?
September 4th, 2006
