Design to achieve full potentials of streets

Designing shared spaces for the comfort and enjoyment of the pedestrian is one of the most important aspects of urban sustainability. The finest cities in the world are cities design with entire networks of car-free and pedestrian friendly environment. Pedestrian friendly cities are growing in popularity because pedestrian friendly streets and squares provides the incredible beauty, enjoyment to the residents on a daily basis. Being able to walk to a mix of shops, restaurants, newsstands, coffeehouses and open-air markets within car-free neighborhoods and work centers delivers the social and economic sustainability and adds great variety and vitality to urban city.

Pedestrian friendly environment in Boulder, Colorado

Design professionals need to implement shared spaces for pedestrian-friendly environment. Some tactics include planting trees near curbs to reduce optical width of roads, adding bike lanes and wider sidewalks, clearly marked crosswalks, speed bumps, angle parking. The idea of creating shared spaces is to increase the ambiguity of urban road spaces and, instead of creating more accidents, actually force drivers to slow down. Shared space can be used for controlling traffic by blurring, rather than sharply delineating, the boundaries between driving areas and walking areas; by making strategic use of street furniture, such as plantings, benches, and bicycle racks and by eliminating traffic lights, stop signs, lane markings, and other traditional controls. Increasing the ambiguity of urban road spaces can actually reduce car speeds, accident rates, and improves the lives of pedestrians as drivers proceed with more caution.

Most of urban cities are arranged around the convenience of drivers, rather than of pedestrians. Reducing or eliminating car parking spaces in the city can have impacts on designing pedestrian friendly shared spaces. Pedestrian friendly environment, a place free from noise, pollution, toxins, radiation, and danger can offer a high quality of life. This includes safe streets everyone can walk along, clean air to breathe, clean and healthy water and food. Designing clear continuous pedestrian access for pedestrian’s safety is important and help them to move easily through public squares, parks, restricted access delivery streets, and other places cars can’t go. Clear signage explaining how to navigate around a shared space is also necessary, especially for tourist heavy areas.

Source- http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-18/adelaide-laneways-project-bank-street/8451208

Image Source- https://metaefficient.com/bicycles/top-5-bikefriendly-small-towns.html

Comments

Start the fight

Most people don’t realize that food waste goes beyond the moral implications, wasting food when one billion people go to bed hungry every night and it is also a major environmental problem. It is so sad that we have the power to feed the hungry with all of the food we waste and yet we just throw it into the garbage. Food production is also the largest single driver of biodiversity loss and creates at least 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to wasting labor and resources, as food decomposes in landfills it produces methane, a greenhouse gas. Food waste is occur in the field, in storage, in transport, and at home. Everyone including farmers, food manufacturers, and consumers are responsible for food waste footprints. Despite what many consumers think, expiry dates are unregulated and do not indicate food safety. One of the best ways to tell if food has gone bad is not by using some fancy technology, but by simply putting our senses to w...

Slay with Eco-smart fashion

Eco friendly fashion known as sustainable fashion or ethical fashion are often used interchangeably should first and foremost be about reducing fashion consumption. Reducing our own footprint starts by being mindful of consumption and waste. This ultimately means buying less and purchasing only what we need. When a garment is damaged, many think nothing more of chucking it out and replacing it with something new. However many items can be repaired easily for example sew back a new button when it’s missing. We can mend a seam that is coming apart and darn a sock or sweater. As Australia is the second most wasteful society with 650 kg of waste per person sent to landfill each year, we need to start changing the mindset of throwing fashion items away which can be repair, recycle and repurpose. Instead of throwing items that we no longer need in the trash, we can recycle those. There are two ways to do this, we can either donate items to a charity or opportunity shop as the...

Keep up with the trend in green manner

Mobile phone recycling is one of the necessary practice to save the planet and also to generate money in the process while keeping up with the technology. Electronic waste became major environmental issues nowadays with technologies growth. Improper disposal of phones fills out the landfills and continue harming the planet and putting lives in danger. Smartphones are here to stay, they’re simply part of our lives, so learning about the importance of proper disposal and recycling of these devices brings us one step closer to the utopia we all dream of living in. They are awesome and connect us in ways we never imagined 30 years ago. However, many of us are blissfully ignorant of the negative ecological impact of these lovely mass they produced. Every youngster anywhere in the world including myself replaces a phone almost every 18 months. Thus, mobile phones hardly have a life-cycle of 2 years and of course most of us wants the latest smart phone. With extensive use of mobile...

SUSD0001

Search This Blog