New Partners for Smart Growth Conference - Denver, CO

In this session, Jim was joined by national street design expert, Dan Burden and Bruce Appleyard, son of urban design visionary Donald Appleyard. The group discussed street design standards, and highlighted cities and developers that incorporate good design.

Jim was the last to present and covered how cities can implement street design standards that are better for both pedestrians and cyclists. He expanded the classification of “pedestrian friendliness” into four categories: Pedestrian Place, Pedestrian Supportive, Pedestrian Tolerant and Pedestrian Intolerant, and emphasized the importance of using these categories in urban design to prioritize pedestrian projects.

Jim also discussed specific design standards that lead to pedestrian places and pedestrian supportive environments, including connectivity standards and street design on a network level. Lastly, Jim talked about why streets keep getting wider, and what cities can do about it.

Implementation_Already.pdf

14.41 MB

Ellen Greenberg of Freedman Tung & Bottomley, along with Jim Charlier and Scott McCarey of CAI led this session. The presentation highlighted how traffic models tend to dictate the direction of growth in our cities. Community goals seem to lose priority over alleviating future traffic issues. Since the traffic model is what predicts the future traffic issues, it essentially is what drives community form.

The “build it and they will come” phenomenon and how that relates to modeling was discussed. Expanding the streets to accommodate traffic growth is self-fulfilling and self-defeating at the same time. One reason that traffic models continue to be used in this manner is that traffic data is abundant and discrete and can have definitive solutions. Community goals are often fuzzy and creating an action plan can be difficult. Although no answers to this issue were given, the session brought the question to the table for planners, engineers and elected officials and opened discussion.

Taming_the_Modeling_Monster.pdf

4.86 MB

Terri Musser and Carlos Hernandez teamed with the City of Boulder and GO Boulder staff to host the “Boulder Experieince” mobile tour. The mobile workshop provided a detail overview to 43 participants on smart growth transportation issues and implementation.

Highlights of the half-day tour included:
 A walking tour of the 28th Street corridor – a former auto-dominated arterial that is being transformed into a complete street with wide sidewalks, bike lanes on the frontage road, frequent bicycle/pedestrian underpasses, transit super stops and increased levels of transit service.
 Bus tour of the 29th Street Mall revitalization project, future Boulder Transit Village site, and the adjacent Steelyards mixed-use development.
 Walking tour of the Pearl Street Pedestrian Mall.
 Break-out groups exploring various aspects of Downtown Boulder:
      o Bicycle and pedestrian facilities – innovative pedestrian crossings, the 13th Street contra-flow bicycle lane, and the Boulder Creek Path.
      o Transit and parking – overview of the Community Transit Network, downtown transit station, mixed-use parking garages, and Boulder’s parking management program.
      o Boulder’s latest mixed-use development project – with special thanks to Jerry Lee of Lee Real Estate for a presentation on the implementation of One Boulder Plaza
 Bus tour of Broadway – one of the City’s first multi-modal corridors to be implemented based upon recommendations of the 1996 Transportation Master Plan developed by Charlier Associates.

Boulder_tour_brochure.pdf

2.14 MB

http://www.outreach.psu.edu/programs/smartgrowth/default.html

http://www.ci.boulder.co.us/publicworks/depts/transportation.html

http://www.walkable.org/

http://www.serapdx.com/employee.php?employee_id=87

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