Design Impact Areas Upcoming Where Design Meets Play Prototyping Safer Streets
Magazine
Issue 001 Fall 2016
Contents
Magazine
Fall 2016
Play
14 • Where Design Meets Play
Vibrant Cities
24 • Prototyping Safer Streets 5 • Executive Director Letter • 7 • Commentary •
Some barbarian or another is always at the gate.
8 • This Happened • 13 • Happening • 30 • Thank You •
Introducing our 12 Design Impact Areas.
A new playground and stories on social impact.
Design Museum experiences you won’t want to miss. Recognizing our amazing supporters.
designmuseumfoundation.org • @designmuseumfdn • info@designmuseumfoundation.org • 888-287-0167 Have a great design impact story? editor@designmuseumfoundation.org Interested in advertising opportunities? advertise@designmuseumfoundation.org Cover photo: A young boy climbs the cargo net at Smale Riverfront Park. Photo courtesy of Sasaki Associates. 3
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Welcome! Introducing Design Impact Areas Welcome to the first issue of Design Museum Magazine! We’re thrilled to bring you, our members and supporters, this new publication and I hope you’ll celebrate with us as we launch this new chapter of content development and storytelling at the museum. A lot of people have asked me why we’re launching a print magazine in the year 2016. We feel strongly about our unique multi-site museum approach — we bring the museum to the people! But by its very nature, Design Museum Foundation is ephemeral. (You’ll read more about the virtues of nomadism from our guest commentator, Philip Barash.) If the museum is nomadic and constantly moving, there should be some artifact, some touchstone that you can always hold onto. Our hope is that this magazine becomes a physical manifestation of our mission to bring the transformative power of design everywhere. Design Museum Magazine also fits our vision of the museum as a hub for thought leadership. For those of you familiar with our exhibitions, events, and workshops, you know we believe in a broad definition of design as a process — a way of thinking — that can solve problems creatively. Whether it’s clearing minefields, educating our children, or building sustainable businesses, there are creative solutions to our most complex problems, and we believe design is the process that activates our collective creativity. During the last seven years we’ve produced programming and content spanning many topics — design is, after all, everywhere. Over the last year, as we expand our outreach, we’ve worked hard to define exactly what it is we do here. To focus our work on the most impactful design, the kind of design that changes people’s lives, we’re defining our 12 Design
Impact Areas. These focal areas will shape our programming and content as we work to fulfill our mission-driven strategy. We envision these areas becoming key curatorial and thought leadership centers at the museum. Think of them as the metaphorical “wings” of our nomadic museum. You can expect great, insightful Design Impact Stories within the pages of this magazine, written by thought leaders and experts across these 12 areas — perhaps you’ll jump in and write one as well! Our goal is to create a participatory platform for design impact content and thought leadership. We have two such stories in this first issue, one from landscape architect, Kate Tooke, on designing and testing a playground in Cincinnati, and another from urban designer, Julie Flynn, about a tactical urbanism project in Burlington, VT. You can also expect guest commentary and previews of key upcoming exhibitions and events, as well as photos of the museum in action. I sincerely hope you enjoy Design Museum Magazine, use it as your connection with the Design Museum community. You may not be able to enter a Design Museum building, but you can certainly immerse yourself in this magazine. See you out there,
Sam Aquillano Executive Director Design Museum Foundation
Design Museum Foundation’s 12 Design Impact Areas. 5
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Commentary Some barbarian or another is always at the gate. By F. Philip Barash
Cities have fear of the barbarian, the nomad, the invading other encoded into them as a fundamental condition of their existence. Cities — bastions — with their thick walls, their disciplined guards, their ruling elites of kings and priests, their supply systems, most of all their monomaniacal faith in themselves as keepers of civilization, are built against the menacing, illegible figure of the nomadic other. The city and the nomad, forever irreducibly destined to be at odds: one chasing verticality with the floors of its skyscrapers and the rungs of its hierarchy, the other spreading across a horizontal plane, the smooth space of the steppe. Deleuze and Guattari first posited this relation between the vertical and the horizontal, the interior and the exterior, the city and the nomad. The city is concerned with conservation of its
the genius, the creator, the One, in favor of a repeatable universe of objects and images and places, without an end in sight. Throughout the last century, design was a natural ally of revolutionary movements. The archetypal designers at the Bauhaus imagined themselves assaulting the system with a vision that both standardizes the city and yet promises liberation from bourgeois bondage: from the interior space of the precious, the crafted, the indulgent. Not content to remake domesticity, designers proposed to unmake it altogether, installing in its place a Miesian machine for living. Spreading in every direction, it destroyed the historic city in its path as slum clearance, and overtook the countryside as a suburb. The consuming vision of the Bauhaus does not distinguish
The job of the designer is explicitly to challenge and pull down the boundaries of convention. structures. But the nomad is a war machine; he glides through territories, extending, expanding, decentering, and not lingering too long. He is “of another species.” The nomad is a threat to cities and systems because he does not observe rules. There is no telling what he will do next. Design swept the 20th century like an invading horde. It leveled craft guilds and their stratified structures of apprenticeships. It endangered masons and clothiers and ironsmiths and poets by demystifying production. It gave us the mechanistic writings of Joyce. It gave us the unstoppable thrust of the Model T and the vast territories of blacktop along which it traveled. It shattered the idea of the artist,
between city and country: it is all territory. Like the nomadic war machine, the Miesian machine “comes like fate,” with no destination and no origin either, since the “international style” is a native of no place. It is anywhere and everywhere: you are surrounded. The Russian constructivists likewise deployed design for its radical potential. In the first decade after the October revolution, the politicized creative avant-garde stormed the establishment with design, wallpapering the city with vivid propaganda posters, staging absurdist performances, inventing architectural forms that swept aside individual privacy and replaced it with communal exteriority. The Moscow subway is exteriority
par excellence; built for anonymity, movement, and war. It subverts the historic city grid with a subterranean network of speedy routes, spy networks, and bomb shelters. Design came to erase the individual artifacts which were once marks of social privilege, spreading serialized objects that would define the workers’ paradise. Tellingly, Enemy Number One in Soviet design mythology is byt, a derisive term for daily being, that which ensnares us in a net of mundane routines and sentimental debris. Design attacks byt from below, from the outside, from anywhere, cleaving us from attachments, shaking things up. Maybe it does. After all, the past few years have produced another iteration of this tradition: the rise of designer as disruptor, someone who values above all the disregard of rules. The creative act, in this view, is a destructive one. The job of the designer is explicitly to challenge and pull down the boundaries of convention. Today’s disrupterati ought to tip their bike helmets to adman David Ogilvy, who broke rules as a rule. In good advertising, he was fond of saying, grammar does not apply. Grammar? Rules? No, thank you. Now, the designer-disruptor — once an outsider — is increasingly embedded in organizations as an “intrapreneur” tasked with dismantling institutional systems and practices: a serpent cradled at the bosom. Or, more to the point, a city under siege from within. Design may be a domesticated barbarian, but it is a barbarian nevertheless. And the most appropriate place for a design museum, the Design Museum, may be no place at all but a succession of points along a flat plane. The inaugural issue of this magazine is one such tactical point. It is a point from which to lodge a nomadic assault, trebucheting ideas into the city, digging under the authority of its ramparts, challenging — and maybe liberating — its denizens. We’re at the gates. • 7
May 19, 2016 • Boston, MA Our intern, Edwin Lo, joins in the fun at the PlayCubes in Chinatown Park, a new playscape installation we helped bring to life in collaboration with Playworld, architect Richard Dattner, and the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy — part of our Extraordinary Playscapes exhibition. 8
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June 3, 2016 • San Francisco, CA Jessa Blades, Program Director of IDEO.org’s Health XO program, shares her tale of designing for reproductive health in Kenya at our Story Hour event focused on design for social impact, in collaboration with AdaptivePath.org. 10
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Photo credit: Isreal King for Design Museum SF 11
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Happening Experience the Design Museum
PLAY
SUSTAINABILITY
WORKPLACE INNOVATION
Extraordinary Playscapes
Green Patriot Posters
Upcoming Free Exhibition Opening Reception: Oct. 6, 2016
Free Exhibition • On-View
@ Pacific Northwest College of Art 511 NW Broadway, Portland, OR
Presented by Xavier & Gerding Edlen
@ Innovation and Design Building 25 Drydock Ave. Boston, MA
Presented by Playworld BSA Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, & Premier Press
Visit our first exhibition in Chicago! Green Patriot Posters explores poster design as a medium for visual mass communication.
Presented by Jamestown & Elkus Manfredi
Our latest national exhibition and education program explores the latest thinking in playground design while presenting how vital free play is to childhood development, thriving communities, and social equity. See it in Portland at PNCA starting October 6.
During World War II, emotionally stirring propaganda posters commissioned by the U.S. government helped spur U.S. citizens “to do their part” in helping to supply, arm, and support troops fighting overseas. The surge in American’s productivity ultimately led to Allied victory. Green Patriot Posters, inspired by those World War II posters, hopes to unite us all once again – this time to combat climate change. Launched by art collective the Canary Project in 2008, Green Patriot Posters invites designers, illustrators, photographers, and artists to create posterform artwork relating to any aspect of climate change and environmental justice. To date, over 500 designs have been collected — see a selected collection including work by Shepard Fairey, Mathilde Fallot, and Diego Gutiérrez at Xavier, a new apartment building in Chicago’s Cabrini Green Neighborhood. •
What we learn through play impacts our physical, mental, social, and creative health — and designers, architects, and play advocates are taking notice. Extraordinary Playscapes examines the art, history, science, and importance of play, while telling the story behind some of the most incredible play spaces in the world. Featuring over 40 international playgrounds, drawings, sketches, videos, scale models, and playable installations, the interactive exhibition examines the importance of play and thoughtful playground design. From towering treetop paths to hand-knit playscapes, visitors will discover how architects and designers worldwide translate play objectives into stateof-the-art and meaningful environments. •
The Revolution Will Be Designed
@ Xavier, 625 W. Division St. Chicago
More information: designmuseumfoundation.org/ greenpatriotposters
Center for Workplace Innovation Summit Upcoming Special Event November 3, 2016
Join us as we present workplace innovators from around the country for a one-day conference experience on the future of how and where we work, November 3, 2016 at the Innovation and Design Building in Boston, MA. We’ve entered the creative age, a time when innovation is essential to economic success. However, our workplace structures are still very much rooted in the past and only 30% of employees feel fully engaged. Design can impact the shape of our offices, organizations, and culture to improve productivity, happiness, and ultimately the bottom line. At the Workplace Innovation Summit you’ll experience the latest in workplace design through one-of-a-kind keynote presentations, workshops, and field trips to tour local offices. Get your tickets and join us in Boston! • More information: centerforworkplaceinnovation.org
More information: designmuseumportland.org/play
But wait! There’s more! Visit our website to see all our events, exhibitions, and demonstration projects: designmuseumfoundation.org 13
A young explorer traverses the stump steps at Smale Riverfront Park on a sunny day in Cincinnati, OH. 14
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PLAY
Where Design Meets Play A Research-Based Approach at Smale Riverfront Park By Kate Tooke, Senior Associate, Landscape Architect, Sasaki Associates Images and illustrations courtesy of Sasaki Associates
On a sunny Saturday afternoon in midOctober the playscape at Cincinnati’s Smale Riverfront Park is alive with children and families. Screams of delight come from the slide hillside, mixing with the comfortable chatter of a group of parents watching from the bottom. From my perch at the top of the slide hill I watch a little girl launch herself down the wide slide. She hollers cheerfully as she slips sideways on the bump halfway down, and careens off the end, taking a tumble before regaining her feet. I lose sight of her momentarily as she skips around a log path behind a copse of trees and shrubs. A moment later she emerges halfway up the hillside, balancing with arms out-stretched on a series of upturned logs. I feel her brush past me as she gets to the top, arms still out wide and making a whooshing noise, as though she is imagining herself a bird. She pauses at the top of a rocky outcrop, just as an older boy runs past and takes a flying leap off the rocks, with a friend in hot pursuit. For a moment she looks back at me, a question in her eyes, and then turns to jump herself, landing like a frog on hands and feet at the bottom of the valley. Her attention is immediately caught by a group of preteen girls at the base of the climbing wall. I come closer to the top of the structure to watch as she sidles up to the group. “I can’t do it” one girl is saying, while the others offer encouragement and advice on where to put her feet and hands. “Watch me!” the littlest girl exclaims, and begins to climb, stretching her body into its longest forms flat against the wall. At the top she turns and flashes me a big smile, eyes shining. “Mama,” she shouts, “come do the rope bridge with me!” I put my clipboard down and run after her because this weekend I am splitting my time between researching and parenting. My daughter, Tessa, and I are in Cincinnati
with a team of designers to conduct a postoccupancy evaluation of the new playscape at the Smale Riverfront Park. The park sits on the banks of the Ohio River in a district dominated by sports venues, between the Paul Brown Stadium and the Great American Ball Park. But these families didn’t come downtown to root for the home team, they are here specifically to play outside. It’s not that Cincinnati has any deficit of playgrounds: in fact, the Trust for Public Land ranks it number two in the nation when it comes to playgrounds per capita.1 But in the brief six months since this playscape opened, it has become a major destination for the region’s families. Throughout the summer the park teemed with children. A park maintenance staffer said some parts of the park had “at least one child per square foot” on hot July Saturdays. In part, the park is so popular because it
here. There’s enough challenge that they can feel proud of themselves and enough variety that we’ll keep coming back again and again.” The refreshing change of pace that these visitors experienced at Smale is part of a nationwide movement to re-invigorate outdoor playspaces. Susan Solomon, author of American Playgrounds: Revitalizing Community Space, describes today’s default playground as “the McDonald’s model”: a garishly-colored and unimaginative collection of posts, platforms, tunnels, and slides stamped uniformly across the country. “Things like taking risks, learning to fail, learning to master something, to plan ahead, to develop deep friendships,” Solomon says, “none of those could take place on most playgrounds today.” Children are suffering as a result: physically, mentally and emotionally. A recent study in the Journal of Pediatrics found that when children
It’s a place that seems a bit wild and a little risky, a place where the unexpected can happen. is so different. Here, instead of the standard plastic post-and-platform structures of a typical American playground, climbing walls, boulders, bridges, logs and slide hillsides await curious kids. It’s a place that seems a bit wild and a little risky, a place where the unexpected can happen. One mother told me that her son is quickly bored at other playgrounds, but “here [at Smale] we can spend hours, and he never wants to leave.” Another said, “this is the best place to play anywhere near Cincinnati – my kids can actually run, climb, jump, get wet, play a giant foot piano, and freely raise their voices
are bored by “safe” play equipment, they are less likely to be physically active, and therefore more prone to obesity.2 There are intellectual and emotional effects too. A lack of free play opportunities is responsible for a generation of children who are less imaginative, creative and expressive, according to Kyung-Hee Kim, an educational psychologist at the College of William and Mary and the author of the 2011 paper The Creativity Crisis.3 Ellen Sandsetter, a Norwegian psychologist and author of Children’s Risky Play from an Evolutionary Perspective writes that protecting children 15
The site for Smale Riverfront Park before and after a reimagining of the waterfront.
on “safe” playgrounds results in “more fearful children and increased levels of psychopathology.”4 The list of ills is extensive, so why have modern playgrounds ended up this way? Today’s “McDonald’s model” playgrounds have been shaped largely by risk aversion within a litigious culture, and by overzealous safety guidelines that are meant to appease these fears. A series of high profile playground injuries and lawsuits in the late 1970s gave rise to the first Handbook for Public Playground Safety, published by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission in 1981. Over the following two decades cities removed “dangerous” play equipment from parks, schools and other public places and replaced it with structures and surfacing deemed “safe”. Yet there is little evidence about the efficacy of this focus on safety: in fact, emergency room visits due to playground injuries have remained steady since 1982.5 David Ball, a professor of risk management at Middlesex University in the UK is uncovering statistics that broken bones may actually be on the rise due to a phenomenon he calls “risk compensation”: kids aren’t as careful because play equipment and surfacing seem so safe, and they end up hurting themselves more often. Over the past decade a groundswell of play advocates – including parents, teachers and designers – have begun arguing that a reasonable level of risk in play is essential to children’s healthy development. Play scholarship uses the term risk as a shorthand for environments and activities that challenge children’s physical coordination, social skills, creative imagination and other desirable qualities. A 2015 study led by Sandsetter found that environments supportive of risky (challenging and exciting) play promoted physical activity, social interactions, creativity and resiliency among children, and argued that the overall positive effects of increased risky play provide a greater benefit than the 16 • Design Museum Magazine
possible negative consequences of injury.6 A recent popular article in the Atlantic Magazine titled “The Overprotected Kid” highlighted a junkyard-style playground in Scotland called “the Land” where children light fires and use saws and hammers to build whatever strikes their fancy.5 While this represents one extreme, the pendulum is slowly swinging back from the bland environs of safety towards the thrill of risk. And that shift means that cities increasingly eschew off-the-shelf playgrounds, instead engaging designers in the creation of custom play environments that are contextual, place-specific and creative in their interpretation of the safety guidelines to open up a sense of adventure, healthy risk and challenge. Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates’ Teardrop Park in New York City was among the first visible American examples of a new playground model. The playscapes at Smale Riverfront Park have put Cincinnati on the map of what an innovative landscape of play can look like in 21st century America.
The Backstory The making of the Smale Riverfront Park is a story of transformation that spans several decades. Back in the mid 1990s, most of the site was a brownfield along the banks of the Ohio River. Like so many post-industrial riverfronts across the U.S., it was covered in parking lots and vacant industrial parcels that flooded regularly. The old Riverfront Stadium, a multipurpose field which had been home to both the Cincinnati Reds and Bengals since 1970 occupied the parcel to the east of the Roebling Bridge and was in disrepair. Mehring Way, a four lane highway, ran along the riverbank, divorcing the city from the water. Vacancy rates in the surrounding areas were among the highest in the city. In the late 1990s the city initiated a masterplan process for the district. Over a two year period, an extensive public and
private input process identified and vetted key priorities. The final plan, approved in 1999, included several bold ideas: first, move Mehring Way away from the banks of the river to create room for a 14-acre park in the floodplain. Second, construct new baseball and football stadiums to anchor the parkland on either side and provide an economic engine for the area. Third, develop the area north of Mehring Way raised above the floodplain with floodable parking underneath. The entire plan encompassed more than 32 acres of riverfront. Sasaki’s role in the riverfront’s transformation began in 1999 when it was selected to develop concept plans for the park areas identified in the Master Plan. A team of landscape architects, urban planners and engineers conceived a multiphase approach that would begin by making room for the park. By 2004, the Great American Ball Park had been moved east and the Paul Brown football stadium had been constructed to the west. Mehring Way moved north in 2010, in conjunction with construction of the event lawn, fountains, stairs, and brewery. Resiliency to flooding was designed into every detail of these areas, and the work required an in-depth permitting process with the Army Corps of Engineers. The park’s dedicated playscapes – the Heekin Family/Grow Up Great Adventure Playscape and the P&G goVibrantscape – are both sited within the floodplain and opened together in the late spring of 2015. Collectively they blur the traditional boundaries between park and playground: there are no fences separating the zones from each other or from the rest of the park. Instead, children and families enter the spaces fluidly from all directions, and play spills out into nearby lawns, paths, and the flexible area beneath the bridge abutment. In addition, the park as a whole is a destination for families, including attractions like Carol Ann’s Carousel, fountains, and a labyrinth, as well as places to picnic, rent bikes, swing or sit by the river.
Many families we interviewed in October described coming to the area for a whole day of outdoor adventure and exploration. Today, two decades after the design process began, the playscapes seem like they were always meant to be here.
Designing the Playscapes In 1999 the park’s masterplan had called generally for some kind of children’s playground to be included on the lower level by the river, but gave no specifics regarding placement or typology. As the design team and Park Board began the design process, we considered everything from standard playground equipment to simple sloped lawns. But bold ideas about creating a new breed of imaginative and active play space captured the whole team early in the process. By 2013, when the design began in earnest, there was consensus that the playgrounds would set a new standard. “We wanted a place of adventure and challenge, and not a typical playground composed of off-the-shelf components,” says Steven Schuckman, Superintendent of Planning and Design for Cincinnati Parks. The goal, he says, was to create a playground “as unique and grounded in the site and its history as is the rest of the park.” At the same time, three important private funding sources stepped forward: The Heekin Family, PNC Bank, and Proctor & Gamble. The Heekin Family along with PNC Bank donated generously towards a playground that would inspire and challenge Cincinnati’s children to be physically active. Proctor & Gamble’s charitable foundation offered a grant to create a playful, interactive space that would engage children and families together in explorations
of cause and effect, promoting physical exercise in a fun way. The support of the Park Board to create an adventure-style playscape, aligned with the goals of the funders, and formed a strong foundation for conceptual design. Early sketches and studies of the PNC/ Heekin Adventure Playscape drew inspiration from the cultural and environmental history of the site. The story of the Ohio River – from its geologic beginnings to its role in settlement and industry to its seasonal flooding patterns – captivated the design team and grounded the design. A valley emerged as a central organizing element, reminiscent of the way the river has carved the landscape over time. Two bridges over the valley evoke the rhythm of the river’s many crossings, especially the historic Roebling suspension bridge which bisects the Smale Riverfront Park on its way to Kentucky. The log climbing feature drew upon the log jams common during flooding events. Likewise, the materiality of the playscape drew heavily from the local area: the rock outcrops are built from large pieces of local sandstone, which also make up the abutments of the adjacent Roebling Bridge, while most of the wood features throughout the playscape are a rot-resistant native locust tree sourced from downed trees in other Cincinnati public parks. A research-based process helped inform the layout and specific features of the PNC/Heekin Adventure Playscape. The design responded to six categories of risky play, as defined by Sandsetter: fast motion, unsupervised & exploration, natural elements, great heights, rough & tumble, and using tools.8 Elements like the slide, climbing walls and bridges were designed specifically to help kids achieve
The Six Categories of Risky Play Fast Motion When fast motion comes into play, children learn how to improve their balance and coordination, as well as practice risk management.
Unsupervised & Explorative When playing alone, children gain skills and knowledge in self-direction, self-reliance, problem solving, risk evaluation, curiosity, independence, and confidence.
Natural Elements When interacting with the environment, children learn about nature and gain an increased sense of curiosity and wonder.
Great Heights When playing at higher elevations, children are able to experience a bird’s-eye view and other new vantage points, as well as practice balance and achieve a sense of accomplishment.
Rough & Tumble During this type of play, children learn negotiation skills, cooperative group play, teamwork, social skills, and empathy.
Functional Tools When children play with tools they are able to learn about cause and effect, practice fine motor skills, and feel a sense of increased responsibility and trust.
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feelings of great heights and rapid speeds, while small nooks in the rock outcrops and winding paths capture a sense of mystery and the feeling that one could disappear. Most of the elements incorporate some sense of danger – a foot could fall through the mesh of the rope bridge, a hand could slip at the top of the climbing wall – without actually being dangerous. Teri Hendy, a play consultant who specializes in alternative play environments, worked with the design team to ensure that each of the custom designed features met all the standards of the Public Playground Safety Handbook. Although a definite focus of the PNC/ Heekin Adventure playscape is to provide a physical outlet and challenge for children, the design team sought to incorporate other types of play. Sara Smilanski, a renowned Israeli child psychologist who trained with Jean Piaget, developed a widely-accepted theory in the late 1960’s about four types of play that contribute to children’s learning and development. They are (1) functional play involving physical and gross-motor activities, (2) constructive play including building and creating, (3) dramatic play that engages imagination and role playing, and (4) games with rules. Our early design conversations focused particularly on how to incorporate dramatic and constructive play into such an active and physical space. The fog misters at the northern amphitheater are cooling in
the summer but are also intended to evoke a sense of mystery that might spark imaginative activities. We worked with a local artist to embed fossil-carved stones into the rock outcrops to promote a sense of discovery and wonderment. Incorporating constructive play into the playscape proved to be the most difficult. Nationwide, constructive play environments that include loose parts to manipulate – like sand, water, or blocks – tend to be challenged in urban public parks. Municipalities cite concerns over maintenance costs and keeping playgrounds looking “neat” while citizens express fears over safety and what things could be hidden in sand. At Smale, the large sloping lawn that today occupies the area north of the valley was, for most of the design process, conceived of as a sand-and-water play zone, where children could freely manipulate the environment to create whatever struck their fancy: from castles, to sculptures, to rivers and dams, or even bakery delights. In the end, local concerns regarding keeping public sand boxes clean and safe for children won out, and the sand area was eliminated. At the same time, the design process for the P&G goVibrantscape was just beginning and early concepts immediately hit on providing a place for children to manipulate water, without the sand. The water play map, which allows children to pump, dam and channel water in order to flood a miniature
granite-relief version of the park, grew out of an intensive process with Richter Spielgerate, a German manufacturer of alternative playground equipment, to identify the maximum interactive play value and layout of elements. We traded sketches back and forth for months, as the design grew from a simple water basin and runnel into an engineer’s paradise. The miniature map of the city took shape first as a digital model, then as a full scale mockup in our office and was ultimately CNC milled by Coldspring Granite. Richter also helped to customize their signature Ornithopter play element into what we like to call the “Oink-i-thopter”. Cincinnati, known to some as “Pork-opolis” has long embraced the flying pig as its mascot, a symbol that evokes both the city’s commercial and industrial roots as well as its aspirations and sense of humor. The flying pig creates a sense of place while engaging many children and families to create movement together. Children and adults climb up a ladder into the pig while friends and family pull on ropes to flap the pig’s wings and give those inside a ride.
The Impact The two playscapes opened within a few weeks of each other in the late spring of 2015. It was immediately clear that they were a hit. We heard from local contacts that the features were “standing room only” and “crawling with kids”, and social media channels were
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alive with positive feedback. As excitement about the playscapes built over the course of the summer, Sasaki became interested in understanding, and learning from, this project. We wanted to unpack how children and families use the playscapes – how they travel through them, what features captivate attention most and what kinds of play activities they inspire. We were also curious about how the park was performing from a maintenance and safety perspective. And so, supported by an internal Sasaki research grant, our team began a rich exploration of contemporary play at Smale Riverfront Park. Our research team – three landscape architects and one intrepid four-year old research assistant – traveled to Cincinnati to collect data on a sunny weekend in midOctober. Armed with clipboards, cameras and copious data collection sheets, we logged more than 45 observation hours in the park and conducted more than 100 interviews. Our chief methods included four activities: counting, tracking, listening, and interviewing. Every 30 minutes throughout the weekend we conducted a full count of the people in the playscapes, capturing where children, adults, teens, strollers and dogs were distributed. Tracking consisted of mapping one child’s journey for ten minutes, noting his or her complete path through the playscape and
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observing key moments. We tracked two to three times every 30 minutes. We conducted interviews with both visitors and stakeholders, including key park maintenance staff and leadership. And key to our qualitative data was intensive listening: we sat in each play zone for 10 minutes at a time and wrote down all comments and conversations. We joke that, in retrospect, listening was the creepiest part of the research effort, but it yielded excellent insights about types of play occurring in each zone. Beyond these formal methods, which generated mountains of excellent quantitative and qualitative data, the experience of spending an entire weekend immersed in the park was transformative. Subtle changes in sunlight, wind, and temperature over the course of a day gave us ever-changing new perspectives on the park. Swells and ebbs of background noises like voices, footfalls, laughter, traffic, and riverboats produced a constant hum of activity. As countless families arrived, played, and departed we spent time watching and occasionally joining in the play. We shared the joy and pride of first ascents up the climbing wall, the laughter of families riding in the flying pig for the first time and the momentary tragedies of skinned knees and elbows. We returned to Boston with a substantial
amount of data, both qualitative and quantitative. As we comb through it, we keep making new discoveries, but four key trends have emerged. First, the playscapes at Smale have a high level of intergenerational integration. At most standard playgrounds, there is a simple pattern: children play on the plastic structure, while parents mill about on the outskirts. Conversely, at Smale the densities of children and adults were relatively even across all play zones. Adults weren’t just watching children on the flying pig, they were climbing up for a ride themselves or helping to pull on the wings to create the flying motion. At the climbing walls and log climbing feature, adults were both spotting children and trying out the holds themselves. One father told us: “[this park] is fun and challenging, so different than our neighborhood tot lot…I can’t help but join in the playing!” The perception of risk also made many parents stick more closely to their children than usual. At times children were asking for help with a difficult move, and at other times parents were nervously hovering and telling children to be careful. Second, design layout has a strong effect on patterns of movement. The PNC/Heekin adventure playscape, on the east side of the bridge, is designed as one fluid playscape, with different play elements linked together in a similar way to a climbing structure. Children
Where Design Meets Play • 21
moved in fast, iterative, and looping paths here. Parents traveled loosely with their kids, but also stopped to watch at times from key vantage points, like the bottom and top of the slides or the ends of the valley. The P&G goVibrantscape, on the west side of the bridge, is laid out as separate play “rooms” arranged along the central spine of the historic Water Street. Parents and children traveled in family groups from room to room, rarely returning to a room after leaving it. The marked difference between movement patterns on the east and the west speaks to the rise of the continuous play concepts in the 1980s. Early playgrounds tended to be object focused: a swing, a seesaw, a ladder, and slide element – all placed separately on a flat plane. Continuous play, credited to Steve King of Landscape Structures, captures the idea of linking play moments together into a fluid experience: from the pinnacle of one feature you can always see another adventure. This thinking gave rise to the kind of conglomerate play structure so familiar on today’s standard playgrounds, but is also useful in designing custom playscapes that will keep children running from one exciting experience to the next. Third, despite design considerations and operational measures in place, some kids will use the playscape in unintended ways. On standard playgrounds, it’s common to see kids climbing backwards up the slides, monkeying around to the outside of high guardrails and swinging from the tops of shade trellises. Some children are hard-wired to make their own challenge, even if that appears dangerous or undesirable to adults. This holds for Smale, where children who want to be creative have plenty of opportunities for upping the ante, despite the fact that the custom playscape meets all safety standards. One group of boys used the Heekin playscape as a parkour training ground, doing back flips off the rocks, frog-leaps over the climbing logs and vigorous swinging on the rope bridge. Children use the sloped concrete next to the slides as much as the slides themselves, and climb to the very top of the pig rather than just inside the cockpit. Instead of just working together to get the balancing disc level, some groups play a game where one person spins the disc in an attempt to get others to lose their balance and fly off. Although these behaviors could be regarded as simply dangerous, they are also markers of creativity and innovation and an important part of children claiming the space as their own. Finally, constructive play in the playscape is just as valuable as challenging physical activity. The new generation of adventure playgrounds, like Heekin, excel at inspiring physical activity, a sense of risk 22 • Design Museum Magazine
and the feelings of pride that go along with accomplishing a difficult challenge. Our play typology mapping of the Smale playscapes revealed active physical play occurring across the entire playscape. But constructive play, where children are experimenting and making discoveries is essentially isolated to the water play map. Although our data from a cool October weekend indicated only an average play density at the water map, we heard again and again from stakeholders and families how hugely popular the area is during the summer. One caregiver who runs a nearby daycare told us, it was “the perfect place to get wet [and kept the kids] interested for so long. [It was] always so crowded…I wish it were bigger.” Over the course of a weekend we witnessed countless moments of experimentation, creativity and discovery as children pumped, dammed, diverted, released and splashed water. The air was full of questions like “what happens if…?” and declarations like “look what I did!”. One girl’s father watched her open and close spigots in a certain order and asked her what she was doing. “I’m engineering,” she told him matter-of-factly. Constructive play is critical for nurturing the kind of creative thinking currently in decline,3 and there is clearly an unmet appetite for more of it in the park. These four big take-aways gloss over a million nuances of the post-occupancy data, but together they highlight how the park has developed a life of its own. As designers, funders, clients and stakeholders – we all dream big about what a park can be, but in the end it is the children, families, and community that really define what it is. How they use the playscape, what they love and what they neglect – these are critical drivers of the park’s future, and also key learning moments for future designs. Sasaki is currently developing partnership models with a local university to continue gathering post-occupancy data throughout the coming summer. At the same time we are already applying thinking around layout, unintended uses and constructive play to new playscape projects. As the sun starts to shift behind Paul Brown stadium casting long shadows in the park, I wrap up a final interview and tuck away my clipboard. Despite the imminent dusk and the cool air, there are still families enjoying the park. Tess is over at the water play map: she has made friends with another little girl, perhaps five years old, and they have been moving water together for almost 30 minutes, a near-eternity for the preschool bracket. I hear Tessa’s friend shout “are you ready?” and Tessa nods vigorously, her eyes fixed on the stainless steel channel in front of her. As the friend begins pumping water, I walk closer and see that they have placed two twigs in the
channel. “Is it working?” the friend asks, and then, unable to contain herself, stops pumping and runs over to see. The three of us watch the water flood the channel, lifting the twigs and carrying them to the end where the girls have left one rubber stopper open. The first twig spins and dives neatly through the hole to fall on the granite map below. The second gets caught sideways and remains as the last of the water drains out. “One boat did the waterfall, and one just did the rapids” explains Tess, and they both laugh. The friend bounds off to retrieve the sticks, but Tessa stays close. “Mama”, she says, leaning her head into my hip, “I’m tired.” And it’s no surprise: she has been playing hard since nine-thirty in the morning. Maria Montessori, founder of the popular pedagogy that bears her name, said famously “play is the work of the child,” and today I believe it wholeheartedly. Tessa, and her peers, numbering more than eight-hundred that day, have explored every inch of the park. They have done many of the things we designers might have expected, and have also innovated and discovered new ways of playing in the space that we never could have imagined. As we begin to climb the steps up to downtown Cincinnati, Tessa turns around and tugs my hand: “But can we come back tomorrow?” As it turns out, we can: this is the perfect collision between work and play for both of us. • Kate Tooke is a licensed landscape architect, artist, and educator. She is a Senior Associate in the Urban Studio at Sasaki, where she leads design efforts for a diverse range of projects at both planning and site scales.
Sources 1The Trust for Public Land, Center for City Park Excellence, 2014 City Park Facts: bit.ly/2bfn2R7 2Journal of Pediatrics, Societal values and policies may curtail preschool children’s physical activity in child care centers. Copeland, et al. 10.1542/peds. 2011-2102 3Creativity Research Journal, The Creativity Crisis: The Decrease in Creative Thinking Scores on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Kyung Hee Kim, 23:4, 285295. 2011 4Evolutionary Psychology, Children’s Risky Play from an Evolutionary Perspective: The Anti-Phobic Effects of Thrilling Experiences. Sandseter, et al. 9(2): 257-284. 2011 5The Atlantic Magazine, The Overprotected Kid. Rosin. April 2014: theatln.tc/2bfq2x2 6International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, What is the relationship between risky outdoor play and health in children? A systematic review. Brussoni et al. 12(6), 6423-6454. 2015
Where Design Meets Play • 23
A cyclist coasts down the new parkingprotected bike lane, a demonstration project in Burlington, VT. 24
Design Museum Magazine
VIBRANT CITIES
Prototyping Safer Streets Demonstration Projects in Burlington, VT By Julie Flynn, Project Manager, Street Plans Collaborative Edited by Mike Lydon, Principal, Street Plans Collaborative Images courtesy of Street Plans Collaborative and Julie Campoli
Imagine standing in the middle of New York’s Times Square in 2008 — you’re surrounded by snarling traffic with car horns beeping and yellow taxicabs zooming by at lightning speed. It’s a space ruled by cars, a dangerous one for pedestrians and cyclists alike. If you told someone back then that in just a few short years Times Square would be permanently closed to vehicular traffic and be a haven for pedestrians enjoying outdoor seating and street performers, she’d say you were crazy. But what seemed physically and politically impossible actually happened. How? Rather than debate and study the idea behind closed doors for decades, the New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT) started small, with a short intervention to improve traffic patterns and increase pedestrian safety. In 2009, through their Green Light for Midtown project, they worked with neighborhood partners to close Broadway between 42nd and 47th streets to create a pop-up plaza for one weekend using traffic barricades and inexpensive folding chairs. Contrary to the concerns of some, the temporary street closure did not cause a transportation system meltdown. Following the successful weekend-long demonstration project, NYCDOT used slightly more durable, but still low-cost and temporary, materials to create a summer-long pilot plaza at the site. The agency studied the impact of the plaza on pedestrian safety, public life, traffic, and local business revenue. They found 2-17% improvements to trip speeds across multiple routes. Injuries to motorists and passengers in the project area declined 63% and pedestrian injuries fell by 35%.1 After analyzing impacts and refining the design incrementally, NYCDOT moved to permanently close off
Time Square to cars with a full build out of the pedestrian plaza — transforming the area from a site of constant traffic congestion and frequent pedestrian injuries into an iconic and much-loved public space.
Tactical Urbanism The transformation of Times Square represents a new and much needed change in the approach to improving our streets. Over 30,000 people are killed in traffic crashes in the United States every year.2 Design sends the strongest signal about how to move through a space, and unfortunately many city streets are designed with little other goal than to move vehicles as quickly as possible. The National Association of City Transportation Officials documents a strong correlation “between higher speeds, crash risk, and the severity of injuries.”3 While enforcement and
way, sometimes halting a project before a conceptual design can even be proposed. For a parent who wants their child to be able to walk or bike to school, waiting 5 to 10 years for a streetscape upgrade with a protected bike lane is exasperating. This is why people often throw up their hands and give up on the urban planning process — it’s hard to accept the slow pace and lack of transparency around implementing capital improvements to our roadways. More often than not it’s the unknowns — the unknown impacts resulting from a change — that hold projects back. In NYCDOT’s Times Square project, cab drivers thought the changes would cause traffic jams and local business owners thought retails sales would decline. The iterative approach NYCDOT applied allowed the agency to gather data and test those unknowns — neither scenario played out. While large-scale efforts do have their
Design sends the strongest signal about how to move through a space. posted speed limits play a role in controlling speed, proactively designing streets to reduce speeds “may be the single most consequential intervention in reducing pedestrian injury and fatality.”4 Thus, as more people in the US are moving to urban places and walking and biking to get around, cities are working to design streets to not only move cars, but also to make it safe and convenient for people of all ages and abilities to walk, bike, or take transit. Unfortunately, timelines for projects often feel maddeningly slow. Politics, budgets, permits, and competing interests get in the
place, cities around the world are increasingly looking to small, incremental projects as an important tool for advancing long-term goals related to making changes to the streetscape. Sometimes sanctioned, sometimes not, this approach is often referred to as Tactical Urbanism: a city, organization, and/or citizen-led approach to neighborhood building using short-term, low-cost, and scalable interventions intended to catalyze long-term change. Tactical Urbanism is an approach to citymaking that embraces an iterative
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approach. The approach might involve shortterm demonstration projects, like pop-up bike lanes, guerrilla crosswalks, or play streets. At a longer time scale, Tactical Urbanism might involve pilot or interim-design projects that last months or years. Examples include curb extensions created with paint and bollards, rapid-implementation of protected bike lanes using low-cost materials, or NYCDOT’s second plaza iteration, using paint, planters, and movable furniture. Though the Tactical Urbanism approach doesn’t always start with a weekend-long popup, many communities find that a small step is the right place to start. Even if a project lasts merely a few days, it can be a valuable way to spark real conversation about street design changes and help people imagine something they didn’t know was possible. Take protected bicycle lanes for example. Though they are popular in many European cities, most people in the United States have never seen or experienced one. In the past 3 years, a growing number of advocacy organizations and community groups across the country have created pop-up, protected bike lanes to educate decision makers and residents about their many benefits. Riders on protected lanes are 50% safer, says research published in the American Journal of Public Health.5 And a recent study from Portland State University showed that protected bike lanes increase bicycle ridership up to 171% on some streets, and that 10-21% of riders in these lanes switched to cycling because of the safer route.6 That means less cars, less traffic, less pollution, plus healthier lifestyles.
Burlington, VT Burlington, VT is consistently rated as one of the most livable and creative small cities in America. With access to forest, mountains, lakes, and the Winooski River, Burlington’s appeal for outdoor recreation is hard to match. The city has a walkable downtown with wellpreserved historic architecture, and compact development patterns that make it inherently conducive to travel on foot and by bike.  However, like many communities across the country, Burlington is experiencing growing demand for safer streets with better walking and biking opportunities for all. The City of Burlington’s vision for improving its streets’ walkability and bikeability was well articulated in planning documents dating back almost a decade, but the city still had no dedicated plan for defining strategy and setting priorities for active transportation investments. To help Burlington transform itself into place where walking and biking are viable, 26 • Design Museum Magazine
enjoyable transportation options for all, city leaders launched their first ever active transportation master planning process. The effort was organized by Burlington’s Department of Public Works (DPW), which hired Vermont-based engineering firm, Dubois & King, as well as our team at Street Plans Collaborative to lead the project. “With this plan, the City of Burlington aimed to turn our well-established community visions for a walkable and bikeable city into specific, actionable projects that are prioritized by the community,” said Nicole Losch, Transportation Planner with the City of Burlington Department of Public Works. “The city’s goal is to increase the number of people walking and biking no matter their age, gender or level of ability. To do this, we needed a plan that would present specific projects for rapid implementation to make walking and biking safe, comfortable, and convenient for all, and we were interested in using innovative and non-traditional public involvement techniques as part of the process.” The Street Plans Collaborative kicked off the project in July of 2015 with a series of public events designed to help the team understand existing conditions and identify community priorities. Through walking and biking tours, dozens of local residents helped the project team identify challenges and opportunities throughout the city. An evening public workshop allowed residents to introduce their top priority project and then rate each other’s ideas, using crowd sourcing to elevate initial priorities. Street Plans Collaborative also launched a dedicated project website with an interactive map that allowed people to submit geo-tagged
comments and suggest project ideas. This initial public outreach revealed a handful of streets that were major pain points for people walking and biking — it’s no surprise that these streets also aligned with high incidences of traffic crashes and injuries. Burlington residents and advocates wanted a bold plan to catapult the city into position as a leader in pedestrian and cycling transportation alongside leading cities like Portland, OR; Minneapolis, MN, and Boulder, CO. They wanted the plan to include projects and policies that would make walking and biking safe, comfortable, and convenient not just for the spandex-clad MAMILs (MiddleAged-Men-in Lycra), but for people of all ages, genders, and abilities. And, they wanted to see action fast — many expressed fear that Burlington was stuck in a cycle of too much planning and not enough action, a situation sometimes referred to as “analysis paralysis.” Residents had a vision and wanted change now. All public projects have trade-offs. On compact urban streets, like those found in Burlington, adding new bicycle or pedestrian amenities might require narrowing lanes or eliminating curbside parking in certain areas. Despite a growing body of data demonstrating the economic and health benefits of better pedestrian and bicycling infrastructure, such design changes are not always an easy sell to parties who are accustomed to existing street designs. Emergency service providers rely on wide lanes and local shop owners often worry that fewer parking spaces will negatively impact their sales. If we were going to create a bold plan,
the typical public engagement framework of analysis and public meetings would not be enough. We had to involve a larger, more diverse pool of people to push the discussion out of the public meeting room and onto the street. Street Plans Collaborative worked with DPW and local advocacy group, Local Motion, to design two multi-component demonstration projects that could be installed temporarily in neighborhoods on either end of the city. The projects were intended to expand the conversation about active transportation and allow residents, business owners, and city agencies to create, physically experience, and react to new types of pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure. To maximize public input and impact, the projects were timed to coincide with two popular local events, both of which were expected to draw thousands of people over the course of one weekend. The first project, in the South End of the city, was focused on enhancing pedestrian safety and comfort. Next to a highly-trafficked food and entertainment hub with little public space, we envisioned a new parklet, repurposing an existing parking space and turning it into a curbside public space for sitting and socializing. To reduce street crossing distances for pedestrians at the adjacent intersection, we created a curb extension with a decorative mural covering the pavement. The second project was planned to coincide with Burlington’s 2nd Open Streets event in the North End of the City. Sometimes called “Ciclovias,” Open Streets events temporarily close miles of streets to cars so that people may use them for dancing, playing, socializing, walking, or biking. We knew that Burlington’s Open Streets event would draw thousands of people interested in walking, biking and making their community a better place, so adjacent to the route we planned
to demonstrate three new bikeway types: a planter protected bike lane, a neighborhood greenway, and Burlington’s first parkingprotected bike lane. Event attendees would have the opportunity to ride or walk around the demonstration projects, taking a “tour” of some of the new street designs that might be proposed in the master plan. With our vision and design drawings in place, DuBois & King drew up traffic control plans so that volunteers could safely install all four projects in the street. DPW circulated the project concepts and traffic control plans to key partner agencies, including the transit agency and fire and police departments. With a mere $4,000 budget for materials across the two projects, Local Motion took the lead in sourcing as many donated and borrowed materials as possible. Community partners loaned the project team brooms and other equipment to clean and prep the sites, as well as cinder blocks and plywood to build benches. A local nursery even lent 100 pots of blooming mums to fill the temporary planter boxes required to create the planter-protected bicycle lane. DPW loaned the team its bicycle marking stencil, as well as the signs needed to implement the traffic control plan. In the end our funding was used only to purchase items that could not be borrowed, such as traffic control tape and paint. After about one month of planning, the big weekend finally arrived. With the help of about a dozen volunteers, we set to work Friday morning installing the first project – the parklet and curb extensions in the South End. We used tape to mark out the stripes in our parklet and curb extension murals, and got to work painting. Once the paint was dry and cones and planters in place, we set to work creating seating in the parklet area from hay bales and home made benches crafted from cinder blocks and plywood. We completed
Volunteers apply paint to create a temporary bike lane.
Tactical Urbanism Project Uses Municipal authorities, organizations, and everyday citizens use Tactical Urbanism as a tool to: • Deepen their understanding of local user’s needs at various scales • Draw attention to perceived shortcomings in policy and physical design • Widen public engagement • Tests aspects of a project or plan before making large political or financial investments • Expedite project implementation • Gather data from the real-world use of streets and other public spaces • Encourage people to work together in new ways • Strengthen relationships between residents, non-profits, local businesses, and government agencies
the setup just as the large art walk event planned in the neighborhood began to draw an audience. We set one finished bench down and within minutes it was occupied. We didn’t have room to move it or tweak the placement of seating the rest of the night – the bench was never empty again! With the successful parklet complete we caught a few hours of sleep before the 5:00am curtain call set for the installation of our second project – the three bikeway projects in the North End. We began with the most complicated of the three bikeway types, the parking-protected bike lane. Sleepy volunteers began arriving, and to our delight, we found that the vast majority of people had obeyed the curbside parking ban we put in place the day before – the Police Department removed the two cars parked in our bike lane area, and we set to work cleaning the street and placing the traffic tape in place. Immediately following the installation of the first few parking spaces marked to out delineate the parking protected bike lane, it became clear that adjustments were needed. Sight lines for cars turning into driveways were too limited, and the overall number of parking spaces in each section needed to be reduced. With input from engineers at DuBois & King, the team adjusted the geometry on the spot by simply pulling up traffic tape and re-marking spots to provide more space at each driveway. Once the parking-protected bike lane was in place we moved on to the other two streets, painting green super sharrows — large graphics Prototyping Safer Streets • 27
Before and after a temporary curb extension and parklet installation. on the street — in place for the neighborhood greenway, and finally, positioning planters in our planter-protected lane. While the planter-protected bike lane and neighborhood greenway seemed clear enough to most people biking through, the parking-protected bike lane was perplexing to some. We watched as the first few cyclists approached the street and, thinking the cars were floated off the curb for an event of some kind, they stuck to the middle of the street and shared the road with vehicles. A few volunteers coaxed people into the parkingprotected bike lane, something many had never seen or experienced before. A few people stopped riding to remark at the novelty of the idea – after riding down the lane themselves, they clearly saw the efficiency of the design, allowing parking to remain, and simply using it as a buffer between the bike and vehicle lanes. By Saturday afternoon, we saw people confidently riding their bikes down the parking protected lane; some even felt confident enough to take their hands off the handlebars to give us a thumbs up. Throughout the project weekend we conducted observations and collected data to understand how the demonstration project impacted street operations. The team collected targeted input from civic stakeholders as they interacted with the demonstrations. The Burlington Fire Department tested out the project designs in the North End, driving a ladder truck through each street in a simulation of a typical emergency response. The wide ladder truck barely fit on the street with a parking-protected bike lane and scraped by the planters, underscoring the need for 28 • Design Museum Magazine
a barrier element that could be mounted by the wheel of a fire truck, such as a low curb. The team also had the opportunity to speak to a postal delivery person — an important street user who is unlikely to share input at a typical public meeting. Though he thought the parking protected bike lane design was a creative solution for protecting cyclists without sacrificing parking, he was concerned that the new street design made it impossible for him to briefly double-park in order to make deliveries. Input from residents was the most important. During the test, people living along the street with the parking-protected bike lane stepped out into their driveways to check out the new parking configuration or test the lane themselves. Neighbors didn’t have many objections to the reduced number of curbside parking spaces, as we’d worried they might — they told us that everyone living on the block parks in their driveways, and the free curbside parking is primarily used by people who work or shop downtown. At the same time, they did express concern that a permanent parkingprotected bike lane could restrict delivery access to their homes, and might make it dangerous to turn in and out of their driveways at night, when visibility is reduced. Neighbors on the street with the planterprotected bike lane came outside to share their approval for the plants and the efforts to slow traffic in the neighborhood. They shared their own stories of watching cars speed wildly down the road. They hoped that a narrower lane might help enforce the posted speed limit in the future. To collect and analyze quantitative data, our team partnered with the Chittenden
County Regional Planning Commission (CCRPC). CCRPC placed pneumatic road tube sensors on two of the primary demonstration project streets, which allowed us to measure vehicle speed and traffic volume. The data showed that volumes of vehicles did not change significantly during the demonstration, but that vehicle speeds were significantly lower: under normal conditions about 25% of drivers on these streets do not observe the speed limit. With the parking-protected and planter-protected bikeways in place to narrow the vehicle travel lanes, speeding dropped to just 6%. Thus, the two demonstrations illustrated that each of the primary corridors has additional capacity for motoring, and that redesigning the street with protected bikeways could lead to a much higher percentage of drivers observing the speed limit. Based on these learnings and the community support for slower traffic speeds, our master plan recommends protected bike lanes on the streets where the parking- and planter-protected bike lanes were tested for the weekend. The city is working to take on pilot projects within a year of adopting the plan to further test options for protective elements that might effectively separate the bike and vehicle lanes. Based on the pilots, the city will likely follow up with permanent protected bike lanes on these two streets within a few years.
Operationalizing the Approach In addition to providing Street Plans Collaborative with key input for our final recommendations, the demonstration projects represented unprecedented collaboration between Burlington’s government agencies, advocates, local businesses, and residents. They allowed a broad base of people, not normally involved with the technical planning process, to experience new and unfamiliar street design types. Through this process the City of Burlington recognized the immense value in short-term, community-led demonstration projects — so much so that they’ve initiated a program to operationalize the approach. With help from Street Plans Collaborative, DPW is creating a guide and policy framework to make it easier for everyday residents, advocacy organizations, and community groups to spearhead shortterm demonstration projects, lasting 1-7 days, alongside DPW and other city agencies. “The policy builds off Burlington’s existing pilot project ordinance, which already allows DPW to implement 30-day traffic and parking projects on public streets in order to evaluate the merits and impacts of proposed street designs,” said Nicole Losch. “The new
demonstration project policy will break the process into smaller increments and bring a new element into the process, allowing DPW to permit short-term, community-led demonstration projects in public streets, just like the demonstration projects we created as part of the plan. Not only will we be able to evaluate the merits and impacts of projects, we hope this new framework will build excitement among residents and advocates as they’re more involved in testing ideas and engaging others in their community in the urban planning process.” Though this approach to engaging people in actively shaping the design of their streets might seem novel, it isn’t. Long before we developed centralized city governments with departments exclusively focused on streets, public health, or recreation, humans created settlements that embraced vernacular responses to their everyday needs. It is natural for people to want to shape the environment around them. Yet in many cases, we’ve regulated opportunities for informal, citizenled citymaking out of the process entirely. An increasing number of citizens want to co-develop neighborhood projects alongside their city governments, and we’re guessing that if you got to the end of this article, you might be one of them. While we can’t promise that your 1-day pop-up bike lane will turn your city into Copenhagen, we can promise that things will never change unless someone takes action. So stop reading. And get started! • Julie Flynn is a Project Manager at Street Plans, and leads the firm’s office in San Francisco. She has a strong background in community outreach, public space activation, and transportation planning projects.
Sources 1NYCDOT, The Green Light for Midtown Evaluation Report: on.nyc.gov/2be2fgH 2Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Accidents or Unintentional Injuries: bit.ly/2be3bBL 3NACTO, Urban Street Design Guide Design Speed Discussion, “Pedestrian fatality risk as a function of car impact,” bit.ly/2bes7JE 4NACTO Urban Street Design Guide Design Speed Discussion, “Pedestrian Safety Review: Risk Factors and Countermeasures,” bit.ly/2bes7JE 5American Journal of Public Health, Route Infrastructure and the Risk of Injuries to Bicyclists: A Case-Crossover Study: bit.ly/2besJik 6Portland State University, Lessons from the Green Lanes: Evaluating Protected Bike Lanes in the U.S. bit.ly/2beuP1q
Prototyping Safer Streets • 29
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