{"id":2376,"date":"2007-10-14T11:43:03","date_gmt":"2007-10-14T15:43:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=2376"},"modified":"2007-10-14T14:37:30","modified_gmt":"2007-10-14T18:37:30","slug":"can-naked-streets-make-pedestrians-sexy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/10\/14\/can-naked-streets-make-pedestrians-sexy\/","title":{"rendered":"Can naked streets make pedestrians sexy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

The surprising media coverage<\/a> of the Walk21 conference<\/a> continued after it was over, with a series of wrap-up pieces over the weekend and in the weeklies.<\/p>\n

What was striking was that all of these pieces were oriented to some extent around the idea of “shared streets,” also known as “naked streets” in their more radical form.<\/p>\n

The concept is based on removing most of the signs, signals and curbs that direct traffic (both vehicles and pedestrians), leaving just street furniture, the texture of the environment, and the other people who occupy the space to shape people’s traffic behaviour. It was pioneered by Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman, who bases it on the principle that people will take less risks if their environment is more uncertain (and will move more slowly if their environment is attractive). In person, he is very eloquent about the ideas behind the concept — Dan Egan, the City’s manager of pedestrian and cycling infrastructure, describes him as a “philosopher-engineer.”<\/p>\n

Part of the appeal of shared streets is that, rather than setting various modes of travel (pedestrians, cyclist, cars) against each other in a struggle for limited space, it integrates them together and benefits all of them. Pedestrians are less marginalized and suffer fewer accidents. Studies have shown that, although cars have to drive much more slowly, their travel time often actually decreases because they do not have to stop as much. I imagine cyclists might benefit from a similar drop in stops that interfere with momentum, not to mention the benefits of slower cars.<\/p>\n

In the Saturday papers, the Star<\/em>‘s Tess Kalinowski wrapped up her week of conference coverage with a good summary of some of the conference’s key ideas, including shared streets, and how they relate to Toronto (“Some modest proposals to liberate city streets<\/a>” — see also the video)<\/span>. The Globe and Mail<\/em> ran a big story by Erin Anderssen in its Focus section that featured Monderman extensively but focused primarily on the effect of shared streets on car traffic (“A radical road map<\/a>” – Globe<\/em> subscribers only). In the weekly NOW<\/em>, Mike Smith wrote a great summary of some of Walk21’s main themes (“Walk this way<\/a>“), opening with a Swiss variation on the naked streets concept, while I too talked about Monderman and naked streets in a supplementary article<\/a> (note that I didn’t write the article’s title!).<\/p>\n

I’m guessing we all picked up on this concept for the same reasons — it grabs people’s imaginations. It’s counter-intuitive, it’s controversial, it brings pedestrian planning up to the sphere of philosophy. Other forms of transport have their sex appeal — cars are flashy and fast, cyclists are lithe and individualistic, even transit has big, powerful machines. But pedestrians have always been treated as kind of prosaic. Now naked streets have come along to get pedestrian blood pumping (Wired<\/em> called their article about it “Roads gone wild<\/a>“).<\/p>\n

The naked street has the best kind of European appeal — not the patronising, we’re-more-refined-than-you kind of European ethos, but rather the innovative, daring, on-the-edge yet grounded in technique European design aesthetic you get in Italian fashion, British architecture, French food, German engineering. It’s unexpected, it’s philosophical, it’s hard to be sure if it really works or if you really like it. Kind of like Alsop’s OCAD tabletop — is it brilliant or ridiculous? Does it really belong here? — it gets people stimulated and talking.<\/p>\n

We don’t know if the naked streets idea would work in Toronto, and if it does, how we would have to adapt it to our local circumstances. But it’s worth pursuing if it gets people excited and thinking about how to change the city for pedestrians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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What was striking was that all of these pieces were oriented to some extent around the idea of “shared streets,” also known as “naked streets” in their more radicalContinue reading “Can naked streets make pedestrians sexy?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4006,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2045,965,6975,6974,451,313,3440,1960,5881,808,1771,5269,6976,314,405,19,6977,3371],"class_list":["post-2376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-walking","tag-car-traffic","tag-cyclist","tag-dan-egan","tag-erin-anderssen","tag-food-2","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-hans-monderman","tag-manager","tag-manager-of-pedestrian-and-cycling-infrastructure","tag-media-coverage","tag-mike-smith","tag-pedestrian-and-cycling-infrastructure","tag-tess-kalinowski","tag-the-globe-and-mail","tag-the-star","tag-toronto","tag-traffic-engineer","tag-travel-time"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCan naked streets make pedestrians sexy? - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/10\/14\/can-naked-streets-make-pedestrians-sexy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Can naked streets make pedestrians sexy? - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The surprising media coverage of the Walk21 conference continued after it was over, with a series of wrap-up pieces over the weekend and in the weeklies. 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