So the good news is that one of America’s leading urban
planners thinks Lancaster is the “best looking city” he’s worked in, and he’s
worked in a lot of them. The bad news –for
planner Jeff Speck, that is – is that it’s not so easy to find ways to improve
things.
Speck, who is co-author of the urban revival manifesto“Suburban Nation”, shouldn’t be overly apprehensive since he is the recipient
of $50,000 from the Lancaster City Alliance to come up with ideas to make downtown
Lancaster more ”walkable.”
To that end, an auditorium full of citizens and officials
came to Ware Center Monday evening to hear Speck go through a locally
customized version of his celebrated TED Talk (800,000-plus views and counting)
on “The Walkable City” (not coincidentally, the title of his newest book).
The goal, in his catchphrase, is “to use everyday design in
everyday spaces that get people out in the street.”
This is happening around the country, in urban centers large
and small that are seeking ways to promote business, entertainment, housing,
recreation and reputation – apparently, we all want to live in Portlandia these
days – by getting people out of their cars and moving by foot (or by extension,
two-wheeled, foot-powered pedals).
Speck cautioned that typical planning practice tends to look
out 20 years, but, as a member of the cohort the planners now term “aging
boomers,” his tolerance for deferred gratification has waned, so he’s viewing
the Lancaster project as one of
recommending strategies that can be realized within two to five years
time.
His fundamental, inarguable premise is that the miracle of
the private automobile has resulted in a litany of social, economic and
environmental ills; hence if people were to drive less it would benefit them
and their communities with improved health, prosperity, social welfare and
environmental quality.
Speck’s approach to reducing the tyranny of the car is not
to abolish its use but to tweak the conditions of its operation: Narrower traffic corridors and fewer lanes,
more four-way stop intersections and fewer stoplights, replacing one-way
raceways with two-way flows that prevent driver jockeying and passing, and lots
of on-street parking, a bit counter-intuitively, to separate sidewalks and bike
lanes from auto flow are the hit tunes in his songbook.
Plans are already afoot (as it were), including the
reversion of Mulberry Street to two-way flow, followed thereafter by a look at
the same change for Charlotte Street. Moves such as these are not aimed to reduce
congestion as much as contain congestion and turn it to benefit by discouraging
those with a choice from getting into the car to make that quick trip to the
market or café.
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| Urban planner Jeff Speck |
Speck makes little reference to the economists’ favored mechanism
of pricing to incentivize behavior. Nor
does he have much to say beyond a perfunctory nod about the importance of
transit.
The latter omission seems shortsighted inasmuch as our
commuter rail service is at the heart of what makes Lancaster attractive and successful
far beyond that of Pennsylvania’s other comparably sized cities. But with the recently spruced up train
station almost solely dependent on car travel to deliver and collect passengers,
the inadequacies of the bus network would be a worthy line of inquiry for Speck
to pursue as his study proceeds.
Finally, he makes an explicit point of addressing safety in terms
of accident reduction, not crime reduction.
The data-driven reality is that Lancaster is a safe community in which
to live, work, visit and walk. But
because perception shapes reality, planner Speck would do well to be mindful
that all the traffic-management strategies in the world will not get people out
of their cars if they don’t feel secure
in their person walking down the street after dark.
Make yourself heard:
Jeff Speck invites comments and suggestions for his Lancaster Walkability
Study. Tweet him at: https://twitter.com/jeffspeckaicp
