Streetscape

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GUEST OBSERVATION
Taxis have traditionally competed for kerbside space in our cities, but they now have many new competitors. <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/the-university-of-queensland-805"> </a>
In case you missed it, 2018 was designated the <a href="https://mobilitylab.org/2018/06/08/managing-the-chaos-of-the-21st-century-curb/" target="_blank">Year of the Kerb</a> by Sabrina Sussman, <a href="https://www.zipcar.com/" target="_blank">Zipcar’s</a> public partnerships manager. This is because competition for limited kerb space has been increasing over the past few years, particularly in cities.
The kerb is the place that provides “access” between the street and the footpath. The definition tends to include the lane beyond the kerb that is used for car parking, bus stops, taxi pickups and dropoffs, and loading and unloading goods.
But kerb competition is increasing from a range of new users including: car sharing, ride sharing, e-scooter share, bike share and e-bike share, food delivery, online order deliveries and, in coming years, autonomous vehicles.
And this increasing focus on the kerb is highlighted in recent reports by the <a href="https://www.ite.org/technical-resources/topics/complete-streets/curbside-management-resources/" target="_blank">Institute of Traffic Engineers</a>, the <a href="https://www.itf-oecd.org/shared-use-city-managing-curb-0" target="_blank">International Transport Forum</a> and North America’s National Association of City Transportation Officials (<a href="https://nacto.org/tsdg/curb-appeal-whitepaper">NACTO</a>).
With this range of new users, cities need to rethink how they manage this contested real estate. Without better kerb management, cities will face increased congestion on local streets from vehicles circulating to access the kerb and on footpaths from a range of shared mobility devices.
One change cities will need to make to accommodate these new users is to repurpose kerb space, which has traditionally been used for parking, to other uses. This change will most likely have a significant financial impact.
<a href="https://www.wired.com/story/city-planning-curbs/" target="_blank">One survey</a> of the 25 largest US cities found parking-related revenues totalled US$5 billion in 2016, or about US$129 per person. While repurposing kerb space will not affect all of this revenue, it will have an impact on city budgets. To minimise this impact, cities will need to think about if, and how, to charge new users of kerb space.
To manage kerbs, first identify the uses
The City of Seattle is one of the leaders in kerb management. The city categorised kerb use into six key functions:
<ol>
<li>
mobility for travel lanes, bike lanes and bus lanes
</li>
<li>
access for people using bus stops, bike parking and loading zones
</li>
<li>
access for commerce to deliver goods
</li>
<li>
activation for <a href="https://theconversation.com/people-love-parklets-and-businesses-can-help-make-them-happen-87172" target="_blank">small parks</a>, food trucks and public art
</li>
<li>
greening for plantings, rain gardens and bio-swales
</li>
<li>
storage for parking, bus layovers and construction.
</li>
</ol>
One of the first in-depth analyses of the kerb was in San Francisco. As part of <a href="https://www.fehrandpeers.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/SF_Curb_Study_2018-10-19_web-download.pdf" target="_blank">this 2018 study</a>, commissioned in 2018 by Uber Technologies, the consultants (Fehr and Peers) developed a Curb Productivity Index (CPI). The index considered three things to compare productivity of kerb use.
<ol>
<li>
number of passengers using kerb space by mode
</li>
<li>
time period the activity was observed
</li>
<li>
total space dedicated to that use.
</li>
</ol>
How to calculate kerb productivity
The CPI is a useful way of quantifying the various competing uses for the kerb.
It’s calculated by dividing the amount of activity by the amount of space used, multiplied by the unit of time. For example, the CPI for a bus stop that uses 45 metres of kerb for 250 arriving and departing passengers over four hours would be: 250 passengers/(45 metres x 4 hours), or 1.39 passengers/metre-hours.
Alternatively, the CPI for a car space that uses five metres of kerb that services two passengers over four hours would be: 2 passengers/(5 metres x 4 hours), or 0.1 passengers/metre-hours.
The CPI shows a bus stop is 13.9 times (1.39/0.1) more productive than a car park.
This analysis of usage data provides some rigour in developing a kerb management plan.
Base management on ‘measurement over myth’
As a way forward, <a href="https://www.fehrandpeers.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/SF_Curb_Study_2018-10-19_web-download.pdf" target="_blank">Fehr and Peer recommend</a> a management strategy with three components:
<ol>
<li>
relocation of existing kerb uses to other areas
</li>
<li>
conversion, which involves eliminating some current uses and replacing them with new uses
</li>
<li>
flexibility, so kerb uses change depending on the time of day.
</li>
</ol>
Trials of flexible kerb management are under way in Washington DC, San Francisco and Fort Lauderdale.
In changing how the kerb is managed, the <a href="https://nacto.org/tsdg/curb-appeal-whitepaper/" target="_blank">2018 report</a> from North America’s National Association of City Transportation Officials recommends a “measurement over myth” strategy when converting parking to other uses.
Surveys on arrival mode consistently show public transport and active travel modes deliver more customers to adjacent businesses than private motor vehicles. <a href="https://www.torontocycling.org/uploads/1/3/1/3/13138411/cycling_economies_eglinton_final.pdf" target="_blank">Before-and-after studies</a> confirm that replacing parking with public transport or bike lanes increases sales for area businesses.
To manage the conflicting needs of car and bike users for roadside space, San Jose has created kerbside bike lanes separated from the road by car parking. <a class="source" href="https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/https://www.flickr.com/photos/willbuckner/45885808941"> </a>
While new mobility startups are part of the reason cities need to develop kerb management plans, other startups are developing new ways to manage this increasingly contested space. Some of these new companies include:
<ul>
<li>
<a href="https://www.coord.co/post/open-curbs-the-first-open-data-multi-city-platform-to-unlock-curbs" target="_blank">Open Curbs</a> from <a href="https://www.coord.co/" target="_blank">Coord</a>, a spin-off of <a href="https://www.sidewalklabs.com/" target="_blank">Sidewalk</a>, that provides wheelchair cuts, fire hydrants, bus stops and other physical kerb assets
</li>
<li>
<a href="https://www.populus.ai/" target="_blank">Populus</a>, a San Francisco transport company that has developed a mobility manager that provides data on e-scooter and e-bike share parking data
</li>
<li>
Remix, which has developed the <a href="https://www.remix.com/new-mobility" target="_blank">New Mobility tool</a> to analyse and visualise data-streaming feeds.
</li>
</ul>
These startups have raised millions of dollars, due in part to the recognised value of the kerb.
Cities need to make the transition from parking cities to pickup/dropoff cities and to flexible cities. For this to happen, cities will need to think strategically about how to manage their kerbs with the emergence of new users and new mobility management options.
One of the first steps in this transition is for cities to ensure data standards and data-sharing arrangements are established as part of the basis for giving new users permission to access the kerb.
<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/neil-sipe-346144" target="_blank">Neil Sipe</a>, Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/the-university-of-queensland-805" target="_blank">The University of Queensland</a>
This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com" target="_blank">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/competition-for-the-kerb-is-rising-and-cities-are-going-to-have-to-manage-it-117410" target="_blank">original article</a>.
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j.ballantyne1990-6AQqhLzZaK

Competition for kerb is rising, cities have to manage it: Neil Sipe

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GUEST OBSERVATION
There’s a difference between a road and a street. Roads take you from one place to another, but streets are more than functional channels. They are public spaces.
The streets of downtown Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, are about to be transformed. A <a href="https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/plans-projects-policies-reports-bylaws/our-plans-strategies/place-based-plans/Pages/city-centre-masterplan.aspx" target="_blank">masterplan for the city centre</a> was approved back in 2012, and now a proposed design is <a href="https://ourauckland.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/articles/news/2019/07/future-city-centre-designs-approved-for-consultation/" target="_blank">open for feedback</a>.
The idea behind this masterplan is to design the central city as a cohesive public space rather than simply the sum of a thousand independent decisions.
The design will include further changes in support of walking, cycling and public transport, and less space for cars. Significantly, sections of Queen Street, which runs through the centre to the waterfront, may be closed to cars completely.
We can expect to see outraged responses from those wedded to their cars, those who see the project as an expensive beautification scheme, and those who resent the idea of Auckland’s population intensifying.
A shared world
This is a good time to reflect on what we mean by “public space” and what we need it for.
Streets are some of our most important public spaces, but are often managed as if they were mainly pipes for cars (or, if we’re lucky, bicycles and pedestrians). Roadways, water pipes, optical fibres and pedestrian walkways are “bundled” together.
Because it is relatively easy to assign metrics to these flows, it is easy to think of streets as technological problems. The implicit ideal is for a city to be a “<a href="http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/32763717/his-majesty-pick-aesthetics-demolition">sleek, efficient machine</a>” with a “rationalised circulatory network”, as architectural historian Spiro Kostof put it. The idea is at least as old as <a href="https://doi.org/10.24135/ijara.v0i0.476">Baron Haussmann’s 19th century rebuilding of Paris</a>.
Today’s smart cities are just <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/dec/17/truth-smart-city-destroy-democracy-urban-thinkers-buzzphrase">the latest corporate version</a> of the perfectly rationalised city. The automated city sounds great, but uncritical reliance on metrics locks in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/27/cathy-oneil-weapons-of-math-destruction-algorithms-big-data">technological assumptions and biases</a>. Airy promises and overhyped technological solutions divert from the more mundane but ultimately critical job of making public space.
How to define public space
Philosopher <a href="https://www.philosophersmag.com/opinion/187-the-urgent-relevance-of-hannah-arendt">Hannah Arendt</a> wrote of public space as a “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arendt/#ActPowSpaApp">space of appearance</a>”, a place where we can become meaningfully visible to one another, and where we can present ourselves on our own terms, not as data points, customers, stereotypes or debating partners.
As social theorist <a href="https://english.yale.edu/people/tenured-and-tenure-track-faculty-professors-staff/michael-warner">Michael Warner</a> put it, “<a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/publics-and-counterpublics">a public is a relation among strangers</a>”. To be in public, I have to negotiate my relationship with strangers, and recognise that I am also a stranger.
Arendt believed that democracy itself could be understood as a project for public space, the creation of a shared world. Māori, New Zealand’s first people, have also long thought of our shared world as a <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy3030042">place of connections</a>.
In other words, there is more at stake with the council’s plan than pleasant streetscapes or well-engineered infrastructure. To make Auckland’s streets good public space, I offer five suggestions:
1) Good public space is meaningful and enabling
It helps us make sense of our relationships, and supports our self-determination. It should be a platform on which we can all build, something like the old concept of the <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/commons-history">commons</a>. Public space is filled with people pursuing various goals, individually and collectively, according to various value systems and ways of living. To imagine new kinds of public space is to imagine <a href="https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/http://hdl.handle.net/10292/11645">new ways to enable people</a>.
2) Public space needs to accommodate informal uses
Streets, unlike roads, are not just spaces to move through, but places to do things. The famous American urban activist <a href="https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/https://www.worldcat.org/title/death-and-life-of-great-american-cities/oclc/1015890160">Jane Jacobs</a> famously pointed to the significance of children playing in the street, and the importance of minor interactions like holding a neighbour’s mail, or leaving a key for someone at the corner store.
Similarly, the iconoclastic theorist of human-centred design <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/pattern-language-towns-buildings-construction/oclc/705864158&amp;referer=brief_results">Christopher Alexander</a> even suggested that a marker of healthy public space is people feeling comfortable enough to take naps there. Informal uses of space like this should be maximised. Public space should be a bit of a mess, not a perfectly optimised machine.
3) Public space allows for discontent
Streets are places for people to gather. The <a href="https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/https://cup.columbia.edu/book/voices-of-the-arab-spring/9780231163187">Arab Spring uprisings</a> of 2010-11, the subsequent <a href="https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/https://www.worldcat.org/title/dreaming-in-public-building-the-occupy-movement/oclc/813844064">Occupy movement</a>, ongoing <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/12/world/asia/hong-kong-protests-communist-party">protests in Hong Kong</a>, and Auckland’s own <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/396470/occupiers-at-ihumatao-remain-strong-in-mud-rain-and-wind">land occupation at Ihūmatao</a>, may have been coordinated on social media, but were ultimately powered by the physical presence of people in public space.
Public spaces are stages where collective identities can be expressed. If we want places where people can appear authentically as themselves, we also need to recognise public space hosts difference, disagreement and <a href="https://doi.org/10.24135/ijara.v0i0.328">potentially conflict</a>.
4) Good public spaces requires joined-up, human-centred thinking
It might seem efficient to treat roads, plumbing, architecture, gardens, community events, public art, planning rules, maintenance, commerce and so on as separate domains best handled by experts in each area. Detailed expertise is essential, but to design good public space we need to join the dots. This isn’t easy.
In recent years, <a href="https://at.govt.nz/">Auckland Transport</a>, nominally a council-controlled organisation, has asserted its independence, <a href="https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2018/01/26/auckland-transport-goes-rogue/">proposing its own plans</a> that are in conflict with the council’s aims. We need to dissolve silos, get more people around the table, and maintain a clear focus on who and what our public spaces are for.
5) Public space needs public involvement
Public space doesn’t just happen. Arendt told us to see it as an ongoing labour, something to achieve together, not something that exists by default. Auckland’s masterplan is a step in the right direction but good public space needs public involvement.
Public consultation can be a fraught process. Typically, only a few people respond, and they are <a href="http://shorthand.radionz.co.nz/white-noise/index">disproportionately older, wealthier and white</a>. The council has a duty to seek public input. We as the public have a responsibility to make ourselves heard.<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122396/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;">
<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/carl-douglas-791136">Carl Douglas</a>, Lecturer in Spatial Design, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/auckland-university-of-technology-1137">Auckland University of Technology</a>
This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-turn-aucklands-inner-city-streets-into-public-spaces-people-can-enjoy-122396">original article</a>.
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How to turn Auckland’s inner city streets into public spaces: Carl Douglas

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GUEST OBSERVER
Sound neighbourly relations and an attractive streetscape have the potential to improve the value of a property and slash days on market considerably for those vendors seeking a swift sale.
The streetscape refers to the appearance of all houses, footpaths, gardens and landscaping along a street.
But it is possible to upset the local streetscape applecart with just a single property eyesore, which has the potential to turn away buyers now and in the future.
The infamous and so-called 'hoarder’s home' in Bondi, in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs is an example.
This is an extreme example, however it has been an issue for those living in Boonara Avenue, Bondi for many, many years, and has undoubtedly impacted the values of homes located near this controversial property.
The streetscape is the visual identity of a neighbourhood and plays an important role in facilitating interaction between residents and creating a community.
It also contributes to building the value of our properties, which for many of us, are our most important investment asset.
The property industry talks ad infinitum about the importance of presenting a property in its best light to potential sellers.
However, a subtler element is how your street presents to potential buyers. The streetscape is really the first impression for potential buyers, even before they walk through the front gate.
To be fair, individual owners can do little about the collective streetscape, but the value of a good looking street, where all the gardens are well-tended, can have an impact on the saleability of a property.
It’s worth keeping in mind that by collectively maintaining the kerbside appeal of all properties in a street, owners can maintain and grow the values of their properties.
Angus Raine is executive chairman, Raine &amp; Horne and can be contacted <a href="https://www.raineandhorne.com.au" target="_blank">here</a>.
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