friday favorites: lucca, italy

Depth, drama, and mystery, all packed into a street not 20 feet wide.

Every Friday I'll post a favorite narrow street snapshot from somewhere around the world. Got a Friday favorite of your own? Send me your photos!

culver boulevard + cardiff avenue, culver city

I love Washington Square. Everyone loves Washington Square. Parking structures are tastefully hidden away out of sight; great food abounds, with outdoor seating placed away from traffic; and hey, there's a few theaters, too. This whole Asian-fusion enchilada is deftly bookended by an iconic Flatiron-esque hotel at one end (above) and the dapper Kirk Douglas theater at the other, clearly defining the district and giving it historical context.

It's just that every time I go there, I have an awkward time crossing the street. Everyone does.

washington boulevard terminus, venice

Southern California has always had an odd attitude about its beach towns. From Laguna to Huntington to Venice, beaches were once thought of as either crude campgrounds or not-so-nice places to live: makeshift shantytowns for dirty hippies + scary Hell's Angels types. Our attitudes since then have of course completely changed, to the point where the phrase "beachfront property" has become a cliché indicating the highest echelon of lifelong real estate aspirations — but the beach, no matter how you dress it up, still has a slapdash foundation rooted in the past. You can see it in the almost complete lack of amenities along the Strand; in PCH's eight lanes of freeway-speed traffic; in Santa Monica's big blacktop binge, with more space dedicated to parking than to her world-famous pier itself; and finally here, at the place where Washington Blvd. (LA's longest east-west artery) unceremoniously meets the ocean as a herringbone lot. Venice maintains its charm despite being saddled with legacy infrastructural oddities (i.e. the bike-hostile Speedway Pacific Avenue), and with narrower streets it starts to less like a truck stop and more like the scruffy, laid-back beach bum we all love. See it narrowed!
High quality prints available

jh crawford on carbusters.org: making today’s cities carfree

Above: Crawford's 1997 plan for a carfree Lyon.

JH Crawford, author of Carfree Cities and personal hero, has an article up on Carbusters, kickin' ass + droppin' science. He rocks my little world.

I do not foresee that cars will completely disappear. Eventually, their use in cities will be largely or entirely prohibited, but a transport mode that reaches rural areas is required, probably involving some continued use of private cars. The interface between rural cars and the city thus requires careful planning. I propose simply to build multi-story parking garages (preferably underground) at the city’s edge for visitors’ cars and car-sharing vehicles. City residents who regularly need a car to travel outside the city could rent a space. These garages must be linked to the city by good public transport. This is, of course, less convenient that driving directly to a destination within the city and will discourage people from using cars unnecessarily.

Read the whole article »

main street + hill street, santa monica

Main Street in Santa Monica is one of the rare streets in LA with a true mix of transportation modes: you've got respectable numbers of walkers, busses, cars, bikes, rollerbladers, skateboarders, longboarders, unicyclists — you name it — all movin' right along at very moderate speeds to + from a nice variety of retail ranging from high-end boutiques to the more utilitarian car washes + cafes. It's a less car-obsessed street than most (unlike its high-strung neighbor Neilson Way), despite still being five lanes wide. One bright day, while waiting for my jewelry-obsessed wife to finish gemstone shopping, I wondered: how would it look with more honest proportions — proportions that better reflect its actual character? Narrowed, Main Street's sidewalks begin to feel wider. Building details, like the ornamental brickwork to the right, come into closer focus. And with less black asphalt around, this already sunny street becomes that much sunnier. See it narrowed!
High quality prints available

more video goodness from streetfilms: fixing the great mistake of autocentric development

Via the ever-awesome Shareable, a new video series from Streetfilms entitled "Fixing the Great Mistake." Streetfilms = my hero!

sunset boulevard + virgil avenue (II)

Another view of the reader request from a couple weeks back. That old Vista theater is just so cool, and dying to be paired with something other than the silly (and ironic) Blockbuster across the street. See it narrowed!
High quality prints available