Recipe for revitalizing public spaces

How do you deal with an urban space that's "become known for petty crime, drugs, and homelessness"? That was the issue facing an area of Boston Common of Park and Tremont streets. In Brewer Plaza, Reborn, the Boston Globe's Renee Loth outlines how now visitors are flocking to the area to enjoy this "outdoor living room," thanks to work by both the city of Boston and non-profit Friends of the Public Garden.

The recipe for success "is a case study in what makes some public spaces work and others wither," Loth writes. Among the ingredients?

* Not trying to get rid of unsavory characters but "figuring out a way to flood the area with the people you do want there," former project manager Ted Furst told Loth.

* Renovating a fountain, improving landscaping and lighting -- things that the short-sighted view as frills but are absolutely essential to creating an appealing public space.

* Movable furniture, allowing people to decide how to group the seating and whether it's in sun or shade.

* Programming entertainment and attracting food trucks.

If you're at all interested in maximizing the potential of public space, this piece is well worth a read.

Sprawl leads to more pedestrian deaths as well as fewer walkers

Greater sprawl leads to a higher pedestrian death rate  -- not jusr fewer people out walking. From the New York Times:

Urban sprawl comes with numerous liabilities, among them, as it happens, a heightened risk of pedestrian death, which may not seem entirely obvious given that you are infinitely more likely to see people walking around Manhattan than you are to see people walking around Atlanta. Data in a coming report from the National Institutes of Health indicate that for every 1 percent increase in a city’s compactness index, essentially a measure of its density, there is a 1.9 percent drop in the pedestrian fatality rate, adjusted for exposure. The more miles traveled by car in a particular place, the greater the chance of accident, as Reid Ewing, the report’s lead researcher and a professor of city and metropolitan planning at the University of Utah, said.

5 years of traffic fatalities visualized

These data visualizations of traffic deaths include several showing deaths involving pedestrians. One clear pattern: Pedestrian risk rises sharply around dusk

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Great reason to green up vacant lots

Residents feel safer when living near a vacant lot that's been "greened," instead of glass-strewn dirt or concrete, according to a study by the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. And, reported crimes around such greened lots may be reduced.

Another sign that making an appealing streetscape isn't a frill; it's essential for quality of life.

People pay more for walkable communities

"Today, the most valuable real estate lies in walkable urban locations," according to this analysis in the New York Times. Values for commercial and residential real estate in the Washington, D.C. metro area

"increase as neighborhoods became more walkable, where everyday needs, including working, can be met by walking, transit or biking. There is a five-step “ladder” of walkability, from least to most walkable. On average, each step up the walkability ladder adds $9 per square foot to annual office rents, $7 per square foot to retail rents, more than $300 per month to apartment rents and nearly $82 per square foot to home values."

And this likely applies elsewhere, with examples such as Seattle, where a downtown neighborhood once priced the same as suburban Redmond is now valued almost 50% higher.

Those claiming to be free-market supporters of suburban sprawl argued against smart-growth zoning because they said Americans didn't want it. What's the argument now?

More details from Walk this Way: The Economic Promise of Walkable Places in Metropolitcan Washington, D.C., Brookings Institute.