Reimagining Cities-Disrupting the Urban Doom Loop

Walkable Urban places should be laid out in ways that attract visitors and optimize quality of life for residents, employees and visitors. • Walkability: Previous Places Platform, LLC an d Smart Growth America research have consistently shown that walkable urban rents and sales prices have a price premium of 40% to 45% over otherwise comparable Drivable Sub-urban products. Market share gains combined with a price premium show that there is pent-up demand for walkable urban places and products. • Connectivity: Special enhancements should be made to ensure connectivity of the various neighborhoods in the WalkUP and with surrounding neighborhoods. This improves sidewalk safety and increases the complementary nature of neighboring WalkUPs.

• Inclusivity: Walkability and connectivity should be accessible and welcoming for all people—reducing obstacles to walking, increasing lighting, expanding sidewalks, connecting to neighboring WalkUPs and wilderness/parks, adding bike lanes to both enhance biking/scooters and get them off sidewalks. Designing for the young and those with disabilities is good for everyone—curb ramps, longer street crossings, tight curb radius, and bump out curbs that shorten the distance a pedestrian must walk and reduces their exposure to cars. • Place Management: Many of the local-serving walkable urban neighborhoods do not have the commercial base to fund place management. However, now there are so many successful place management organizations focused on WalkUPs that there could be joint ventures; WalkUP place managers could “adopt” a neighborhood to provide clean and safe management, economic development assistance, festival management, etc. Since the fixed management costs are already in place, the marginal cost of operations would be relatively low. • Great Streets: This concept entails at least one special street in each WalkUP, connecting major anchor institutions and increasing street and sidewalk enhancements. Ideally there is a “terminating vista” of these anchor institutions that creates “Instagrammable,” walkable urban places that visitors “must” frequent. Examples include: » Market Street terminating on the Ferry Building in San Francisco » The planned 8th Street in Downtown DC with three terminating vistas, created by the Carnegie Library, Smithsonian American Art Museum/National Portrait Gallery and the National Archives » Pine Avenue with the terminating vista of the Pike Public Market in Seattle » Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia with the terminating vista of City Hall and the Art Museum (the Rocky view of the city) » Champs-Elysées terminating at the Arc du Triumph in Paris » The Mall through St. James Park with terminating vistas of Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square/National Gallery of Art in London

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