Street Networks Archives - Oxnard Placemaking, Civic Beauty & Urban Design

Defining the 15-minute city

ByRoy Prince February 8, 2021February 8, 2021

Defining the 15-minute city The “15-minute city” may be defined as an ideal geography where most human needs and many desires are located within a travel distance of 15 minutes. Here’s what that means. ANDRES DUANY, ROBERT STEUTEVILLE FEB. 8, 2021 The 15-minute city is gaining significant traction politically and in planning circles, but what does it…

Superblocks of Barcelona

ByRoy Prince November 23, 2020February 8, 2021

Over two years ago, Barcelona set the transportation world aflutter when it announced it would be attempting to reinvent parts of its city by developing a Superblock system by transforming targeted street grids to prioritize people over cars. On selected small street networks large parts of intersections and roadways would be taken back for parks and community gathering. Vehicles would not be banned, but it would redesign the grids so that fast thru-traffic was discouraged thru a series of driving direction changes, street narrowing and speed limits. Thus, almost all vehicles present would be either local residents or people with personal business on those streets.

Housing and Oxnard

ByRoy August 30, 2018July 14, 2019

Oxnard has a severe housing shortage. Earlier this year SB 827 attempted to help communities build more housing. If the direction of SB 827 is correct the “fixes” relate mostly to zoning that incentives sprawl and makes it almost impossible to build in city cores. I will not go into the failure of SB 827…

Barcelona’s Superblocks: Change the Grid, Change your Neighborhood

ByRoy August 7, 2018August 7, 2018

The Copious Capacity of Street Grids

ByRoy July 31, 2018

The Commons in Downtown Ithaca. Wikimedia Commons Historic street grids can handle greater traffic of all kinds—so why aren’t we building more of them? ROBERT STEUTEVILLE JUN. 28, 2018 As far as I have been able to determine, no one has ever scientifically compared the capacity of historic street grids with modern road systems. If they…

Why Street Grids Have More Capacity

ByRoy July 31, 2018July 31, 2018

The greater choice offered by well-connected street networks leads to more capacity and efficiency, according to pioneering smart growth engineer Walter Kulash. ROBERT STEUTEVILLE JUL. 31, 2018 I recently posted “The copious capacity of street grids” making the case that traditional street networks are not just better for walking, biking, and livability, but also offer far greater…

Renovating a Multipurpose Main Street

ByRoy December 27, 2017January 16, 2018

Greenville Avenue’s new streetscape (Source: City of Dallas) Streetscape improvements have helped bring back an 18-hour-a-day character to the corridor. Crime has dropped and property values have risen. Note: This case study was written for the Institute for Transportation Engineers new bookImplementing Context Sensitive Design on Multimodal Thoroughfares, funded by the Federal Highway Administration….

25 Great Ideas of the New Urbanism

ByRoy November 2, 2017November 2, 2017

Rendering of I-980 in Oakland as a multi-way boulevard. Credit / Dover, Kohl & Partners The New Urbanism is a design movement toward complete, compact, connected communities—but it is also a generator of ideas that transform the landscape. Communities are shaped by the movement and flow of ideas, and the New Urbanism has been a…