MyWHaT

Sightline Daily contributor Eric de Place is fascinated by the ‘functional chaos of the city‘ caught on film in San Fransisco in 1906. He’s struck about how it appears that, “American streets have not always been the exclusive province of automobiles, where all other uses are forbidden on pain of death.“

He then goes on to compare this idea with the modern Woonerf design and refers to a 2004 Salon titled  Why don’t we do it in the road? The article explores the idea that one reason why our streets are so dangerous is because there are too many rules. Something Traverse City writer Henry Morgenstein has also written about and has been proposed in Traverse City in the 200 Front St block alley project (PDF).

U.K. traffic and urban design consultant Ben Hamilton-Baillie explains the advantage in the Salon article:

“One of the characteristics of a shared environment is that it appears chaotic, it appears very complex, and it demands a strong level of having your wits about you. The history of traffic engineering is the effort to rationalize what appeared to be chaos. Today, we have a better understanding that chaos can be productive.

“What the early woonerf principles realized was that there was a two-way interaction between people and traffic. It was a vicious or, rather, a virtuous circle: The busier the streets are, the safer they become. So once you drive people off the street, they become less safe.”

Research repeatedly shows that “fatality rates at busy intersections” drop significantly when modern signals and signage are taken away.

Found looking at the above video was an updated version from 2005. Look how orderly, and separate, everything is..seems a lot less vibrant as well. Not to mention the amount of space & expense dedicated to one function.

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