City Grid 2.0

by Taras Bohonok

June 21, 2010

PART I - SKY PATH

I grew up in a small town in the western part of Ukraine where having a weekend picnic

off the beaten path in the local forest was normal. Sure, there was the city life, but the people

of Ukraine prefer to spend their time relaxing at their dachas1, picking wild mushrooms in the

woods, or relaxing at the lake. Ukrainians view nature as a part of daily life. When I moved to

America, I took a trip to visit The Big Apple. You can imagine my first impressions when I got

out of the 42nd Street Bus Terminal. Lights, billboards, cars, noise, and traffic as far as the eye

could see. My first thought was, "I wonder how many of these cars are just looking for

parking?" The pedestrians were not coexisting with the vehicles. It looked like they were

fighting over who would get to cross the intersections first. A Pakistani cab driver was revving

his engine, warding off any pedestrian who thought of making a last minute sprint with only

three seconds left on the crosswalk sign. There was tension everywhere I looked. You could

see just about anything from the middle of Time Square; everything but trees. I guess people

who come to this magical city aren't interested in finding nature. They come for the allure of

the big city, the social life, and the job opportunities.

Ironically enough, when I visited Central Park, it was packed with people tanning,

throwing Frisbees, biking, and playing chess. This was intriguing to me. I have lived in

Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Chicago. One thing these cities had in common was that their

park systems were vast, yet no one was there! America was built around the car and so were

the park systems. In order to go to Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, I would have to load my

bike in my car and drive to the park. Nature is plentiful in these cities, it's just not integrated

well because as the city grows, urban sprawl pushes nature towards the outskirts. Park systems

that are incorporated into denser urban environments, like Millennium Park in Chicago, get a

lot more usage then parks out in the suburbs, like Cuba Marsh in Barrington. This makes sense

since these green spaces are much more accessible. They are also in higher demand because

peoples' bodies in urban environments have a higher stress factors. "New York never sleeps,"

and in my opinion, this is a perfect way to get insomnia.

1 Privately owned pieces of land, usually located in the rural wilderness. People build small shelters, sometimes even summer homes, and use the land to grow crops or just to relax.

Our bodies are not machines. Stress and anxiety speeds up the aging process and can

be a leading factor for many psychological illnesses. If I lived in New York, I would also spend my

free time relaxing in Central Park. New studies are being conducted on how urban living can

actually harm the human brain. Marc Berman is a psychologist at the University of Michigan.

He is the lead author of a study that measured the cognitive deficiencies caused by a short walk

in the city. Cities lack the connection to nature and this impedes our brain performance.

Simply seeing trees in your peripheral provides a mental break from the urban landscape.

This research backs up the notion that city life can be exhausting, but also goes to show

that it can actually dull our thinking by a considerable amount. 2 When we traverse the urban

landscape, our brains work overtime to monitor the flow of traffic, process the various stimuli

and maintain our sense of direction. Simply by choosing to ignore a billboard, we are making

our frontal cortex process the data and choose to not think about it. Millions of these decision

occur during a common walk down a city street. These elements overload our frontal cortex

which is responsible for decision making. No wonder cities can be stressful. But somehow,

when we look at nature, our brains "relax" and slow down. As humans evolved living outdoors,

nature scenes have been instinctively programmed into our subconscious. City environments

have not. That is why our brains are continuously trying to process all of this new visceral data.

Berman says this has implications for planners, “in terms of how they’re designing living

environments,” and, “get better productivity from employees.” 3

Frances Kuo's studies support Marc's research. Kuo is the director of the Landscape and

Human Health Laboratory at the University of Illinois. He conducted studies in the late 1990's

on how views of trees and flowerbeds affected female residents in a housing project on the

South Side of Chicago. Women who had views of parking lots and buildings had increased

levels of aggression and spousal abuse. A view of trees from a hospital window will speed post-

operative recovery and "women living in public housing are better able to focus when their

apartment overlooks a grassy courtyard." 4

2 Jonah Lehrer, "How the city hurts your brain", January 2, 2009, <http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/

ideas/articles/2009/01/04/how_the_city_hurts_your_brain/?page=full > (accessed June 21, 2010).

3 Jack Penland, "Go Play Outside", March 16th, 2009, <http://www.sciencentral.com/news/image_db/2026168/ CAT2170_GoPlayOutside_POD.mp4> (accessed June 21, 2010).

4 Jonah Lehrer, "How the city hurts your brain".

Ok, so how can we do something about this without tearing up our largest metropolitan

cities? Large cities are notorious for impervious surface coverage. They suffocate the ground

by paving almost every square foot with concrete, foundations, and asphalt. This would create

drastic problems with flooding, but humans rerouted that problem through drainage systems.

There is not enough open ground to develop park systems within a busy city grid. Frankly, so

much of our streets are already used up by buildings and roads that people living in these cities

have to fight just to traverse the landscape!

Most of Manhattan's pedestrian sidewalks are bombarded with advertisement, shadowed in

darkness, constantly broken up by intersections, and lack proper size.

This is in part do to the city putting the automobile first. Unfortunetly people get pushed to the

sides of the streets. People and cars can not coexist in this environment. Since it is too costly

to rebuild the road infrastracture, the logical conclusion would be to redesign the sidewalk. But

where can you squeeze in a larger broader path that would be free of constant darkness, busy

intersections, and bothersome advertising? Up.

This is the High Line Project which took a decommissioned rail line in NY and created a green

oasis in the city. It creates a serene path for pedestrian and allows traffic to flow underneath.

The High Line is a superb example of how we can reuse existing city grid infrastructures

to create new pedestrian paths that will relieve some stress from the urban environment.

Unfortunately there is not enough old rail lines running through the cities and their scale is too

large for their intended purpose. These rail lines block all of the sunlight to the streets below.

What we need are elevated pedestrian paths made of lighter material. Plus, they have to lead

us somewhere. I propose to create an elevated pedestrian path that would continue from the

High Line. It can connect with the Dewitt Clinton Park and continue onto Central park. Future

phases can expand this route to other parts of the city.

This image depicts an example of how we can develop continuity to the High Line. This

method still allows plenty of light to come through to the street level. It provides an express

lane for pedestrians and bicyclists which in return decreases traffic, promotes greener modes of

transportation, and frankly is faster than taking a cab. The final phase of this "skypath" would

be to overgrow it with greenery. The columns were designed to be fully functional planters for

a 15 foot tree. The cables of the bridges allow vine plants to grow up the structure. The path

itself contains a layer of soil so grasses and moss could sprout. Finally, the safety tunnels that

begin when the skywalk reaches heights over 30 feet, would surround you with green lush

vegetation as greenery would start to engulf the metal mesh.

PART II - STREET REVITALIZATION

Now that we have a method for rerouting the public, how can we rework the city's grid

to create new urban environments and hopefully free up some of the congestion? The grid is

very geometrical and methodical. It splits up the city into manageable blocks that function as

housing or business spaces. We cannot touch the private properties in order to redesign the

grid due to the excessive costs. The only space we have to work with is the street itself, the

sidewalks and the space above and below them. If the buildings can't be taken away, can we

simply redesign the street? How can we redesign this urban fabric that has existed for

decades? I drew some inspiration from my stay in Stuttgart, Germany. The city center is

thriving with people, and store sales are much higher judging by the amount of people in the

stores. One distinct difference comes to mind. Stuttgart, along with other smaller European

cities, does not permit cars in its center. People park around the center, and walk to their

destinations.

Granted, Stuttgart is not comparable to New York in size and shutting down the heart of the

city isn't even an option. But I can't help but notice the significant difference even a single

street like the Blotzstrausse in Stuttgart can make when you take the cars off the road and it

opens up to cafes, trees, and pedestrians. One street's traffic can certainly be rerouted, but the

benefit that it would bring to the community is unfathomable.

When I visited Ukraine again in 2009, I drove to Lviv. Lviv is the largest city in western

Ukraine. I noticed a similar trend. The volume of cars increased tenfold, and the old

cobblestone streets were overrun by traffic. Then, suddenly on a Sunday morning, it all

STOPPED. Lviv passed new regulations that began blocking off a few streets in the city's center

every Sunday. During my same stroll through the city, I ran into cafes setting up chairs in the

street, a lively street market selling handcraft goods, and elderly men testing their wits in a

heated chess match in the middle of the street. I was enjoying the rare silence of the city. I

could finally hear a bird or two and the sounds of the trolleys echoing in the distance. This

temporary restriction was also evident in Philadelphia where on Saturday mornings, West River

Drive, a busy road that runs along the river, was blocked off for the public. It hosts countless

marathons and brings out bikers and joggers alike.

But if New York wants to reinvent the grid, it's going to have to take a risk to reap the

benefits. If a large city like Ukraine can close off existing streets and still maintain order, I

believe large cities like New York can afford to lose some streets and still maintain the integrity

of the road system. What would be the consequence if NY lost a few streets to green space?

One obvious problem is with parking. Traffic could always be rerouted. Since too many

intersections could effectively eliminate any changes of a successful pedestrian boulevard, a

few intersections would have to be taken out. In its place, we could fit in automated multilevel

parking lots indicated by the black rectangles in the diagram above. This method would simply

make larger city blocks in which their center was pedestrian friendly. The traffic would go

around the outside of these larger blocks. This in essence would replicate the system used in

European cities, only in micro form.

These self parking garages can be below ground level, or above. They can easily provide more

parking then what is offered on the streets that would be blocked off. Auto Motion has already

created undeground self parking garges in NY. To learn more about their self parking systems,

you can visit: http://www.gizmag.com/go/6848/

These two methods could free up the city, create environments for pedestrians, and create a

better city grid.