“While enabling cars to move around is not unimportant, I applaud those leaders who are also directing our attention — and the attention of public departments of transportation — back to people, to streets as not just conveyances but also destinations, places to linger on foot, as places of beauty, as places whose look and feel greatly define what it means to be in a particular community, why one city differs from another. Last year’s critically acclaimed book Street Design, written by my friends Victor Dover and John Massengale, has been a major contribution to this effort, as has Jeff Speck’s Walkable City. The “complete streets” movement has been an enormous influence in making roadway designers aware of the needs of pedestrians and bicyclists when building or updating street infrastructure.
“We are finally making some progress in these efforts, though we still have a long way to go.
“But I think there is another, critically important way in which we need to consider and improve our streets: we need to give much more thought to their impact on natural ecosystems. In the twenty-first century, our most important public spaces need to be not only complete, hospitable and beautiful but also green in an ecological sense. They need to be places of resilience where nature is respected.”
Read the entire article at the Huffington Post: Greening Our Streets
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