Pedestrian Circulation & Open Space Planning Analysis
A major component of smart growth, New Urbanism and sustainable design are the integration and celebration of the pedestrian and accessible open space.
All of the developments described in this study have successfully created progressive pedestrian circulation systems and development open space plans.
The celebration of the pedestrian environment within each of these developments helps to reduce the dependence on the private automobile as the primary form of transportation.
This celebration is achieved primarily through the clear separation of uses that is enhanced by the implementation of buffers between the pedestrians and vehicles.
These buffers can take various forms that include on-street parking to act as a barrier between the pedestrian and the road, landscape buffers that provide for a cleaner pedestrian environment or by removing the automobile from the equation all together.
The open space systems of these developments help to demonstrate that developments can achieve high levels of density without sacrificing the preservation or creation of accessible open spaces within the community.
Whether it is through the creation of pocket-parks, waterfront parks or large community spaces, the importance of accessible open space cannot be ignored.
Accessible open space benefits not only the members of the immediate community, but it contributes to the improvement of the global environmental community by discouraging the unchecked development of our natural lands.
Normative qualities can be associated to the successful design of pedestrian and open space systems that will ensure their sustainability.
Pedestrian and open space systems should be planned to provide for a connected, combined, contained, consistent and re-configurable system.
Paying careful attention to these qualities will allow designers to create viable pedestrian circulation systems that will reduce the dependence on the private automobile and result in an improvement of our global environmental community.
In addition to improving the environmental community, pedestrian circulation systems enhance the opportunities to engage in inter-personal communication that helps to improve our social community.
These systems should be clearly defined and should strive to integrate multiple uses into the system.
Finally, the systems should maintain a high level of flexibility so that they may be re-configured to respond to developmental challenges that they will face over time.
Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them. -Henry David Thoreau
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