‘Shared-space’ streets cross the Atlantic

New Urban News Article with images, 10/1/2008

Cities in the western and eastern US are starting to let motorists and pedestrians deal with one another more intuitively.

Up and down the West Coast and in parts of the East Coast, a select group of streets is going through a radical makeover. The street surfaces are being raised to the same level as the sidewalks. Curbs are being eliminated. Trees and vegetation are extending into what had been the domain of the automobile.

Motorists and pedestrians are being expected to use — imagine this! — their intelligence and their powers of observation to operate safely in multipurpose environments. A fundamental premise of modern traffic engineering — that safety can be assured only by strictly separating pedestrians from moving vehicles and by explicitly telling drivers what to do — is under challenge.

The new approach, called “shared space,” is showing up in Seattle, Portland (Oregon), San Francisco, Santa Monica, and other cities on the West Coast; in Cambridge, Massachusetts, New York City, and other places in the East; and in scattered places in between, such as New Town at St. Charles, Missouri, and the South Main development in Buena Vista, Colorado.