Urban Navigation: Urban Vistas

New Urban News Technical Page by Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell

In the practice of urbanism, a host of techniques can help people move around easily and interestingly. One group of techniques consists of methods that visually encourage a pedestrian or a driver to move in a particular direction.

Modernist planning’s interest in speed of movement often compromises instinctive ease of movement. In highway interchanges, for example, it is standard practice to exit right to go left. Other “rational” techniques, such as the misapplication of the one-way street pairs to a non-gridded sector, result in blizzards of directional signage which still usually do not suffice to explain the “system.” A preoccupation with speed results in monotony alternating at unpredictable intervals with terrifyingly quick decision-making and action.