Raise the Hammer

Thx Mahesh...I leave in the morning so any further research will be online. But, boy, I am coming home with some very simple and clear goals to pass onto council and staff. Especially with regards to complete streets being a goal, more than 2-way, and the neighbourhood greenways as I mention in the other blog entry from today. What a small, simple and cheap way to transform urban residential streets. Another feature I've seen everywhere on the greenways and read about is the planter boxes in the sidewalks. You'll see some of them in the pics in my other blog entry. These are used for creating visual elements close to the street at corners to help everyone slow down, but they are also used to divert storm water run off. I saw a close-up of some today and they have small culverts that lead into the boxes from the sidewalks. The native grasses, trees and plants bring more greenery to a street but their highest function in my mind is sparing an overtaxed storm water system (Hamilton knows all about this) by diverting water into these huge sidewalk planters and into the soil. Simple, yet brilliantly cheap solution to a maxed out storm water system. I'll be blogging on this next week.

Here's a few pics:

http://tokyogreenspace.files.wordpress.c...

• you'll notice the metal grid layed into the sidewalk below this genteman's left foot.

http://elkhorn.unl.edu/epublic/live/g214...

• these ones use curb cuts to drain the water into the box

Take Cannon Street and turn it from a sidewalk like this: http://goo.gl/maps/Hf2Ov

To this: http://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews....

Cannon doesn't need all that concrete. Even as a 4-lane freeway, for most of it's length it has ample sidewalk space to spare the space next to the roadway for green infrastructure like I've shown above. We divert rainwater, green an urban street and once we add bike lanes to one side and 24-hour curb parking to the other, we can create bumpouts so that even as a one-way street, it now flows nicely with 2 car lanes, yet pedestrians and cyclists will actually enjoy being on it too. Imagine, wanting to walk or cycle on Cannon??

Comment edited by jason on 2012-10-06 00:22:52