Design vs. Develop

In case you didn’t hear elsewhere, Joomla! is having a “Pizza, Bugs, and Fun” (PBF) event sponsored by PICNet and Google. Sign up now! If the NYC, DC, and SF Bay areas are not convenient for you, you’ll still be able to join in on the IRC channel.

Also, Joomla! recently announced their entry into the brand-new Google Highly Open Participation Contest. Tasks are open to all high school aged students who want to contribute to the Joomla! project. I was asked to be a mentor on this project and gladly accepted See you on the forums…

To the delight of the Commonwealth of Virginia, the State of Maryland decided to tax computer services. Thank you Maryland! We will enjoy the wave of talent you are pushing to our side of the river.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald. Why?

Cities, unlike hearts, are not improved by zero congestion. Pretty much the whole of Australia has zero congestion (unless you count the flies). Cities are designed to concentrate - or congest - human energy. They are less about moving through than being there; they thrive on bustle, busy-ness and friction, creative and otherwise.

The article also recognizes the “walkers vs. drivers” false dichotomy:

Think, for example, of the proposal to retime street crossings to give priority to pedestrians. Such ideas have been discussed and squabbled over in Sydney for decades. The killer is that every second given to the pedestrian is a second taken from traffic and, much as we might wish to see “cars” as the opposite of “people”, any slowing of traffic will be bemoaned as a worsening of already intolerable “congestion”.

The DC PHP Conference was held this past week at George Washington University, specifically in this building. Our main conference room was on the third floor, but our breakout rooms were split between the first and fourth floors for the first day. While I was walking up to the fourth floor, it suddenly dawned on me that this was a perfect example of what I’m talking about when I say I’m a “sidewalk advocate.”

As with most buildings of this height, there are bank of elevators ready to take you to any floor you desire. However, when you are only one or two floors away from your destination, it is considerably faster to take the stairs. Going up three or more flights is usually easier by elevator, but one or two aren’t too strenuous. Each floor is accessible from the stairs and they are at consistent heights.

This is the same thing I would like to see as American suburbs form and expand. I am completely in favor of cars, but we need to make sure that neighborhoods are also accessible on foot. Additionally, blocks should be small and consistent enough that you can estimate walking distances. If the floors of the building were at inconsistent heights, you wouldn’t bother taking the stairs; it would be difficult to estimate the amount of effort necessary to get to your destination.

How frequent is frequent enough? Some googling gives us an idea. If you don’t want to follow the links, they turn up lengths anywhere from 200ft to 1500ft; most hovering around the 200ft to 600ft range. If you take a mile (5,280ft) and divide it by 10, you get 528 feet. This sounds about right to me. A square mile can contain single family homes, townhomes, apartment buildings, and some shopping (especially if you put some of the apartments on floors above the shopping). A few of these blocks could be dedicated to parking (yielding 700-800 generously sized spaces per block: 250,000sqft / 360sqft) with more parking available on the street and in people’s garages. At the same time, many residents of the neighborhood would be able to walk two or three blocks (1584 feet, most Americans will not walk more than 2000ft) to any of the nearby stores, reducing traffic and the need for parking. At the same time, there would be plenty of space for homes and yards as well.

We currently separate stores and homes to such an extreme that it is often not possible to safely walk to a store that is less than 1000ft away. Feeder roads, dead ends, and streets without sidewalks make it very difficult (if not dangerous) to walk even short distances. If we applied the same common sense used in building stairways to sidewalks, I think the biggest problems associated with suburban sprawl would disappear.

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