Great Streets

(Republished from my personal blog, because it fits better here.)

Over the past week I've been working on an article about churches as part of an urban village vanguard in the old industrial cities of North America ... and moving house to Locke Street in the Kirkendall neighbourhood of Hamilton, Ontario - exactly such a city.

In my preparation for the article I looked again at a number of my favourite books on city life, including Allan Jacobs's Great Streets. Mr. Jacobs writes that great city streets share a number of characteristics:

1. They offer safe, leisurely walking;
2. They offer physical comfort in response to the climate of the city – warmth or sunlight when it is cool, shade and coolness when it is hot, and protection from the wind;
3. They have definition: “They have boundaries, usually walls of some sort or another, that communicate clearly where the edges of the street are, that set the street apart, that keep the eyes on and in the street, that make it a place;
4. They offer a feast for the eyes – trees, architectural features, the movement of light, people moving about;
5. They have a quality of transparency at their edges, at the intersection of the private and public realms – in particular by means of windows and doorways;
6. Their buildings “get along with each other” – “They are not the same but they express respect for one another, most particularly in height and in the way they look”;
7. They are well-maintained – clean, in good repair – with regard to the street surface, furniture and plants, as well as the buildings on the street; and
8. They are imaginatively designed, and constructed with high-quality craft and materials.

I am going to walk down Locke Street sometime next week, and evaluate it in terms of Mr. Jacobs's criteria.

Comments made at the original site:

:: 2 post(s) ::

Post 1:
On points:
1. yes
2. yes (combination of lovely shade trees and clear space, along with crossing streets which circulate breezes)
3. I'm ambivalent about this point, and think it needs clarification, but yes.
4. definitely
5. Uh huh
6. definitely, though I'm not sure about the portions of locke beyond the tracks.
7. yes.
8. Unsure.

Do you agree?
by: B. Dijkema (URL) on 2006-05-24 09:19:11

Post 2:
Regarding #5, I would add front porches. They are the ultimate liminal space betwixt public and private space in a neighbhorhood.
by: J. Michael Matkin (URL) on 2006-05-27 00:18:53

Further remarks from me:

Brian: I am not sure yet.

Mr. Matkin: Yes, front porches, I agree!