Category: bipedal

commons

deaf child sign
Post-prandial walk down Dublin street. The road surface is a composition of many materials, oyster shells, Portland cement, river gravel, asphalt, crushed rock, sand, tar. The patches are numerous, their levels and texture vary. The street is one continuous speed bump. It works ok for a biped or vehicles moving slowly. The final result is a street where vehicles seem to be aware of pedestrians and bicycle traffic. I haven’t seen anyone driving and texting simultaneously.


used to wave my fingers in front of my face to stop the ceiling fan blades. This video from Canon G-10 does one better with the Dash 8 300

transcontinental

garrett street
(Charlottesville Bicycle Pedestrian Coordinator) Amanda Poncy out for a morning walk with Buddy, five year old tricolor hound. Coincidentally, Poncy is walking on the 1976 TransAmerica Bicycle Trail, a 4247 mile transcontinental trail established for the Bicentennial.

belmont store
One of my favorite aspects of snow is the momentary reclamation of the street, the commons, the several square miles of our city which we ceded to the automobile in the last century.


Pedestrians momentarily rule. People see and speak to each other. Smartphones are stored.

infrastructure
A calmness prevails. A chance to look around and see all we have created.

silver maple
Walking about, everything is almost black and white, a most salutary condition.

standards and design-fire engines

for the comfort of the fire truck
Municipalities have cook books for those interested in adding to City infrastructure. How to make a ramp, how to build a curb, how to make a fire engine cozy.

Some Cities include in the cook books specifications for green infrastructure. How to plant a tree in an urban environment and obtain its ecosystem services, how to build a road that won’t hurt the river, how to infiltrate rainwater into the ground near where it falls.
Search your City’s standards manual for the words green, narrow, sustainable, pervious, woonerf…