Public Events :: Making Good Streets Symposium

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UDC Symposium Puts Euclid Avenue
and Cleveland's Transit Future in National Context
CUDC Quarterly, 2:2 (Spring, 2002)

The Euclid Corridor, the Innerbelt, the Shoreway: in a sense it’s surprising that Cleveland should be contemplating so many transportation projects at this juncture. After all, the city’s transportation network was built for a much larger population than currently lives or works here. There’s no need to add capacity. However, there is a need to rethink what the city is getting out of its streets. Does the transportation twork allow people to choose from multiple ways of getting around, and does it foster the development of exciting urban places where people want to be?

With these questions in mind, the UDC invited three professionals from around the country–Anish Kumar, Paddy Tillett and Yolanda Takesian–to share their experience with succesful transit planning and discuss the possibilities for Cleveland at a public symposium (held March 16 at the CUDC). While in town, the symposium participants also critiqued projects for Euclid Avenue by first-year graduate students in Professor Maurizio Sabini’s studio.

The symposium was divided into two sessions. In the morning the three speakers presented projects on which they worked. This was followed by an open discussion in the afternoon, for which the speakers were joined by Professor Sabini and former Cleveland Planning Director Hunter Morrison.

The first speaker was Paddy Tillett, who drew on a wide range of experiences to set out some general principles for transit planning. In doing so, he set two of the day’s major themes, stressing the importance of equity and public consultation. In Tillett’s view, equity–among the beneficiaries of transit development and among modes of transportation–is essential to the success of any public investment in a city’s infrastructure. He cited the particularly striking statistic that ridership of the Portland public transit system almost exactly parallels the demographic profile of the Portland region as a whole. The success of the system comes from making it something that everyone owns and everyone wants to use. He noted that one of the ways to do this is to put quality to the forefront in planning things like transit stations and streetscapes. By using "expensive stuff that’s valued" and creating memorable environments, Tillett and his team made tangible their goal of a transit system that wouldn’t only be the last resort for those who can’t afford to own a car.

Tillett stressed the importance of a serious public process in achieving that successful outcome. "Too often," he said, "public involvement means, ‘Well, this is what we’re gonna stuff down your throat.’" In an experience echoed by the other two speakers, he found that engaging seriously with the problems of those affected by a public investment not only made implementation possible, but also resulted in a more workable and place-specific product.

This was certainly one of the major lessons of Anish Kumar’s long experience with the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail system in New Jersey. This project, like many of those contemplated for Cleveland, was intended to stimulate development in a varied and somewhat blighted environment, in this case the Jersey side of the Hudson. Kumar’s job as urban design consultant was to make the "continuum of unique places" along the line work, taking into account a wide range of social and physical conditions.

Given the bureaucratic and engineering complexities of the project, one might well have expected a dispiriting tale of frustrations and bad compromises. Sure enough, Kumar admitted to a few disappointments, but he stressed the degree to which he came to see the constraints of the process as essential to avoiding routine design solutions. "We tend to draw trees to mitigate otherwise unfriendly or hostile environments," he said, but that solution was unavailable in some of the roughest parts of Jersey City where the space was too precious to include passive landscape. Other ways had to be found to make the environment work, including public art, as well as careful enhancement of existing buildings and streets.

Yolanda Takesian expressed similar views, but from a slightly different perspective. Her work with the Community Design Division of the Maryland State Highway Administration is part of a mandate from Maryland’s governor to make state investments serve the localities where they’re placed. Her goal has been to establish a design process that "gets beyond street trees and colors of paving and into the fabric of the community."

Takesian showed a number of projects in which routine highway enhancements became specific interventions that improved much more than traffic flow and safety. In each case, careful consultation with the affected community was essential to the process. A particularly heartening part of her story was her experience collaborating with traffic engineers. She has found that these veteran civil servants have proven not only capable of moving beyond boilerplate design solutions, but eager to do so.

There can be little doubt that the morning’s presentations shed a particularly critical light on the current project for Euclid Avenue, and this was reflected in the symposium’s afternoon session which concentrated on Euclid, to the exclusion of the Shoreway and the Innerbelt. While many of the nearly 100 people present expressed the urgent need for a major effort to improve Euclid Avenue, there was also general anxiety about the current RTA project. In his opening comments, Hunter Morrison, who helped initiate the "dual hub" concept that has emerged from 20 years of mutation as RTA’s current project, expressed serious doubts and emphasized the importance of getting such a major investment right. The symposium participants were diplomatic, but suggested that the RTA project, with its complicated "ribbon flow" arrangement, was much too driven by engineering concerns at the expense of the pedestrian environment. They also noted that it made little or no provision for bicycles or other transit alternatives.

The mood of the session was perhpas best summed up by the fact that jaywalking was heralded by everyone present (even supporters of the Euclid Corridor project) as a sign of urban vitality, as something a newly designed street should allow. Those present were highly receptive to the symposium’s overall message that "good streets" should do much more than just move people around.

The panel during the afternoon discussion, from left: 
Anish Kumar,Yolanda Takesian, Maurizio Sabini, 
Paddy Tillett, Hunter Morrison

Members of the audience listen to a comment by Paul 
Volpe during the afternoon discussion.

Symposium Participants
Anish Kumar, AIA, AICP is director of urban design for the Philadelphia based Hillier Group. A specialist in planning and design for sustainable development, Kumar has played a leading role in a number of complex transportation and infrastructure projects, including the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail system.

For more information on Kumar and his firm, look at the Hillier Group’s very fancy website (www.hillier.com). You can find background information on the Hudson-Bergen system, as well as a few pictures, at the system’s web page (www.hudsontma.org/hblrts.html).

Yolanda Takesian, AICP is a planner and economist working with the Community Design Division of the Maryland State Highway Administration. She established the state’s Neighborhood Conservation Program, which seeks to make highway and infrastructure projects responsive to community needs.

Some information on the Community Design Division is available at www.marylandroads.com. By clicking on "maps and brochures" you can find out how to get a copy of Takesian’s book, When Main Street Is a State Highway, A Handbook for Communities and Designers.

Paddy Tillett, RIBA, FRTPI, FAICP, FAIA heads the department of planning and urban design for the Portland-based firm of Zimmer Gunsul Frasca. The firm is highly respected for its urban design work on the west coast and elsewhere, of which Portland’s much-praised transit system is only one example.

Zimmer Gunsul Frasca’s projects are illustrated extensively on their website (www.zgf.com). The Portland transit system’s site also has some useful information (www.portlandtransit.org).