Reddit reviews Great Streets (The MIT Press)

Firstly on the resources for Urban planning. Well. Honestly, I haven't personally great online resources for learning about Urban planning. Various government institutions have released master plans and design guide documents (almost all are pretty boring). Your best bet (unfortunately) is in buying expensive books online and getting it shipped to you. There are plenty of great planning books for the European context. Particularly urban design books.

https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/wiki/readinglist Is worth a look at. (most are american focuses of course)

I think these might be useful to you.

https://www.amazon.com/City-Reader-5th-Routledge-Urban/dp/0415556651

https://www.amazon.com/Economics-Land-Planning-Alan-Evans/dp/140511861X

https://www.amazon.com/Urban-Economics-Arthur-OSullivan/dp/0073511471

https://www.amazon.com/Great-Streets-Press-Allan-Jacobs/dp/0262600234/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536125765&sr=8-1&keywords=great+streets

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On the green space/parking. Well firstly it really depends on:

A) what is the land parcel you already own here. Who owns the petrol station? What is the minimum set back from the Ma-6014 road?

B) What kind of funding do you have? Are you using a loan?

C) what are your zoning and planning powers here?

D) how many cars do you need to accommodate and how much of the parking share would be given for free and how will you pay for that (will the foreign parking pay for it? Will you need general revenue or will you lease out some land for commercial purposes to cover costs -and do you have the power to do that) -I'm personally against free parking but i get it's appeal and use as a planning tool-.

E) What kind of services does your town lack? Child care? Library (if within your level of government)? Flexible community space (i.e cheaply rent-able rooms for hire by community groups)?

F) What's the parking for anyway? Do people drive to your town to go to the beach (will it compete with the beach front parking)? Or do people use the town as a dormitory suburb for Parma and is that is why people park there? Will people be using the car park all the time? On the weekends? Mornings and at night in the week days?

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Other random observations:

-How much demand is there fore more green space? The town seems to be pretty well provisioned with public space (even if there isn't much 'green' public space). There's also near by natural reserve.

-There's a lack of street trees east of the supermarket and police station.

- Whats up with the fence around the main park? For the children?

-From an urban design perspective, everything around that park is such a missed opportunity.

Good pics thus far. I'd like to add:

City: Rediscovering the Center by William H Whyte.

Great Streets by Allan Jacobs.

Life Between Buildings: Using Public Spaces by Jan Gehl.

And for something different, a little Marxist geography:

Social Justice and the City by David Harvey

No shame in copying.

Look at great examples of Section drawings of Streetscapes and emulate them in some way. Pay attention to the details, how do they dimension? how do they draw a person, car, bus, tree? How do they depict architecture?

Here's a famous example: http://www.amazon.com/Great-Streets-Allan-B-Jacobs/dp/0262600234

Go digital though if you can do that look.


Getting dimensions is fairly simple. Measure from google earth. Measuring tape, Find out a street standard for a particular city to fact check as you go along. Figure out your pace as you walk across a roadway.

For buildings:

Step 1: Have a friend with a specific height (let's say 6') or most doorways are 6'8" tall.
Step 2: Have them stand against a building.
Step 3: Take a photo from further away to get the entire building and your friend in the photo.

Step 4: Now to find the height figure out how many of your friend (6') you can fit from the ground to the roof of the building.

e.g. This building can fit your friend 4 times so your building is 24'.


Hope this helps.

The APA has some good material on this: [What Makes a Place Great?] (https://www.planning.org/greatplaces/streets/characteristics.htm)

Related note, see if you can get a look at Allan Jacobs' classic Great Streets before you go. It'll equip you to evaluate public spaces that you visit.

Here is the mobile version of your link