How to Make Dallas a Livable City, Part 2

In our previous article, we challenged city leaders to set extraordinary goals and to think beyond what is currently the defeatist “Dallas is a car city” mindset. The above picture illustrates a comparison of attitudes towards Dallas city planning and Copenhagen city planning. You’ll notice Dallas looks like a moonscape filled with massive gray parking lots, and a perfect place to live if you happen to be a car. We also noted Danish planner Jan Gehl’s efforts to return Copenhagen’s streets to a people-first model, and specifically his successful Stroget project. To recap, the Stroget turned from an auto-centric street, to a pedestrian only in 1962:

Gehl’s ideas were shaped largely by the observations of noted author and architecture critic, Jane Jacobs, whose seminal book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, was released in 1961. The key to the success of his projects was a gradual shifting of mode planning. Gehl strived to reduce parking each year by only 3%. Similar efforts to create pedestrian plazas in the US in the late 70′s often failed due to efforts to simply remove all parking in hopes that people would come out. The problem with this idea was that residents had no time to adapt to the changed environment, and quickly lead to several of these project’s failures. Along with the pedestrianization efforts of city plaza’s by Gehl, the city of Copenhagen also noticed a large drop in bicycle ridership. It hits its lowest point in the 1970′s, where city officials then took great measures to begin the buidout of a major bicycle infrastructure network. Due to these efforts, bicycling rebounded, and has now grown wildly in popularity:

The focus of efforts to increase ridership centered on building safe streets for all residents, from ages 5 to 85+. Gehl illustrates this point in the following slide from a recent presentation with his 85 year old mother-in-law:

In the end, city leaders were willing to take risks, and drop assumptions they’d built over time on how people wanted their city to look and feel. To contrast this split in planning, Dallas began its Downtown underground mall in the 1970′s, completing its vision to remove all signs of life from its streets.

Dallas Should Strive to Become the World’s Most Livable City

Stroget Pedestrian Plaza, Copenhagen, Denmark

“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood…. Make big plans… aim high in hope and work.” Daniel Burnham, Architect of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair

When Danish Planner, Jan Gehl, began his work to make the streets of Copenhagen pedestrian and bicycle friendly, what he heard most often from residents was, “We’re Danes, not Italians…We Don’t have a culture for walking”. Businesses along the now famous “car-free” Stroget plaza, claimed that their shops would be shuttered and everyone would desert the City center if no access was allowed for automobiles. Obviously, the changes they made have turned Copenhagen into one of the most livable cities in the world, but the idea of removing car lanes, parking, and more, originally brought nothing but defeatist predictions on the outcome, based soley on the idea that the culture simply didn’t exist…or if it once did, it had long since passed.

And how did they achieve such a status in a relatively short amount of time? Their city leaders were visionaries and didn’t settle for “just enough”. In all of my own advocacy within city meetings, townhalls, chambers, and more, I’ve been struck at how many people who have been placed in positions of authority, had the “Dallas just doesn’t do that” mentality. Fortunately, I’ve recently been heartened by a few that have decided to actually set goals beyond our own predefined boundaries like council members Delia Jasso, and Angela Hunt. I should note, it takes one extra trait beyond vision, and that’s courage. One has to muster quite a bit when putting ideas on the line, while knowing you’ll be taking arrows from NIMBY’s, C.A.V.E. people, and the very vocal “We Can’t” crowd.

So how do you challenge your community, and set out for the unimaginable? You set extraordinary goals. There are examples of this throughout the places we think of as “Great Cities”. Copenhagen set a goal to reach 50% bicycle ridership by 2015. Chicago set a goal to become the “Most Bicycle Friendly City in the United States”. Portland’s goal is to become the “Most Sustainable City in THE WORLD”.

If you strive for mediocrity, and miss your goal, then not only have you settled, but you might as well go home. On the other hand, if you set your vision far beyond what is currently imaginable (think: JFK’s moon challenge), then you’ve found an inspiring endeavor, and you stand the chance to make an entire community strive to its greatest potential. And even if you fall short, you’ve probably achieved much greater strides toward your goal than you ever would have previously, had you set out for “just enough”.

So our challenge to all city leaders is simple…set an unimaginable goal like “Dallas will be the most livable city in the World by 2020″, and even if we fall short, I don’t think anyone will have a problem with only being the “Eighth Most Livable City in the World.”

Lonestar Goldsprints Competition at Eno’s in Bishop Arts Nov. 7th

New BFOC Messenger Bags Available

Thanks to the awesome work of FreeLisa designs, BFOC now has these cool new messenger bags available. I can easily carry my laptop and a couple of books in mine, and the strap is adjustable. You can pick one of these up at the Oak Cliff Bicycle Company, or email Lisa direct. A portion of all sales go back to BFOC and help fund our work to hold events, install bike racks and more. These also make great Christmas presents!

Streetfilms Video on New York Bike Lane Installations

It’s hard to believe how far New York City has come with it’s bicycle infrastructure work in such a short time period. Hiring expert planners and engineers from Denmark proved to be a stroke of genius, and seeing the ridership levels grow is a testimony to the ideas of Jan Gehl, Soren Jenson, and others. Though Dallas is in last place for bicycle initiatives in the country, we stand a great chance to learn from the hundreds of cities now adopting progressive multi-modal infrastructure.

More from the Bicycle Scavenger Hunt and Oktoberfest at Eno’s

Video from earlier in the day at Oktoberfest:

Photos from Oktoberfest and the Scavenger Hunt

Fortunately, we had a perfect day of weather for the Bicycle Photo Scavener Hunt and Oktoberfest. Thirteen teams competed for prizes doled out by the girls at Photopol.us for the hunt, which they should be uploading pics from shortly. Some of the challenges were pretty far out there, including having someone swim in Lake Cliff, and picturing a guy wearing a Quincinera dress.

Later that day, our favorite local tavern, Eno’s, did a great job of hosting an amazing event, complete with a 20 piece jazz orchestra and enough beer to keep everyone well hydrated on into the night. Special thanks to the folks at Franconia Brewing for bringing out the 200 year old keg and filling everyone’s mugs. Also, thanks go to New Belgium Brewing (for beer, and all the free bicycle goodies), Saint Arnold, Harpoon Brewery, and Real Ale, for donating to the day.

Here’s a few pics from the day with more located here:

FMD & BFOC Present: Terror on Two Wheels. A Haunted Dallas Group Bike Ride

Join us for the fourth group ride in our history themed series focusing on haunted sites in Dallas. Alicia Pol of FMD, and Colin Clarke of 75208 will lead the group from the Grassy Knoll in Downtown Dallas through some of the most notorious ghost-ridden spots in town.

Arrive at 2:30PM on Halloween (Saturday, Oct. 31). Costumes are encouraged and we’ll be giving out an award at the end of the ride to the best one.

A Facebook event page has been setup here as well.

Also, later that afternoon, Liberty Cycle Works is holding a Costumed Halloween ride as well at 5PM. It’s a great chance to catch two fun group rides in town:

How to Build a Bike Friendly City Part 2

(A new bike lane in Times Square, NY by Flickr user denali2001)

Several interesting articles have come out recently on bicycle culture, and more to the point, the move away from auto-centric planning. The New York Times published an article on Wednesday titled “Is Happiness Still That New Car Smell?”, where an auto industry expert is quoted as saying “People are questioning car purchases more than we’ve ever seen in recent history,” and goes on to profile people who have made the switch from auto ownership to bicycling + public transit. Also, the League of American Bicyclists released their Fall 2009 Bike Friendly City list. Several mid-west cities have made the list, so hopefully in the not too distant future, Dallas can make the cut.

BikeDenton attended the most recent NCTCOG Bike and Pedestrian advisory committee meeting and heard a suburban planner from Richardson admit that post-WWII planning had been negligent of non-car transit, and that overwhelming support for bicycle specific infrastructure by neighborhood associations had begun in his area. We also went to the archives to pull a Car Free in Big D entry spotlighting an Austrian city engineer in an article titled “A Traffic Engineer Whose Mother Actually Loves Him”, who is quoted “I discovered that traditional traffic planning is merely based on assumptions. For a long time there was no consideration for the consequences for the society or the environment. Nobody cared about noise or pollution, about fatalities, about the economy being altered or unemployment being created.” There’s definitely a change in mindset among the new set of planners and engineers coming out of schools today. It’s almost as if they’ve finally taken heed of Jane Jacobs warnings in the classic Death and Life of Great American Cities. Annecdotally speaking, we even note a split inside of many city offices among one generation of planners to the next. One will state “I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and these new ideas won’t work here”, while the others are stating, “what we did 30 years ago IS the problem.” Only time will tell on what our city will look like in the coming decade, but it is heartening to see traditional planning ideas look beyond the idea of simply getting people in and out of places as fast as possible without regard to effects on livability.

Finally, I ran across this incredible paper titled “Livable Copenhagen” released by the University of Washington with cooperation from the Center for Public Space Research in Copenhagen. In it, detailed renderings are made of several different streetscapes in Copenhagen (pages 23-39) which include cutouts of roadways, intersection planning, and cycle track measurements. A great place to start when looking at how a successful bicycle city was developed which moved away from 1950-70′s era car-only planning models.

OC Bicycle Weekend Event Update

A lot of Bicycle activities happening this weekend in the OC. For starters, tonight we’re featuring “Breaking Away” at the Belmont Hotel as part of our Bike-In Movie series. Movie begins at dark (7:30ish). It’s starting to get cooler at night, so be sure to bring a couple blankets.

Sunday, two events take place that run together. For starters, Photopol.us is putting on their Bicycle Photo Scavenger Hunt, and later that afternoon, Eno’s will be holding its rescheduled Oktoberfest event, behind their building. There will be dart throwing competitions, plenty of micro-brewed beer and food, music, and the winner of the scavenger hunt will be awarded there. Oktoberfest is from 2PM to 9PM, and the scavenger hunt is from Noon to 3PM so there’s plenty of time to take in the day.