TOOLS
Gehl Institute
We offer tools that draw on decades of applied research demonstrating how a walkable human scale is part of what makes cities interesting. The public life tools available on this page will help you measure how people use public spaces and better understand the relationship between those spaces and the public life that takes place in them.
ARTICLE / TOOL
Adele Peters, Fast Company, 20 July 2017
At the moment, cars spend around 95% of the time parked, and only 5% of the time in use. Huge swaths of cities, either in parking lots, garages, or street parking spaces, are used as storage for cars (while, at the same time, many cities struggle to find enough land to build housing to keep up with demand). “There’s this huge space that’s basically wasted,” says Szell.
ARTICLE
PB Network, 24 Jan 2017
Launched in 2014, Paris implements a successful method of citizen participation. Ideas are developed and submitted on an Internet platform by residents or groups of residents. In 2015, Parisians submitted over 5,000 projects. In 2014, the first year of its operation, over 40,000 Parisians chose 9 winning projects at a cost of 17,7 million €.
To learn more about Participatory Budgeting in the USA click here, and in the UK click here.
WEBSITE
Renew Newcastle
Since 2008, Renew Newcastle has been connecting people with vacant spaces, supporting a community of creative entrepreneurs who bring life, interest and activity into under utilised neighbourhoods. Partnering with those who share the vision of giving back to their community.
What makes a good Renew Newcastle project?
How long does Renew Newcastle have properties for?
Renew Newcastle’s default license agreement is based on accessing the property on a rolling 30 day basis. That means Property Owners can give 30 days notice at any time should they receive a commercial offer or need to proceed with development. This enables the property owner to provide the property without sacrificing the potential commercial returns and is one of the key reasons why properties are made available so cheaply.
To watch Marcus Wesbury’s speak about creative cities and the Renew Newcastle model click here, for his book Creating Cities click here, and for tools to create your own Renew project click here.
TOOL
ARUP, 2015
The cards are designed to help stakeholders at all levels — citizens, planners, and officials — prioritise and explore issues that will shape the future of their city and explore the notion of city vitality thinking.
For more on ARUP’s work on cities, click here.
ARTICLE
Sarah Goodyear, CityLab, 20 Mar 2015
The phrase “tactical urbanism” came into use just a few short years ago, coined by a group of young planners and activists and popularized by an online guide to phenomena such as guerrilla wayfinding, pop-up markets, and DIY traffic-calming.
Many of those nimble urban-improvement techniques, which often originated in the activist community, have since gone mainstream. Cities such as San Francisco and Philadelphia, for instance, have been rapidly installing parklets where parking spaces used to go, a practice that originated with an annual grassroots action called Park(ing) Day.
To listen to a panel discussion about Tactical Urbanism, hosted by the New York Times and including Mike Lydon, click here.
To find out more about Mike Lydon and his Street Plans practice click here, for links to Street Plan’s books click here, and to download their guides to Tactical Urbanism click here. Several of these guides have been co-authored with similar placemaking firms around the world including Co-Design Studio (Australia), Ciudad Emergente (Chile), and TaMaLaCà (Italy).
TOOL
streetmix.com
Design, remix and share your neighbourhood street. Add trees or bike paths, widen sidewalks or traffic lanes, learn how your decisions can impact your community.
For a professional planning tool that incorporates Streetmix style road planning as well as other mobility tools, check out Remix.