9.7.Big-City-2-detail-c Highlights Relative to Sustainable Design:
Closing Perspective on the Big City Experience
Cities are a rich concentration of information. New York and Los Angeles anchor the East and West Coasts as extreme examples of tall and sprawl, while most cities are less extreme with a combination of density and surrounding suburbs.
It is not too late to reconsider electric streetcars or green energy city buses. Over the fall of 2015, I was in one of the combination cities that is an example of tall and sprawl, with advanced transportation. When visiting Denver, Colorado, for a family wedding, I was delighted to see the Sixteenth Street Mall[i] in action. The city permanently closed the street to cars in favor of pedestrians and free buses that run on ecofriendly compressed natural gas. The 1.25-mile “mall” has over three hundred stores and fifty restaurants. Denver also offers shared transportation via car2go smart cars throughout the city. People register to drive the cars for a fee, reducing the parking clutter in so many cities. I have written about European town centers in this book, and the Sixteenth Street Mall along with the shared transportation embody the principles that add value to the urban experience. Hopefully, the outdoor pedestrian mall in Denver serves as a model for other cities.
Author and illustrator: Charlie Szoradi is an architect, inventor, and the CEO of Independence LED Lighting. He writes about many other topics related to the big city experience through his extensive travels around the world.
If you have found this posting online, it is an excerpt from Mr. Szoradi’s book Learn from Looking that served as the inspiring seed content for this drawing share resource. For additional drawings and insights on urban planning and the big city experience, we hope that you enjoy exploring LearnfromLooking.com. You can search via general terms such as sustainability as well as narrower terms such as big city experience, New York, Los Angeles, and Denver.
[i] Sixteenth Street Mall in Denver: Big City 2: Los Angeles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16th_Street_Mall.
