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King Street does not attract anywhere near the number of pedestrians that Reston Town Center does.
Caladium, this is something I always ponder having experienced the example of San Jose's downtown. When I moved there the South First Street area they dubbed SoFa was just developing an organic business community. It was a bit beaten up, but it was genuine. The Cactus Club was there, where Nirvana and Soundgarden and all kinds of other bands played. It was San Jose's club scene.
Then city planners decided to clean things up. The Cactus Club closed. Up the street they built upon the transit mall a retail structure. I think they imagined the south end of it to become a plaza, anchored by the major hotel there.
Unfortunately, what actually happened was this design effectively cut the burgeoning SoFa district off from pedestrian traffic from the north. In the SoFa district a high end pool hall opened up, $15 a game, as if...!? I haven't been to downtown San Jose in a while, but I do know if that area has found its stride, it's in spite of poor planning. My cousin who lives there tells me it has not. And this is why I'm often leery of urban planning, as the planners can display zero understanding of the true street dynamics to create the appeal they envision.
And this is why I'm often leery of urban planning, as the planners can display zero understanding of the true street dynamics to create the appeal they envision.
This is a statement I truly agree with. I find city planning very interesting, yet at the same time I have witnessed some huge mistakes made by city planners. Sometimes they get so wrapped up in theories they seem to lose touch with common sense.
It might be fun to have a thread called "Mistakes I've seen city planners make over the years"
I do indeed, in fact that's how we happened to buy the house we're in now. When we first moved here we lived in western Fairfax County which is nearby but not walking distance. One day when I was driving to work I saw a house go up for sale that had exactly what we wanted and was walking distance to my job. It was also closer to my husband's job. So, we bought it.
Okay. If I were married and worked in the suburbs, I would probably prefer living in the suburbs, too. The greatest thing about living in a city like DC, imo, is the sheer number of attractive women you get to see on a daily basis. When I'm married, I'm not so sure I want to be around that temptation. One of my friends got married and moved to the burbs and he goes into the city no more than once a month (for social purposes). Anything more than that and his wife will tell him that he's having "too much fun."
I'm glad you had a nice time walking around Fairfax Corners. I like that Town Center too (sorry, I just can't bring myself to call it a lifestyle center LOL LOL ) I do wonder, though, if a visitor to an area is the best judge of whether or not the roads are barriers to local residents. What looks like a barrier to you might not actually be one. I have friends who have a condo there and don't seem to find it a problem. However, different strokes for different folks. Those that like narrower roads can find them in your part of Nova. Those who like the wider roads can find them out in my area. Something for everyone. .
In fact I did not see many other people walking in the parts of fair oaks that would require crossing a wide road. Most the walking (other than within the commercial area, where most people arrive by car) was too and from the residential areas that did NOT require crossing a wide road.
and there are lots of wide roads (often very poorly designed for pedestrians) in my part of annandale, including LRT, braddock, Gallows, etc, etc.
Im glad there is something for everyone, but that should not detract from the likelihood that certain urban forms are more conducive to increasing the amount of people walking than others are. Its unfortunate we don't have adequate data to analyze that as well as we would like, and its also true that there are folks who like walking regardless of the conditions. However planners must make decisions with the information at hand. I certainly hope that Fairfax planners will make every effort, when designing pedestrian focused activity centers, to make it possible to access them without crossing wide streets - not for my personal preference, but to best leverage the centers involved. (note its not only about street width - but about things like number of traffic lights - visual cues of urban density - etc - there are reasons manhattan avenues are lesser barriers than certain suburban boulevards)
re leesburg vs RTC - could one difference be simply location? Leesburg is on the edge of the built up area - west of there is mostly rural. RTC draws from folks in all directions. Some lower density areas near RTC, but I think not so much as for Leesburg.
I dont think you can find anything by comparing town centers or whatever the majority of whose users arrive their by auto. Isolation caused by wide roads simply won't matter. The question is not which ones are busier, but which ones are better tied to neighboring areas for pedestrians.
This is a statement I truly agree with. I find city planning very interesting, yet at the same time I have witnessed some huge mistakes made by city planners. Sometimes they get so wrapped up in theories they seem to lose touch with common sense.
It might be fun to have a thread called "Mistakes I've seen city planners make over the years"
"common sense"
"Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”John Maynard Keynes
re leesburg vs RTC - could one difference be simply location? Leesburg is on the edge of the built up area - west of there is mostly rural. RTC draws from folks in all directions. .
That's why I'm going to do a comparison of King Street of Villages of Leesburg. Same part of town. Both have residents, as well as visiting traffic. I'll do it once the trees leaf out to show them both at their best. It should be interesting to see how it turns out.
That's why I'm going to do a comparison of King Street of Villages of Leesburg. Same part of town. Both have residents, as well as visiting traffic. I'll do it once the trees leaf out to show them both at their best. It should be interesting to see how it turns out.
Of the three categories of users - A pedestrians who dont have to cross a wide road, B. pedestrians who do have to cross a wide road, and C. people who drive and park - how do you plan to identify members of group B?
Im also not sure in general it makes sense to compare a 19th century town, with retail in buildings owned by different landlords, with varying states of repair, etc, with a lifestyle center that is the product of 21st century marketing.
Of the three categories of users - A pedestrians who dont have to cross a wide road, B. pedestrians who do have to cross a wide road, and C. people who drive and park - how do you plan to identify members of group B?
I'm not sure why it would be important to make categories like that, but FWIW Villages of Leesburg has a wide road running down the center of it, and is surrounded by even wider roads. King Street is a narrow road and is in a section of town that also has narrow roads. That's a minute part of what I plan to contrast and compare, however. There are many components that go into urban design, and I'll try to contrast as many as possible.
Just taking a quick look at King Street on google maps, it looks like King Street has a lot of shopping centres close by that are more accessible from the Leesburg Bypass/Harry Byrd Highway and those shopping centres have very convenient parking, so it looks like it would be move convenient to shop there if you drive. If I'm right, that means King Street would either need a lot of potential shoppers within walking distance, or be nicer or more exciting than the other shopping centres to succeed.
From the census data, there seem to be about 2000-3000 people within a 10min walk of the King Street retail, which might not be enough. I'm not sure how many people the courthouse employs, but I'm guessing it's not thousands, and the employees might still do most of the shopping elsewhere, like along the way to work or near their homes.
The city where I go to university (Waterloo, Ontario) seems to have at least 5000 people living within a 10 min walk of its King Street and the retail there seems to be doing ok. In addition to those 5000 residents, there are about 40,000 students attending two universities about a 15-25 minute walk from there, and taking the express bus, it's only about 5 min between the downtown and universities with headways of about 5-15min. There's many other bus routes that run along King Street in Waterloo too, before splitting off to different parts of the city. The fact that much of the students live close by helps too, especially since many students don't have a car, so it's not as much of an advantage for the malls to be easily accessible by car. I'm guessing most people in Leesburg have a car? The other commercial centres in Waterloo aren't that accessible by car either, being not so much along the highway but rather along arterial roads - which mostly radiate out of downtown.
The employment near downtown Waterloo is probably higher too, it includes a 20 storey office tower and about half a dozen smaller office buildings. There are also other attractions in downtown Waterloo like the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, a museum, a nice park and a main square next to a small downtown shopping centre which gets converted to an outdoor skating rink in the winter.
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