#liveable streets

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Bicycle parking in Belfast city centre | While recognising the draft Bicycle Strategy for Northern Ireland has the potential for real change over the next few years, it’s bloody obvious that a rapid expansion of good quality bicycle parking is desperately needed in Belfast. Right now.

You lack imagination if you think Belfast’s arterial roads are too narrow to add a high quality (even Dutch-standard) cycle route - I make that 6 cars across on the Ormeau Road..

[Lerner] caught wind that a group of motorists were planning to disregard the prohibition and drive their cars onto the pedestrian area on a Saturday morning, so he dreamt up a fail proof plan to stop them in their tracks. He assembled hundreds of children in the street, handed out rolls of newsprint and boxes of paint, and there they sat, happily, keeping the motorists from entering.

Thanks to @fireflybicycles for dropping the crumbs.

There has been much talk lately about Liveable streets, esp now that the Complete Streets Act is in the Senate. GOOD Magazine (which I subcribe to and simply love) had this feature on their website today. The article "It’s easy to forget that our streets are alterable. They weren’t set down by God on the eighth day; they were designed by human beings. Unfortunately, throughout the 20th century, most of the human beings designing our streets were traffic engineers. For the most part, they viewed the city from behind a windshield and saw the street as a problem to be solved for automobiles. The result is the American city that most of us know today: sprawling, traffic-choked, hostile to pedestrians and cyclists, dependent on a vast, never-ending flow of cheap oil, and deeply unsustainable. Streets can and must be more than just a place for the movement and storage of private motor vehicles. The urban street of the 21st century will be a “complete street,” accommodating pedestrians, cyclists, and transit riders alike. At the Livable Streets Initiative we are helping citizens re-envision streets as great public spaces. Take, for example, the busy intersection of Amsterdam Avenue and West 76th Street in Manhattan"... It has an interactive graphic that is really cool-go check it out. In more local news, Anna and I went to a reception and talk given by Dan Burden on Walkable Communities. It was really hopeful and interesting. He said so many things that are obvious yet completely new to many people (i.e. designing your city to the people instead of the car), and he also showed streets in Birmingham that can be 'reclaimed' using the current dimensions. It is time to reclaim our city from the car! you can read Anna's notes on the talk here