Close Encounters with Cities - Discussion

Hi Dave

I was looking at figure 6, which is from Stockholm. As you know I lived in Stockholm for 10 years and the street is a tourist street. Durning the summer you cannot move more than 5/km not because of the facade, but the novelty of the area for tourist. The authors contrast this with 60km/hr walking, now that is pretty fast walking; walking on crack. I grew up in New York City. Given it was New York and Americans over exaggerate we all walked 80 km,/hr, we also all took super crack. If you tripped well you where simply trampled into the concrete.

Anyway, I knew Gehl, the lead author, he is also on crack. He came an guest lectured and the Swedish students harassed. They attacked him because he never included side walk materials or design, other street elements (trees, etc), the type the commercial-residential mix, length of the street, time of day. Basically he ignored the issue that the objective of some street are move as many people as quickly as possible, while others encourage slow leisure movement and others encourage people to actually sit and enjoy the environment. Look at figure 19 do the before and after pictures show any changes in sidewalk width. NO! You think anyone wants to sit in a street corridor that gets no sunlight with deep shadows. Well maybe if you want to sell crack.

Ciao, Eric