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Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna

Friday fun streets.

People using Streetmix to tackle actual projects within their communities is something that warms our hearts (part 1, part 2), but our app is also supposed to be fun – and it seems that many of our users have a lot of it.

Scathing critiques, design statements, dreamscapes, even things that could be called streets only with huge suspension of disbelief… here’s a small selection of your creations that made us laugh. And think.

Note: Click on any image to see that street in Streetmix, and, by all means, remix it!

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A graphical update!

Today, we’re excited to be rolling out some graphical tweaks to Streetmix that have been in our queue for quite some time now. First up: the width of our cars! The average width of a car in the United States is only 6 ft wide, but we’ve been showing them at over 7 feet wide for a long time, giving a false impression that cars need way more breathing room than they really do. We’re finally fixing that, so your cars are leaner and more realistic.

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Another important tweak is where cars are placed in a parking lane. Previously, they were centered in the parking lane, but that’s not realistic either. With skinnier cars, the difference is much more noticeable. Now, cars are parked alongside one edge (which could be a curb, for instance).

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Other tweaks include improving the turn signal light visibility on turning cars, tweaking the look of the parklet, and painting diagonal stripes on the asphalt below the bollard and the traffic exclusion dome, as well as some smaller tweaks. Here’s a full list of improvements in this update.

We’ve also updated the default “new example street” to showcase some of these new graphical tweaks! We hope you enjoy these updates.

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And now, for a special holiday stocking-stuffer for some of our users who have been asking us high-resolution graphics that they could use for their publications. We’ve exported all of our artwork to the open-source SVG vector graphics format and created a separate GitHub repository for them. Feel free to use these Creative Commons-licensed images in your own presentations and modify them to your liking – maybe your town has red light rail vehicles instead of green and gray! If you’ve made any improvements, we’d love to see them, so send us a pull request or drop us a line and show us what you’ve made.

Streetmix in the real world (part 2).

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More examples of Streetmix being used to tackle real-world street issues:

(Here’s part 1.)

We’ve just made a small change to the default layout when you create a new street by adding in a lane of parking on the side, opposite from the transit shelter bulb-out. Why did we do this? On-street parking acts as a protective “barrier of steel” between pedestrians and traffic, to use a term noted walkability expert Jeff Speck used in his book Walkable City. Walkability leads to other benefits, too. Kaid Benfield, Director of Sustainable Communities at the Natural Resources Defense Council, writes: We take it for granted, but on-street parking buffers walkers from the flow of traffic, providing them with an additional sense of comfort in a highly urban space.  The more comfortable we are walking, the more sustainability and health benefits we can enjoy. We agree. Many of our streets have this condition, so we’ve updated our default layout accordingly. And while we’re on the subject: parking doesn’t just buffer pedestrians – it can buffer bikes, too.  Several European cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen commonly have a row of parked cars separating traffic from bicyclists. While rare in the United States, this design is starting to gain traction in New York City, Chicago and a few other North American cities. We haven’t made this the default condition, but maybe someday we’ll have to – in the meantime, it’s pretty easy to try it yourself!

We’ve just made a small change to the default layout when you create a new street by adding in a lane of parking on the side, opposite from the transit shelter bulb-out.

Why did we do this?

On-street parking acts as a protective “barrier of steel” between pedestrians and traffic, to use a term noted walkability expert Jeff Speck used in his book Walkable City.

Walkability leads to other benefits, too. Kaid Benfield, Director of Sustainable Communities at the Natural Resources Defense Council, writes:

We take it for granted, but on-street parking buffers walkers from the flow of traffic, providing them with an additional sense of comfort in a highly urban space.  The more comfortable we are walking, the more sustainability and health benefits we can enjoy.

We agree. Many of our streets have this condition, so we’ve updated our default layout accordingly.

And while we’re on the subject: parking doesn’t just buffer pedestrians – it can buffer bikes, too.  Several European cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen commonly have a row of parked cars separating traffic from bicyclists. While rare in the United States, this design is starting to gain traction in New York City, Chicago and a few other North American cities. We haven’t made this the default condition, but maybe someday we’ll have to – in the meantime, it’s pretty easy to try it yourself!

Streetmix in the real world.

We’re very happy when people use Streetmix to propose improvements and ideas for actual streets in their cities.

Here are some we’ve seen:

How have you reimagined your streets? Let us know. And if you haven’t… give it a shot!

Sometimes the best solution is an old-fashioned one. In addition to sharing by Twitter or Facebook and sending out a link to your street, Streetmix now also supports… printing. It’s a bit experimental, so check it out and let us know if it works for you!

Sometimes the best solution is an old-fashioned one. In addition to sharing by Twitter or Facebook and sending out a link to your street, Streetmix now also supports… printing.

It’s a bit experimental, so check it out and let us know if it works for you!

We get awesome feedback: I tried out your UTOPIA Street simulator and while I liked the ability to banish cars from the streets, I was disappointed that there was no way to ensure rent control after installing light rail. Nor was there any option to add a community billboard on the side of the building. There were no rooftop gardens, no hanging plants from street lamps, no way to add signage for shops on street level. And I was probably the most dismayed to see there was no way to add graffiti in order to make yuppies feel slightly uncomfortable, and to ensure that people living there felt a connection to the commons. I had to add all of these amenities by hand.—Hart Noecker Duly noted and inspired.

We get awesome feedback:

I tried out your UTOPIA Street simulator and while I liked the ability to banish cars from the streets, I was disappointed that there was no way to ensure rent control after installing light rail. Nor was there any option to add a community billboard on the side of the building. There were no rooftop gardens, no hanging plants from street lamps, no way to add signage for shops on street level. And I was probably the most dismayed to see there was no way to add graffiti in order to make yuppies feel slightly uncomfortable, and to ensure that people living there felt a connection to the commons. I had to add all of these amenities by hand.
—Hart Noecker

Duly noted and inspired.

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