New shared-space waterfront for DC
A 12-block waterfront redevelopment broke ground in Washington DC that extensively uses the concept of "share-space" streets, according to Payton Chung of Streetsblog. At 27-acres, The Wharf is designed to include 560 dwellings plus a couple million square feet of office, retail, hotel space, a concert hall, museum, and maritime education center, and a marina.
About 60 percent of the site will be public space — including the streets, which are designed as public spaces, although cars and trucks will have access to most.
The development by Hoffman-Madison Waterfront is one of the largest projects to employ shared-space -- which blends pedestrians, bicyclists, and automobiles in the right of way —- to date in the US. The developer was influenced by places in Europe. When asked by Streetsblog about the benefits of this approach, spokesman Matthew Steenhoek answered:
"Our reason was placemaking. For us, it was starting with a question of 'what’s the space going to feel like?' We wanted to bring something interesting and unique — a space that’ll work tomorrow, and in 50 or 99 years, when our ground lease is done. Vehicular capacity wasn’t important, since these are not continuous routes through to anywhere. Most cars will just want to go to and from the garage."
This design approach was taken on the internal streets, which are expected to see little automobile traffic but lots of foot traffic. The occasional delivery truck will need to drive very slowly — like in a parking lot. These streets will be private, giving the developer more design freedom. At the edge of The Wharf will be a more conventional urban street, with on-street parking and two lanes of traffic in either direction. This will carry through traffic.
As Better Cities & Towns reported in the July-August print issue, shared space is one of the more exciting design ideas in the field of urbanism today. A presentation by British architect Ben Hamilton-Baillie generated a lot of buzz at the Congress for the New Urbanism in Buffalo, New York, in June.
A section of The Wharf circulation plan. Source: Streetsblog
