To national transportation expert Ian Lockwood, pedestrians are the center of the universe.
"Originally, people thought that earth was the center of the solar system, but the calculations never made sense," said Lockwood, as he pointed to an illustrated PowerPoint presentation Wednesday night."When we finally put the sun in the center, everything started to make sense. If you replace the earth with a car and the sun with a pedestrian, it's the same story."
Lockwood, a transportation engineer with a focus in livable communities, brought this idea of a pedestrian-centric city to packed audience on Nov. 28, including members of the Metro Policy Advisory Committee. Pinpointing the birth of automobiles as the negative turning point in city planning, Lockwood illustrated how cities can reclaim an environment where pedestrians and multi-modal transit options reign.
To get there, he said, mainstream laws and funding sources must shift their focus from modern transportation planning to traditional.
"Look at Detroit," Lockwood said. "It's an example of a city that embraced modernism early on, pushing its population to the suburbs and focusing on fast, car-centric arterials."
Detroit, he said, lost its vibrancy and culture with the modernist push, leaving traditional downtown housing structures empty and social nodes abandoned. As a visual metaphor, Lockwood displayed a photo of an ornate theatre, the Michigan, home to many social galas and screenings in the early 1900s. Now, it lays gutted in downtown Detroit, used as a deteriorating parking garage.
As another example, Lockwood featured a main arterial street in Savannah, Ga. On one end, the transportation and land use layout featured traditional styles – or that of cities prior to the introduction of the car. For example, Savannah has lower traffic speeds, many mixed-use buildings, narrower connected streets and comfortable sidewalks. At the other end of the street, miles south, big box stores and speeding cars took precedent – forgettable zone.
"What we're seeing is everyone in major cities favoring the traditional layout of walkable, livable streets," Lockwood said. "It's the laws, rules, and funding sources that love the modern designs. Or at least are built on it."
To cure this disconnect, Lockwood said, cities must focus on rewarding shorter trips, a key player in traditional planning.
"We currently reward long trips, giving commuters the priority rather than the local communities they drive through," he said. "Smaller trips to boost your local economy and society should be the focus."
From Lockwood's brief stay in Portland, he said he saw the Southwest Corridor as an example of a arterial being put to good use. Focusing on the smaller communities that it connects, rather than simply ushering drivers through, is the corridor's greatest asset, according to Lockwood.
"There's no excuse in any city to have cars be the priority," Lockwood said. "It's time we go back in time to a city where pedestrians and city life thrive."