Walkology, Dr. Downtown & Dr. Street

Street Design in the Providence Journal Again

Westminster Street in Providence, Rhode Island

Westminster Street in Providence, Rhode Island

We then crossed the College Street Bridge to enter downtown, and found ourselves where Weybosset and Westminster merge to form what Dr. Street said could be a sumptuous civic plaza. It is a sumptuous civic plaza, replied this doctor, and a civic dance plaza on WaterFire nights. He said it was still too wide. He noted that Nantucket’s Main Street has a horse fountain at one end and a Civil War monument at the other, around both of which cars must maneuver. He recommended an obelisk at Westminster and Weybosset to slow the cars entering downtown. What a great idea!
Dr. Street referred often to a new “paradigm shift” for making cities less car-centric. Vision Zero was conceived by New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has called for zero traffic deaths, including pedestrians, in the city. These are not unpreventable “accidents” and no level is acceptable. By focusing on safety, politicians who otherwise care nothing for the niceties of good streets will feel obliged to promote the goals of the slow-streets movement.

Benefit Street in Providence, Rhode Island, closed for a RISD street fair.

Benefit Street in Providence, Rhode Island, closed for a RISD street fair. In most American cities it’s better to sometimes close streets for special events than to create Pedestrian Streets that are always closed to traffic.


David Brussat is the architecture critic for the Providence Journal, as well as an Editorial Board member there. He wrote about Benefit Street for Street Design, reviewed the book, and walked the streets of Providence with John Massengale (aka “Dr. Street”).

David Brussat, “The Secret to Making Great Streets,” Providence Journal
John Massengale, “Mr. Manners Goes To MOMA: The Etiquette of Deconstructivism,” Inland Architect (September/October 1988): 66-69

Street Design in Salon

“How cars conquered the American city (and how we can win it back)”

Two quotes from the article by Henry Grabar:

John Massengale and I are standing in the middle of 1st Avenue at East 4th Street, in New York’s East Village, and he does not like the feng shui. He points to the thick, white lines in the roadway, directing drivers toward a left turn. “Automobile-scale striping,” he notes. “It’s telling you: ‘This is not a place for you.’”

Part instruction manual, part history, part manifesto, the book argues that it is the street, more than anything, that shapes the city. In traveling to cities around the world and interviewing residents, pedestrians and businesspeople, Dover and Massengale found a remarkable degree of agreement about which streets are nice and which are not. “If there is so much consensus on what makes a good street,” they ask, “then why are we still building so many bad and ugly ones?”

SCAD Lecture: The Art of Street Design

Image of Victor speaking at SCAD

Victor Dover and co-author John Massengale have been doing a lot of traveling to talk about their recently released book Street Design: The Secret to Great Cities and Towns. Recent lectures have taken place in Delray Beach, Florida; The University of Texas at San Antonio; CNU-FL in Sarasota, Florida; Florida International University in Miami, Florida; and the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia.

NEW VIDEO: A recording of Victor’s lecture at the Savannah College of Art and Design on February 11, 2014 is available online at the SCAD Virtual Lecture Hall

Additional lectures are scheduled in Coral Gables, Florida; Winter Park, Florida; Glendale, Colorado; and Atlanta, Georgia. The Form-Based Codes Institute is also hosting a webinar titled Street Design for Form-Based Codes on Tuesday, March 11, 2014 featuring Victor Dover, John Massengale and Richard A. Hall.  Learn more about the webinar and register today.