Oooo la la, My Escape to Paris

Melissa Hege, AICP of South Florida-based Melissa Hege City Planning LLC. takes a trip to Paris, to provide a few transportation planning tips on how to improve mobility in our communities.

Slowing Down Traffic

This is a typical Parisian side street. It’s narrow, so there’s not much opportunity to speed down the road. But just in case that’s not a sufficient deterrent, this street has a kind of rumble strip made of cobblestones to slow traffic and the speed limit painted in large white numbers at the top of the intersection. Pretty simple. How easy would it be to paint the speed limit on some of the more dangerous streets in Miami? Bollards and metal fencing provides another layer of protection for the strolling Parisian. Tres chic.

A Place for Pedestrians, Car Free Streets

We have a pretty great example of this in Miami Beach. Lincoln Road is kind of our poster child for pedestrian exclusive streets. It’s so successful that retailers pay outrageous rents just to have a presence on the street. These streets are more common in Paris and they exist for the sheer pleasure of strolling between neighborhoods without having to maneuver around cars. There are place for sitting, walking and space for planters and street trees. The street is calm and pleasant.

Beautiful Buildings

A love that this crosswalk is placed in the middle of the block and perfectly aligned with the Pantheon monument. Getting to the building is not just about crossing the street, but crossing the street at a precise location in order to get the perfect view of this monument. Parisians think of everything!

Getting Around Town

And for the cyclist that has to tote around multiple children without losing style points. Here’s a weather proof bike caddy to protect your little ones from the rain. This could work in Miami!

Parks in Unexpected Places

I used this photo already in a previous blog, but it was worth a second look. When streets are wide enough, rather than adding another lane for car traffic, Parisians build parks. Yes, right in the middle of the street. A nice little respite for residents looking for some greenery or a business person on their lunch hour. It’s a civilized way to create comfortable spaces for everyone. The lesson–streets can be a wonderful extension of a place’s personality while providing a vital function to move all kinds of traffic. We don’t need to build banal, utilitarian streets in Miami that serve nothing more than cars. Here are examples of how one retrofit its streets by sharing spaces and using mostly paint and some embellishments.

Article originally posted by Melissa Hege, AICP at www.Melissahege.com.

Melissa Hege, AICP, LEED AP, practices planning and urban design in one of the Country’s most envied and envious iconic cities—the Republic of Miami. For more than a decade, she has enjoyed the juxtaposition of the region’s beauty and dysfunction, and continues to learn from it daily. Educated at the University of Pennsylvania and Brandeis University, her portfolio includes award winning plans which translate design based solutions into practical applications.

In her current practice, Melissa Hege City Planning, she straddles the roles of planner and community advocate by exploring infrastructure investments which add exponential value to cities. These include waterfront parks, bicycle and pedestrian trails, and complete streets—streets which have comfortable and protected zones for bicycles, pedestrians, cars, and transit. She is currently developing a waterfront pop-up installation on Miami’s Biscayne Bay to demonstrate the potential value of a permanently improved and connected waterfront trail in downtown Miami. Other recent projects include an interactive web based tool to visually track all multi-agency infrastructure improvements in downtown Miami and a Complete Streets forum for local municipalities in partnership with Miami Dade County.

Melissa is a board member of the Miami Modern (MIMO) Biscayne Boulevard Association, a 501c3 dedicated to preserving its architectural history and expanding commercial opportunities for this US-1 corridor. She is Past Chair of the Miami Section of the Florida American Planning Association, was Co-chair for the State’s annual conference and served on Miami-Dade County’s Transportation Aesthetic Review Committee. She has been published in the Miami Herald, Florida Planning, Planetizen and Panorama (University of Pennsylvania) and taught as an adjunct professor at Florida Atlantic University. She developed a planning curriculum for middle school students at the Cushman School and is a regular speaker at the Florida American Planning Association’s annual conference.</i>