Making Better Streets

Amalgamated, on transforming streets:

How can an arterial streets be improved? Lancaster, a city of 158,000 provides some lessons. The city recently completed an $11.5 million dollar project to revitalize its main street, Lancaster Boulevard. The main street, like many in North America, was in decline due to competition from commercial centers and strip malls. For years, big box retailers and regional malls had captured nearly all new commercial growth. The City was looking for a strategy to revitalize the main street and settled on a revitalization that emphasized slowing traffic and improving the streetscape.

The resulting street is pretty great. I particularly like the “Ramblas” concept - a flexible part of the street that is typically for parking but can be easily changed to a plaza for street fairs, farmers markets, and other events. As for the economic results?

According to Moule & Polyzoides forty-nine new businesses have opened, property values rose by 10 percent (the rest of the city saw a 1.25 percent decline), and 800 permanent jobs were created. Furthermore, there were significant benefits to public safety. Traffic collision rates were cut in half, while injury-related collisions plummeted 85 percent as a result of the new street design and traffic pattern (based on a comparison of the two years prior to the transformation with the two years following).

Overall, this is a great example of how public investment can make for a more productive, more human environment. We need more of this.