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Conversations about Creating a Culture of Activity: Profiling the people, places, programs, and policies that help to promote a culture of activity within our communities.
Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited
00:00:00:02 - 00:00:02:19
John Simmerman
Victor Dover. Welcome back to the Active Towns podcast.
00:00:02:20 - 00:00:04:10
Victor Dover
Thanks for having me.
00:00:04:12 - 00:00:28:12
John Simmerman
Folks, you can probably notice that we're in a slightly different platform. We had some technical difficulties on what was supposed to be a live streaming episode, but we are recording this. Victor, thank you very much for being flexible in making this happen here today. For those who don't know who you are. Take a moment just to introduce yourself.
00:00:28:13 - 00:00:50:18
Victor Dover
Well, my name is Victor Dover. I'm a town planner and neighborhood designer and a futurist, an optimist. Our firm is Dover Kohl & Partners. We were established in 1987, and well, as town planners, we feel really lucky. We get to travel all around the country and sometimes abroad, helping people figure out what sort of future they want for their community.
00:00:50:19 - 00:01:16:18
Victor Dover
And, and, you know, imagining the possibilities for their future town. And that's, that's kind of what we do. And that puts us in the field working about half the time for local governments and community groups and foundations, NGOs, people like that. Right. And the other half the time we're working for private investors and developers, and people are put one brick on top of another to make something.
00:01:16:20 - 00:01:44:20
Victor Dover
Sometimes families that are doing large scale, you know, estate plans or family stewardship plans for large, long term, large scale landholdings. But a lot of the time, we've been asked to work on revitalization plans for districts. I'll turn the lights back on and historic neighborhoods. And I think that has really taught us two key things. First, the essence of traditional neighborhoods.
00:01:45:00 - 00:02:13:07
Victor Dover
As it turns out, there's there are patterns that are recognizable, measurable, repeatable design patterns that work really well, that human beings used for a long time, basically prior to World War two, especially in America, where we were really, really good at it once and making settlements, they work super well. And so we can use these patterns to restore full functionality to them in places where restoring or bringing back to life.
00:02:13:08 - 00:02:19:18
Victor Dover
And we can use these patterns to bring that functionality and.
00:02:19:20 - 00:02:44:14
Victor Dover
And pleasure to new development. So that's the first thing we learned. And then the second thing we got from Oregon in those places was a realization about how important street design is. Street design turns out to be the one thing we can least afford to get wrong. Right. And the one thing most often gotten wrong. And so I am the tad obsessed about it.
00:02:44:14 - 00:02:50:21
Victor Dover
And my buddy John Mason and I wrote a big fat book about it called Street Design.
00:02:50:23 - 00:03:09:16
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And when you say you wrote a book about it, you wrote a book about it years ago, and now we've come out with the second edition. And you know what? Let's, let's, let's kind of take a quick break and I'm going to run and get the book because I actually have it. It's just in the other room.
00:03:09:16 - 00:03:35:00
John Simmerman
I'll be right back. I always like having it also available in three dimensions because although it's wonderful, you've got the the covers there. They're in two dimensions, as you just noted, as you were holding your copy up of it. It's nice to be able to to show it. And, you know, having the heft of this thing in your hands is, is really, really special.
00:03:35:02 - 00:04:06:22
John Simmerman
And I think you know, this. But, you know, way back when you published the first edition, the one in the image on the left there. And I love that photo there. That is the feature cover photo on the first edition, which is a shot from Amsterdam. I walked around with my hardcover copy of of that book on the streets of New York during one of the polar vortex.
00:04:06:24 - 00:04:22:20
John Simmerman
It was like a blizzard. There was like ten inches of snow on the streets of New York, and I was walking around trying to find some of the streets, the delightful and beautiful streets that you and John had profiled in that book. I don't remember if I ever shared that story with you or not.
00:04:22:22 - 00:04:39:12
Victor Dover
First, I've heard it, but I'm thrilled about it. Well, if you were to do that with the new edition, you need a little Bill Barrow or a handcart or something. I think we should get some tiny little wheelbarrows that are branded with design on it, and then give those out with the book because it's a heavy thing. It is.
00:04:39:13 - 00:04:59:09
Victor Dover
Think of it as heavy reading material, right? Yes. Yeah. But and it is kind of a beast, but I think people will find it even more useful than the first edition. Right. Because we've got a lot of new stuff in there, new case studies, a lot of new information updated, a great deal of it. It's really a new book.
00:04:59:11 - 00:05:05:09
John Simmerman
Yeah, talk about that. I mean, I had this discussion with.
00:05:05:11 - 00:05:33:15
John Simmerman
With Jeff Speck, you know, after he did the ten year anniversary of his and he made the decision to keep Walkable City pretty much intact, and then he just tacked on and added an additional 100 pages and did some reflection and, you know, said, hey, here's some of the here's some new stuff that emerged in that decade. And then here's also some things where I think I didn't quite get it right.
00:05:33:16 - 00:05:52:09
John Simmerman
And he and I talked a little bit about, you know, the the bicycle infrastructure and the role that the bicycle plays within a quote unquote, walkable, livable, desirable, lovable city. You guys decided to go a different direction. You basically rewrote the book.
00:05:52:11 - 00:06:21:09
Victor Dover
Well, we kept some things that we had. We had a beautiful forward for the first edition was written by then Prince Charles, now King Charles the Third is it. And but we have a new forward that was written by Carlos Moreno, the originator of the 15 Minute City. So this edition has them both. And and the first chapter, which we retitled Street Design Matters, is quite a bit changed, but it has much of the material that was there.
00:06:21:11 - 00:06:42:21
Victor Dover
And then after that the book changes quite a bit. The the chapter on historic streets. We added new case studies and we updated the ones that we had based on what we found out. It happened to those streets during the ten years since the first edition came out. So and some of those were the subject of some deep reconsideration.
00:06:42:23 - 00:06:47:17
Victor Dover
I'll point out in a minute, but the.
00:06:47:19 - 00:07:11:00
Victor Dover
Then you go into the rest of the book and it's really quite different. This, this the section on new streets and retrofitted streets, these were combined and we added a lot of new case studies there. And then we added a whole new substantial ending to the book, which has a question mark in the title chapter is called Who's Streets question mark.
00:07:11:02 - 00:07:28:19
Victor Dover
There's an old joke about traffic engineers. It says, we traffic engineers don't mind if you use our streets. We just wish you wouldn't turn on and off of them all the time and create all that congestion, right? And the reason that joke is funny is because we all know deep down it's not their streets, it's the streets belong to all of us.
00:07:28:19 - 00:07:52:12
Victor Dover
I often audiences to name the biggest things they own, and they'll name their house or their refrigerator, or their car, their washing machine or something. And those are all good answers. But I tell them that the real answer is the streets. The biggest thing you're a shareholder in are the streets in your town, right? You own them. And so we took that last chapter to add.
00:07:52:13 - 00:08:11:05
Victor Dover
It's entirely new to add a challenge in the book about how to take back our streets and to highlight some successes that have been achieved in that regard, and also to talk about just what remains to be done. A lot remains to be done, right?
00:08:11:07 - 00:08:13:19
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, we.
00:08:13:23 - 00:08:25:22
Victor Dover
Have done on the cover here. So you can see this painting by James Doherty. The cover was designed by by lead over my daughter who's a graphic designer here in our in our firm.
00:08:25:24 - 00:08:59:21
Victor Dover
Who contributed mightily in many other parts of the book. But the the painting on the cover, this time using a drawing instead of a photograph, was meant to capture a combination of things that we think should be normal in streets, but are not merely normal enough and are hard to photograph all at once in one place, including street oriented architecture and greenness and multimodal ism and inclusiveness, and the idea that the street is a communications device that sends a message, hopefully a message of welcome.
00:09:00:02 - 00:09:06:21
Victor Dover
Right. So there it is. That's that's the that's the zoom in on the painting of the new cover.
00:09:07:00 - 00:09:41:09
John Simmerman
I love it, I love it. And you mentioned something there when referencing the transportation and street engineers that they kind of have a different drum that they've been beating, marching to the beat that they've been marching to. And it's, you know, with the automobile, you know, coming around and really taking over, you know, a good 100 years ago, there was a huge shift.
00:09:41:10 - 00:10:26:10
John Simmerman
I mean, we in, you know, and Peter Norton has, has done a great job as a historian of documenting this shift that took place. And you referenced it multiple times in the book about Motor Dome, sort of, you know, saying, yeah, no, the streets really aren't for people anymore. They're now for cars. And so you see a little bit more of this shift in, you know, you mentioned jokingly that, you know, they're unhappy if if, you know, if you, the people are kind of in the way because then you're creating friction for the thing that they're most you know, I almost said that is most important.
00:10:26:10 - 00:10:36:24
John Simmerman
But the thing that they're striving to achieve is a level of service, a flow free flowing of traffic. So talk a little bit about that. Yeah.
00:10:37:00 - 00:10:43:10
Victor Dover
First, in defense of our friends that the traffic engineers, although the wisecrack does does come from them.
00:10:43:11 - 00:10:44:23
John Simmerman
Yes.
00:10:45:00 - 00:11:11:01
Victor Dover
We also know that there are really a lot of transportation engineers as they like to be called now that are on the wall and are making the world better and are helping undo some of the mistakes of a century of error. Right? And they deserve a lot of credit. In fact, we devote a whole page, page 40, for those who are following along, right, to name a bunch of them, and talk about what they're doing and their work.
00:11:11:02 - 00:11:54:14
Victor Dover
And like the old joke goes. Some of my best friends are traffic engineers. So we we, you know, don't want to paint with two broad brush here. There are a lot of people in the transportation engineering profession and feel their hands are tied because while they're responding to the system, to a culturally ingrained, indoctrinated system that drives constituents and citizens, motorists, the motoring public, as they're sometimes called, drives elected officials to stay after the agencies all the time, saying, when are you going to do something about all this traffic congestion?
00:11:54:14 - 00:12:24:02
Victor Dover
And despite the fact they've known for the better part of 70 years that widening roads does not actually solve congestion problems, right? There's still often a drum beat that they're responding to that says that that should be their main objective. And engineering is a profession with a racist and science and an ethic that says state the problem carefully and then go use technology to address the problem.
00:12:24:02 - 00:12:50:02
Victor Dover
And it's the only problem you give the professionals is how do we get more people moving in cars, usually driving alone at peak hour with every passing year? How can we do something about the plight of the person who's chosen to drive long distances alone, right? Who finds themselves stuck in traffic at peak hour? And if that's the way you state the problem, what are they going to come up with?
00:12:50:03 - 00:13:14:16
Victor Dover
They're going to come up with, let's just add more asphalt. Let's keep trying to trim the number of times somebody turns on a side street or slows down for an intersection. Right. And that philosophy might be okay for the Interstate Highway system or living trucks and freight. People are living from region to region. It's really inappropriate for the design of Liverpool towns.
00:13:14:18 - 00:13:48:24
Victor Dover
And of course, not only does it result in places that are ugly and undesirable, but it also produces places that are unhealthy and downright unsafe. So all of that, you know, you have to reframe the question. So we should say we should ask our engineers better questions like, how can we make this a place that is supporting of our local economy and our and public health and helps address some urgent public problems like the rise of childhood obesity and early onset diabetes and hypertension.
00:13:49:01 - 00:13:55:00
Victor Dover
I mean, they thought of these facilities as something like public spaces,
00:13:55:01 - 00:13:55:14
John Simmerman
Right.
00:13:55:19 - 00:14:07:02
Victor Dover
Instead of as conveyance devices. Then my guess is their technology can can be applied to building as places we can really love.
00:14:07:03 - 00:14:57:04
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And I'll refer people to my conversations that I've had with Wes Marshall, author of the book killed by a Traffic Engineer. And he points out the fact in his book, which is just brilliantly written, using I and we all the time in the book, because he is an engineer and he's training freshly minted new engineers, and he talks about how, you know, it's the biggest problem is the education of said engineers and the manuals that engineers point to, and the fact that through his research, he was able to ascertain that, in fact, there's not a lot of science and, you know, empirical evidence behind the manuals that the engineers will oftentimes point to
00:14:57:05 - 00:15:06:00
John Simmerman
and say, sorry, Victor. Sorry, John, we can't have all these wonderful trees along the road. That needs to be clear zone, right? Yeah.
00:15:06:01 - 00:15:29:01
Victor Dover
Or the computer made me do it. The computer numbers in of some hypothetical future population at maximum build out and a design year off into the future with an A growth rate for the amount of traffic congestion and driving. Yeah. Vehicle miles traveled. And the answer came back from the computer that you're going to have a decreased level of service if you don't do something right.
00:15:29:02 - 00:15:50:07
Victor Dover
And of course, they end up doing the thing that makes those into self-fulfilling prophecies, right? Using computer models that are were designed by asphalt monitors for asphalt monitors. Right. So it's no surprise. So we have to kind of I think we have to give this. I'm not giving the engineers a free pass here. I'm saying I think West is absolutely right.
00:15:50:08 - 00:16:24:14
Victor Dover
But I think with the rest of us, including our elected officials, need to give those traffic engineers a better problem to solve, more well-defined problem to solve. Now, it's worth pointing out that the most notorious or famous, maybe the most influential of the many manuals is the the actual Green Book. Right? Right. Well, it says right in the front of that book that your first task should be to determine the functions that this street is meant to perform.
00:16:24:17 - 00:16:47:11
Victor Dover
Right. And then design your design solution to that. It's essentially a broad statement giving the engineers permission to dial up or dial down the level of priority they put on safety versus flow, for example. And so, you know, sometimes what we have to do is study their manuals so we can show them the page that they forgot was in there.
00:16:47:12 - 00:16:53:14
Victor Dover
Right. But you know, that is all about expanding the menu, which we'll talk about.
00:16:53:16 - 00:17:12:24
John Simmerman
Yeah. And also in front of those manuals is, you know, a statement to the effect of use your engineering judgment. That's correct. Don't just follow these these quote unquote manuals or guidebooks, you know, blindly, I mean, you have a great deal of education. Use it. So yeah.
00:17:13:00 - 00:17:35:10
Victor Dover
There was a problem. This is a new picture that appears in the in the new edition, but wasn't the first one in which the traditional way of using the streets was everybody is using all the space, all the time, in many different ways, generally slow moving people on foot, people on two wheels, or people with or strong parts and so on.
00:17:35:12 - 00:18:08:05
Victor Dover
So the differential in their speed and, and and all was not as great between say a trolley car trouble in along and the horse drawn cart that we've introduced the motor vehicle in that you put a bunch of Model T's into that scene. Within 20 years of this picture, you start running into conflicts. And because the cars got faster and safer, more reliable and more plentiful, more affordable, and so they began to multiply in those street spaces.
00:18:08:06 - 00:18:46:16
Victor Dover
And I think it's kind of understandable that people at some point said, maybe we need to set things up so that the, the not every space, not every square foot in every space is shared space. And but, you know, they took that finding and went to an extreme where they pushed all the pedestrians all the way out to the edge of the space, began remaking the physical environment so that it looks like a motor motorized environment and not not a place for people anymore.
00:18:46:17 - 00:19:08:05
Victor Dover
Adding all sorts of stripes and markings and signs and signals and things, of course, are sensibly there for safety. But essentially, if you think of the the street as a communication device, now it's sending a message, this is not for you unless you're driving, if you're walking or biking, you're probably doing it wrong. And yet we find and use this example from Paris.
00:19:08:06 - 00:19:41:10
Victor Dover
This is Tony Cece's photo that a lot of world civilizations are dialing this back. They're taking backspace, and they're re inventing that system of markings and and all the physical design stuff within the curves to make the point that this is a place where if you are on two feet, you're also welcome. If you're using transit, you're also welcome.
00:19:41:12 - 00:20:10:15
Victor Dover
And you might be on two wheels, but your two wheels are side by side instead of one behind the other. So that that transformation, which is, you know, profound. In Paris, when we we we wrote about the streets in Paris in the first edition and some of the grand boulevards, which, like the here, were just exhausting in terms of the extent to which they had been taken over by loud, smelly, fast moving and overly plentiful cars.
00:20:10:16 - 00:20:40:02
Victor Dover
And Paris has been rolling that back, taking back a bunch of the space on this very street for for bikes, for. So the whole environment of the city has changed into one that's less noisy and and what happened? You know, people shifted their way, moving around in huge numbers, that growth in walking, biking and transit in these European capitals that are making that kind of transformation has been great to see.
00:20:40:07 - 00:21:00:14
Victor Dover
And it's not only on big important, you know, sort of super scenic streets in the tourist parts of these capitals. It's also on, on everyday streets. Here's what they call in London now, lightness or low traffic neighborhoods. I think for a while they might have called the experiment Mini Hollands, but then they started saying, well, no, we don't want to call it Dutch.
00:21:00:15 - 00:21:19:14
Victor Dover
So the mini Holland word is sort of fallen out of the British vocabulary. But lightness, low traffic, neighborhoods are filtered so that a lot of the space is space where your car, if it's there, is a guest. Yeah. Pretty pretty difference.
00:21:19:15 - 00:21:19:23
John Simmerman
Yeah.
00:21:20:03 - 00:21:46:04
Victor Dover
The motivations for writing the book began to realize how stark the difference was in the progress that's being made in those places, including London and Paris, compared to the progress making in the United States in 2010 2012. We're writing the first book in 2014. We thought we were kind of on an on a parallel tracks. You know, the United States was was improving our safety record.
00:21:46:04 - 00:22:26:03
Victor Dover
We were. And then cities like New York were undertaking phenomenal revolutionary experiments, really with taking back streets and our our progress in the US, even with the sort of bumper sticker success of the Complete Streets movement has stalled somewhat compared to them. And so in my Miami, which is a portion of the last chapter on those streets, I wrote about this and said, you know, we finally managed to get a few miles of protected bike lane in a couple of very remote places in Miami-Dade.
00:22:26:04 - 00:22:31:09
Victor Dover
But does it does it really look like a place where.
00:22:31:11 - 00:22:46:01
Victor Dover
A natural habitat for someone on a bike, or does it look like a car space that where some grudging accommodation has been made? And we, we, we kind of tackle that pretty head on in the book.
00:22:46:02 - 00:23:09:20
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. When I see the application of a Complete Streets solution to a strode such as this without doing an actual true transformation of what that space could be.
00:23:09:22 - 00:23:39:07
John Simmerman
It it comes to mind. The phrase that comes to mind is one that Chuck Marone used years ago about the Complete Streets movement. It's like, if you just do that, that little bit of real estate, but that little bit of real estate, that little bit of sanctuary for a person, walking or biking is next to a high speed traffic, and you're being pummeled by noise and exhaust and still 50 mile per hour vehicles, 40 mile per hour of vehicles, 35 mile per hour vehicles.
00:23:39:08 - 00:23:48:11
John Simmerman
Yeah. That image there, the phrase he used was this is a complete disaster, you know, and I and I used that frame last.
00:23:48:11 - 00:23:49:22
Victor Dover
Week I'm going to hit that.
00:23:50:02 - 00:24:18:19
John Simmerman
And I used that framing last week with, with Beth Osborne when she was talking about how they're going to shift, looking at the Complete Streets movement and really starting to get down to it's not just the policies that you put in place, but also the results that are on the ground and whether they truly are an all ages and all abilities, network or facility that contributes to a network.
00:24:18:19 - 00:24:25:17
John Simmerman
And we'll talk about the difference between streets and networks of streets and how powerful that is.
00:24:25:19 - 00:24:59:04
Victor Dover
Well, I want to mention something about that. I listen to great interest to your interview with With Beth, which was great, by the way, and just I, I adore her. She was terrific. Absolutely, really great. And I thought it was interesting that she was talking about reframing the Complete Streets terminology. And it's it's it's time. That's good. You know, we have a line which we repeat a couple of places in the book that says, if it's not yet a beautiful street, it's not a complete street.
00:24:59:04 - 00:25:23:16
Victor Dover
Thank you. If we want to make active talents, don't got to make it. Can't be perfunctory accommodation for walking and biking, for example. I mean, how many times have you seen a sidewalk immediately back of the curb on a whizzing high speed street where supposedly you could walk? But if you did, you'd probably be hot and sunburned and bored and maybe a little scared.
00:25:23:16 - 00:25:45:13
Victor Dover
And and you certainly wouldn't be having any fun. It wouldn't be like a magnetic environment for you, right? Right. And it doesn't take much, you know, get the street trees right, get the sidewalk in the right position, get the build industry relationships. A few things are required, but we can actually transcend the transportation function, make a place where people want to be.
00:25:45:14 - 00:26:14:04
Victor Dover
And that's what we do. They'll want to be there walking, biking and using transit. So the active culture of activity is a lot easier to grow in a place where it feels natural to do those things, instead of just one. Where it happens to have some accommodation in this example is perfect example of what what Chuck Marone was describing because I measured the lanes here, they're actually wider than the travel lanes, that is.
00:26:14:05 - 00:26:39:20
Victor Dover
Yeah. For the cars. They're wider than the lanes on the nearby interchange of the Florida's Turnpike. Yeah. Because some old manual when that that strode was first installed had them not include the strike, not include the gutter, not measure to the face of the curb and make the lane extra wide. Plus, you know, it was classified on that limited menu as an arterial.
00:26:39:20 - 00:27:07:01
Victor Dover
And therefore it's a high speed place because all that extra asphalt business invitation to driving too fast. So there are there are wins among the losses. I try to point that out pretty vividly in the book. I'm, you know, Ocean Drive and Miami Beach is one of the most famous streets in the world, has been just since Covid closed to traffic, open to traffic, open to bikes, close to bikes.
00:27:07:06 - 00:27:25:15
Victor Dover
Bike facility installed, removed, reinstalled. So they're obviously conducting the ongoing experiment to figure out what this place should be like. And that wasn't happening, you know, in 2000, let's say, or even 2005, in South Florida. So we're making some progress.
00:27:25:18 - 00:27:54:08
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, it seems to me I recall in the book the new version, like a transformation. I think maybe John wrote about it. Was it in Queens where it was basically the current condition is like this, this massive strode, overbuilt. And then the revisioning of it is, let's bring in some street trees, let's bring in this. Let's totally I can't remember if that was in the parkway section or the boulevard section.
00:27:54:12 - 00:28:19:09
Victor Dover
You're thinking about Queens Boulevard. It's in the new and retrofitted street section. And it's all and more information about the the the bigger initiative is in the final chapter under John's essay called My Manhattan. Yeah, yeah. And we put my Manhattan and my Miami back to back so that people could kind of relate to both both our experiences.
00:28:19:10 - 00:28:50:10
Victor Dover
Right. And I guess you have to get all the way to the back of the book and read that part to get to really understand where we're coming from. But in that example, Queens Boulevard, no time honored, street type. But even Alan Jacobs in his Boulevard book and in his famous book Great Streets, criticized Queens Boulevard. He compared it to other, more successful and wonderful boulevards, like the ones in Paris or even in New York, Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn.
00:28:50:12 - 00:29:14:18
Victor Dover
And he pointed out that I had those. It's a multi way boulevard, side access lanes, but they were very speedy. And you can't have high speed on the side access lanes and expect it to work and and other design errors. So in the end, correcting that has become an important project for New York City.
00:29:14:20 - 00:29:37:07
John Simmerman
Yeah. One of the things that I've also been critical of is the Vision Zero movement, in the sense that if a city like they will do and they have done with Complete Streets, they pass this resolution and say, we're going to apply complete streets, so be it. You know, so let it be written. So let it be done.
00:29:37:07 - 00:30:00:14
John Simmerman
And then it's written, but it doesn't actually get done. It actually isn't truly there. Same thing with Vision Zero. So let it be written. So let it be done. We're going to do Vision Zero. But to your point, there's no real commitment to actually bring motor vehicle speeds down. And that's where I that's where I'm like okay that's great I love your enthusiasm.
00:30:00:14 - 00:30:28:15
John Simmerman
You're right. No deaths, no serious injuries out on our streets are acceptable. Do you really know what that means? Do you realize what you're saying is that you need to be able to bring motor vehicle speeds down, especially on the streets where you have richness and lots of of interactions and lots, lots of, of friction points with these soft humans.
00:30:28:17 - 00:30:29:20
John Simmerman
Squishy people.
00:30:29:22 - 00:30:57:22
Victor Dover
For the first step is that minute you have a problem? Yes, exactly. The Vision Zero pronouncements and resolutions. The adoption of a Vision Zero goal is a little bit like going to a first AA meeting or something, where you admit that there is a problem. And so some communities have followed up their Vision Zero pronouncements with Vision Zero action plans, and done something like in Hoboken and in Jersey city, they're making they're making tremendous progress.
00:30:57:24 - 00:31:22:09
Victor Dover
And that's because they got serious about actually implementing stuff in the real world with physical design changes. Not all of them beautiful, some of them temporary or, you know, pilot demonstration kinds of projects to be replaced with more beautiful, more permanent solutions after their tested and refined. Right. But they did took an action vision zero in in its orthodox sense.
00:31:22:09 - 00:31:55:23
Victor Dover
And it's really being applied should come with a commitment to implement some change in the built environment immediately after another injury or fatality has occurred in the traffic. Whether it's adding a mirror, adding an A marking, you know, changing a one corner of the intersection because it's all he had the money for that month. But some really within 30 days of of incapacitating crash, we have a collision that results in a fatality.
00:31:56:00 - 00:32:20:11
Victor Dover
Cities that are truly committed to Vision Zero should do something. It might even just traffic enforcement in that intersection while they figure out the engineering and construction of something more physical. But but instead, what happened is a lot of local governments were attracted. Division zero is a kind of going through the motions right where they could announce, okay, we have Vision Zero now.
00:32:20:11 - 00:32:52:12
Victor Dover
That's good. We did something and they didn't really do something right. So we I think we should really study those examples from new Jersey and the examples from Europe that took Vision Zero seriously and actually got the deaths in traffic to go down. Now in Florida, we were first place for a long time. And those dangerous by design reports and the Sunshine State has been notoriously effective champions at killing pedestrians, for example.
00:32:52:13 - 00:33:17:22
Victor Dover
And so that's a sad statistic. You know, there's some things you don't want to be number one n and the latest ones we slid down in the rankings in the in the one before last it was 14th. I'm not sure what it is in this latest one that just came out a few weeks ago. But the but that really only happened not because we got so much better at safety in Florida, but because New Mexico and some other states got so much worse.
00:33:17:24 - 00:33:41:15
Victor Dover
Yeah, I mean, it's a real number. And the, you know, our, our fatalities have not been decreasing. And we still have 4 or 5 of the metro areas that are right in the top of the list of metro areas that managed to kill a lot of pedestrians. It's unacceptable. We never we would never accept that safety record from any other industry.
00:33:41:16 - 00:34:13:21
Victor Dover
Right now. The diagram that I have on here on the screen with you right now is interesting because that transect drawing, you know, transect drawings are familiar to the followers of the New Urbanism, the urban to rural range or spectrum with design solutions that belong in each. The idea that's the Florida Department of Transportation context classification system. So they got, you know, a little bit of a call to arms from being on those notorious lists.
00:34:13:21 - 00:34:17:06
Victor Dover
And.
00:34:17:08 - 00:34:38:12
Victor Dover
A decade and decade a half ago, they started saying, we've got to do something about it, and I will give our state credit. It's going to take a long time to really see this, the effects of this on the ground. But they undertook a multi-year difficult.
00:34:38:14 - 00:35:03:22
Victor Dover
Emotionally charged and intellectually charged rewrite of the manuals. And around this idea that context matters, that you shouldn't be using the interstate highway designs on your ordinary surface streets and your neighborhood, for example. Right. And so now that basically means, is that the at least on Florida Dot streets, they have the ability to say yes to things. They used to have to say no to write.
00:35:03:24 - 00:35:30:19
Victor Dover
Every mayor is accustomed to the speech from the transport where they say, I'm sorry, Madam Mayor, you can't have street trees. We can't have on street parking. We can have wide sidewalks, can have protected bike lanes. We don't have room for all of that because the manual says, I've got to use that room for all these other things, or I've got the level of service analysis says I can't spare any space I would otherwise use for motoring for any of those other things.
00:35:30:19 - 00:36:13:12
Victor Dover
So sorry you can't have those nice things. Yeah, well, now with context classification in the upper ranges of the context or transect sounds, the urban ones that are the places that are meant to be walkable and bike and transported, interconnected and all in all the senses of the word in those places, they now have permission to say yes to things like narrower lanes and slower design speeds, or target speeds and tighter intersections and crosswalks and on street parking and just things that that old excuse was, I can't do it.
00:36:13:12 - 00:36:39:05
Victor Dover
The manual makes me say no. Now, it doesn't mean I should point out. It doesn't mean they will say yes. Right? It doesn't mean they will. They still have to make your case. And the local governments and community groups, the developers are still having to like, you know, fight for it. But they at least now the engineers in those Dot districts have the ability to say yes, not that they always will.
00:36:39:10 - 00:37:35:08
John Simmerman
Right. And in a state like Florida, just like in Texas, where I used to live, there's a tension between street design and perceptions of what a street is for. And given that context that you just shared, go ahead and put the transect back up there from Florida just because it, I think, is illustrative of a little bit of attention that has here is that if if we follow this book here, and we take a look at what it means to actually create great cities and towns, there's now a conflict because it has been politicized at the highest levels of some of these, you know, conservative state governments of saying, no, you shall not remove any
00:37:35:08 - 00:38:05:10
John Simmerman
parking, you shall not remove any traffic travel lanes. And so it's encouraging to hear that the, you know, the state dot the Florida dot has given, you know, they've realized we need to address the fact that we're being very, very efficient at killing people. We need to address this. But at the same time, part of the challenge, I'm sure, within that environment is a culture of a politicization of this and making this a culture war issue.
00:38:05:12 - 00:38:22:06
John Simmerman
I don't want to linger on that too long, but just since you brought it up with this, the Florida dot transect here with the street types typology, let's at least address it. And then let's get on to more, you know, positive things like what's in the book. It's highlighting.
00:38:22:08 - 00:38:48:13
Victor Dover
Yeah. You and I have been running dogs long enough to know I know you already know this, but history is this is this process of swinging back and forth between overreactions and over corrections. Yeah. And right now we're in one of these. The national mood is, I suppose, part of this. And the Sun Belt in particular, we have a little bit of a bike latch and backlash.
00:38:48:15 - 00:39:25:15
Victor Dover
And we took a couple of steps forward, and now we're taking one step back. But it doesn't erase all the progress. And so you have to kind of every once in a while, just take a breath and say it gets better and then make your case, which is what we attempted to do in the book. You know, we we, we there's one page where we started chapter with a quote about what cities are for and what the human habitat should be trying to achieve, and regenerative environments and so on.
00:39:25:16 - 00:39:49:06
Victor Dover
Written by a famous leftist. And right underneath it is a quote from Margaret Thatcher. Right, the Iron Lady of the right. And the point of it is this is really not a right or left thing, but it definitely is a overreacted versus overcorrected mood swing kind of thing. And we I think we just have to accept that that is going on.
00:39:49:07 - 00:40:22:19
Victor Dover
And every culture and in the history of world civilizations that has accomplished something, has done it in spite of a lot of stuff that was going on. You know, the, the, the cultural achievements in Florence under the Medicis. Well, you know, that was a violent and dangerous time full of. Corruption and.
00:40:22:21 - 00:40:48:12
Victor Dover
And there wasn't a good old days. Right? They also managed to achieve some phenomenal, dazzling cultural achievements. And so I continue to think that despite the backdrop of backlash in governors mansions and legislatures, that especially at the local level, progress will still be made. Yeah. So I remain optimistic despite what you said.
00:40:48:14 - 00:41:15:01
John Simmerman
Yeah. No, no, I do too. And I think the reason I bring it up to is, is to just also point out some of the silliness of it being a cultural war issue, because really, this image exemplifies what we're talking about. I mean, it doesn't matter. You know, where you are on the political spectrum. You should be looking at streets, as you know, places that are safe and inviting for all ages and abilities.
00:41:15:01 - 00:41:18:19
John Simmerman
And and that's what we're talking about here is.
00:41:18:20 - 00:41:41:04
Victor Dover
These little girls were actually sailing paper boats. They had folded up down the puddle in the gutter that showed up there, that data to photograph that street of Chicago. Yeah, yeah. If you go back to that idea of what's the real function was the real purpose of doing this, it's to nurture human flourishing. That's really what we should be trying to do, right?
00:41:41:05 - 00:42:01:15
Victor Dover
And some of that has to do with being able to move around, you know, to get to get in your car, get on your bike, or get on your feet and go to a place, you know, that's perfectly legit, part of of human flourishing. But there are other things we need, like the ability to come to know one another, even if we might be different in public space.
00:42:01:15 - 00:42:24:04
Victor Dover
That's a need and the need to get reassurance. If you if you go to a story places, they're all around you. These symbols like in Charleston, that church at the end of the the this church street right is a symbol that some things remain the same from generation to generation, are still with us and still send messages. And I think that's that's a pretty powerful thing.
00:42:24:05 - 00:42:50:22
Victor Dover
And, you know, variety menu is a big word. We use the word menu. So many times in the book we complain that the menu is too small. If only if you believe that only wider and faster roads or better roads, you're just going to end up with nothing but wide fast roads and not the other kinds of streets that are so important, like skinny, skinny streets that shouldn't be part of the menu.
00:42:50:24 - 00:43:17:22
Victor Dover
This could be pedestrian dominated streets or shared space. What about the ones where the main job of the street is to be a great address, right? And then a secondary job is to be a place where you can get in and out of your your rideshare car or pull up in your in your own private vehicle. And so I think getting that menu back is a big part of what we try to do.
00:43:17:22 - 00:43:46:03
Victor Dover
So in some ways we throw that in the new book. This stuff that's in the new book with examples that we didn't have in the first place, you know, newly transformed streets or streets that didn't change many times. And to try and make the case that no matter where you are, there's an example of this probably going on around you or has gone on around you and your in the, in previous generations, and you can take some encouragement from that or something.
00:43:46:09 - 00:44:17:01
Victor Dover
Yeah. I mentioned that we've reconsidered some case studies. Monument Avenue in Richmond is one of them. If you flip to the pages on Monument Avenue. In either addition, there are beautiful pictures of what a beautiful street, a postcard worthy street. Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, is big Broad Avenue with tree lined median, a median generous and wide enough that it feels almost like a linear park, and then monuments that are spectacular examples of civic art.
00:44:17:04 - 00:44:39:14
Victor Dover
And yet somehow in the first edition, and I think the blame for this, I wrote that case study, and I spent a lot of my life in Richmond. I know you know that street really well. Somehow in the first edition, we didn't talk about the other side of that street, which is that those monuments were monuments to atrocity.
00:44:39:14 - 00:45:19:13
Victor Dover
They were they were communications devices. They're selling a message about the lost cause of the Confederacy, those statues and the soldiers on top of them. Well, those soldiers were Confederate leaders that were positioned on the streets so that their backs were toward Washington. You know? And so for many people, including African-Americans, you know, who you know, who have family includes folks who were enslaved in the service of the Confederacy and the world of the antebellum world, not even having just, like, slap in the face.
00:45:19:13 - 00:45:50:02
Victor Dover
And I didn't write about that, and I felt like that was wrong. And then so after the George Floyd murder and the Black Lives Matter movement and we got, you know, all those big yellow stencils were murals on to on the streets, again, using streets as communications devices and streets all over America. And in fact, around the world became the places of protest again, communicating about what was important to a culture right, communicating the need for change.
00:45:50:04 - 00:45:59:17
Victor Dover
I thought we should rewrite that case study. And so now it's it's much more upfront about the.
00:45:59:19 - 00:46:26:15
Victor Dover
The the mean and sad side of the violent side of that street as it was historically constructed. We told the story about how not all voices in our country were supportive and admiring of it. When it was done, it was they were called out on it, mostly by northern newspapers at the time that the Monument Avenue was constructed.
00:46:26:15 - 00:46:52:05
Victor Dover
And then we end with the story of how the Robert E Lee statue was removed after the the Black Lives Matter protests. And I guess the story here I'm trying to explain is that these streets, these communications devices are where history is actually unfolding and where we learn to, to to think better about things. And so I hope that the rewrite of the case study on Monument Avenue does that idea justice.
00:46:52:06 - 00:46:53:11
Victor Dover
Yeah. So there are some.
00:46:53:16 - 00:47:12:01
John Simmerman
Delightful to see that in there. I was I was surprised and delighted to to see that addition in there. And I'm like, I didn't even think about it, you know, the first time through with the first edition. But when I saw the revision of it and saw what you included, I'm like, of course you needed to talk about that.
00:47:12:05 - 00:47:32:09
Victor Dover
Perfect. We tried to also increase the number of examples in South America and the Pacific Rim. And there's there was there were some examples from the Middle East in the first edition, but we've added Tel Aviv, which has a very interesting street design history. It was which was written for the book by Johann Rafi, who's a professor in Lviv.
00:47:32:11 - 00:48:01:08
Victor Dover
And so it's interesting, you can actually see a menu in this map. You can see the through streets, which are relatively straight and connected, mostly running up and down on the map, north south, a few of them running east and west across. And then you can see all the other streets that go shorter distances and t junctions and, and or more elaborate geometry and patriotes.
00:48:01:08 - 00:48:26:20
Victor Dover
Who was the the designer of Tel Aviv got all started. This whole thing started and he and his time said, we need a bigger menu, not just the wide and fast through going streets that serve this regional function, but also the local streets that are meant to be like addresses. So that's something new in the book. And I show you.
00:48:26:22 - 00:48:28:01
John Simmerman
Yeah.
00:48:28:03 - 00:48:28:18
Victor Dover
We've added.
00:48:28:19 - 00:48:38:09
John Simmerman
Yeah. Go. Your favorite thing. I was just going to say this was one of my favorite sections was the the streets to dream on and to lose. Yeah.
00:48:38:11 - 00:49:00:21
Victor Dover
I will say Nicholas Boy Smith from Create Streets, who's a hero of ours and such an incredible follow on social media. If you're not following Create Streets, you should be, he wrote that case study about to lose and show up on the lists of the streets of the cities where revolutionary street redesigns are occurring. And yet they're amazing.
00:49:00:23 - 00:49:28:12
Victor Dover
They're really, really good. And he describes that in some detail. Yeah. My favorite new addition to the book is this thing I called the Catalog of Essential Street Types. While John was bearing down on some John Mason Gale, on some serious scholarly research to do things like write the detailed design history of Riverside Drive in New York, another great addition to the book, Robin Crowder in our office.
00:49:28:13 - 00:49:55:02
Victor Dover
And I were both obsessing over this thing. And what we did is we, with John's help, we boiled the examples down that we had studied and that we were uncomfortable with into ten categories the ten essential street types. And then we created illustrations, the pretty detailed illustrations that are labeled for something like 28 variations on those ten types.
00:49:55:03 - 00:50:23:01
Victor Dover
And it starts off with the widest, which of course also the rarest, grandest streets. And then it moves its way down into the smaller and more ordinary streets. And I'll just show you some pages for that. The catalog is a subversive tool. Okay. It was written for this purpose so that somebody who was being told, no one size fits all, you have to either be this thing or that thing.
00:50:23:03 - 00:50:48:01
Victor Dover
They could show up at their meeting with the public works director, or the Dot, or the mayor, or what have you, and say, how come we can't have a street like this in our town? And so it starts with wide streets, which are somewhat exceptional. Those multi-way, multi-lane boulevards like Eastern Parkway in New York I spoke about.
00:50:48:03 - 00:51:14:16
Victor Dover
The to create the illustrations that are in the book on these paired pages. We I shouldn't say, I should say Robin Crowder, the amazing designer here in our office, built elaborate 3D computer models. And we sat there and we worked on all details of them to to get that one still picture. But once we had the model was possible to make animations.
00:51:14:16 - 00:51:28:16
Victor Dover
So we created a series of animation video clips that fly around or through or down into the intersections and show the street with its street trees, and then take them off and put them back on again, that kind of thing.
00:51:28:20 - 00:51:29:21
John Simmerman
Brilliant.
00:51:29:23 - 00:52:04:17
Victor Dover
And so my daughter Lee, who's a filmmaker and graphic designer, took the computer models and made animated video sequences, which we then put on the website. So if you're in the book, for example, you can click on the link, or if you just go to Street Design, that's the website URL. You can find these these animations and they show the street in from various views and in various levels of detail, usually from a high angle, like we show it in the still pictures in the print catalog first, and then they zoom in.
00:52:04:18 - 00:52:27:17
Victor Dover
Since you can see things that are not visible as readily in the book. So that I hope that that people will find that to be a useful tool. Show the promenade streets like the Rambla Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, and then we get to the more normal streets, the ordinary streets that occur thousands and thousands of times like main streets.
00:52:27:19 - 00:52:28:05
John Simmerman
Right?
00:52:28:06 - 00:52:36:21
Victor Dover
For example, this model is very much based on our design for Clematis Street in West Palm Beach, which you and I talked about on the podcast before.
00:52:36:22 - 00:52:38:07
John Simmerman
Yes, yes.
00:52:38:09 - 00:53:04:01
Victor Dover
And so, you know, I'm hopeful that people will find this as a way of using the website as a digital extension of what in the book or book and, and then study them and, you know, let me know if they think the models might be useful. I think we can also make them into freeware so other people would use on so, you know, subversive tool.
00:53:04:01 - 00:53:26:23
Victor Dover
We introduced street types that have fallen out of favor and have fallen. It used to be normal. And we're part of the great menu in those historic neighborhoods. And now you have a hard time getting permission for in new neighborhoods. And so one of those, the yield street, where basically the two way traffic, but the cars have to slow down, let somebody else go by.
00:53:26:24 - 00:53:28:12
John Simmerman
Yeah. Brilliant. Brilliant.
00:53:28:13 - 00:53:36:14
Victor Dover
Yeah. Wave and say hello there, neighbor. And then go on their way, which is inherently safe and slow way to operate within neighborhoods.
00:53:36:18 - 00:53:37:20
John Simmerman
Yeah.
00:53:37:22 - 00:53:40:15
Victor Dover
You have you seen these animations? I don't know if you.
00:53:40:17 - 00:54:01:21
John Simmerman
Look at it. I haven't had a chance to look at these. These are absolutely brilliant. And I love what this does. And I really encourage people to pop on over to the website, take a look at some of these animations yourself and what I love about this too. And by the way, we're down to the last seven minutes of our recording session here, so it may actually kick us out.
00:54:01:23 - 00:54:22:19
John Simmerman
Yes, we're on a different platform folks, so we're not sure if it's going to kick us out or if we can continue. One of the things I wanted to mention is that I was honored to see my name mentioned in the book, because a new section of the book talks about creating, you know, streets that help reinforce and create a culture of activity.
00:54:22:24 - 00:54:44:21
John Simmerman
And I want you to talk just a little bit in the last few minutes about Lake Wales and what you all are trying to do in that area, and kind of blend in a little bit of what I talk about in that section to about the networks. And this is a great example here of a straight there in the Netherlands.
00:54:44:21 - 00:55:09:04
John Simmerman
And one of my frequently used quotes here on the channel is talking about the the Dutch network of Cycle Network, and how a good 60 to 70% in any given city in the Netherlands is some form of shared space like this. These are slow street environments, bicycles, priority streets, bicycle boulevards in the United States, things, things of this nature.
00:55:09:04 - 00:55:18:24
John Simmerman
And again, the tagline of auto to gas. The auto is the guest in this environment. Thank you so much for including me in this. That was a great surprise.
00:55:19:01 - 00:55:51:22
Victor Dover
Well, you've been a huge influence on us, and thank you for the constant stream of new information and messages and examples from your travels. The I think, John, but John and I and others in our office have become part of followers of the, you know, the Active Towns tour that you continually have examples from. And I didn't know about it until I learned about it from Gabe Klein and from you.
00:55:51:24 - 00:56:26:08
Victor Dover
You know, this is it's been incredibly important to us. So, you know, planning my thing and and health your thing thing you started with was, was, was public health in a way. And exercise. They used to be two parts of the same thing. The modern planning profession started with parks and public health and sanitation and, you know, driving the healthful city as a reaction to toxic industrial, 19th century cities.
00:56:26:10 - 00:56:51:08
Victor Dover
But planning and urban design and transportation and public health and parks all got divorced into their own silos. And so I think part of the mission for active Townsend, for Dover goal and for street design lovers should be to bring these things back together again. And that's that is what we've tried to do with the work in Lake Wales, which is a historic town where the Olmsted Brothers.
00:56:51:10 - 00:57:18:24
Victor Dover
Frederick Law Olmsted, landscape architect, is son Homestead Junior, and their company did work in the 1920s and 30s. And we've been doing work recently. The the idea is to try and bring back the healthful town, and that has a lot to do with what goes on in between buildings, the ways we can move around, whether we're encouraged to be there or not.
00:57:19:01 - 00:57:30:21
Victor Dover
And remember, Fridolin, picky species that we have. If a place is unpleasant to us or turns us off, we will recoil from it and avoid it. Right?
00:57:30:23 - 00:57:59:11
John Simmerman
And that's one of the quotes that you include from me, is, is acknowledging the fact that if the environment, if the streetscape, if the pathways, if the parks are a truly inviting and beautiful experience that reinforces our ability to have a positive habit, because if we go out there and it feels like we're doing battle in, our life is at risk, that's not a positive, reinforcing experience that helps habit formation.
00:57:59:11 - 00:58:23:08
John Simmerman
And so what I love about your section on Lake Wales, too, was the story about how and this was a great section of a great animation of it is how they're planting some of those natural trees and indigenous trees and really trying to say that, you know, that's part of what is making this a beautiful, welcoming environment is that little bit of nature.
00:58:23:10 - 00:58:27:17
John Simmerman
You feel like you're just being hugged by a tree canopy.
00:58:27:19 - 00:58:40:03
Victor Dover
Henry Arnold, who wrote a book called Trees and Urban Design, also very big influence on us, used to say that 50% of urban design is street trees.
00:58:40:04 - 00:58:40:16
John Simmerman
Right.
00:58:40:18 - 00:59:11:00
Victor Dover
And I think he was right. You know, all of the beautiful streetcar suburbs and, and most every temperate climate environment is, is a place where street trees that make a big difference. And so one of your prescriptions should be plant some street trees. You can't do anything else this year. Planet street trees. And then next year plan some more street trees because inevitably that will be the gateway drug to an active town.
00:59:11:01 - 00:59:33:12
Victor Dover
Yeah. And there are other things like the architecture. The build is building the street relationships, and there are places where there's not much water. So we need to use the architecture instead of the trees to provide shade. You got to recognize the context that you're in. But in general, we should be starting with the lovable, beloved parts of the street first.
00:59:33:17 - 00:59:45:18
Victor Dover
You know that feeling you get when you say hello to your neighbor on their front porch when you go by on the sidewalk, which is, as Joanna Lombard points out, really good for our brains. Yeah, really, really important for longevity.
00:59:45:19 - 00:59:46:24
John Simmerman
And which I.
00:59:46:24 - 00:59:47:23
Victor Dover
Believe was.
00:59:47:23 - 01:00:13:20
John Simmerman
The topic of our last time we had you on the channel. Let's start with the green parts first. Victor Dover, this has been such a pleasure having you back on the The Active Towns channel. Folks, please get your copy of the Street Design book. The second edition is an absolute joy. And it's I mean, this is going to be a book where you're going to be referencing back to time and time again.
01:00:13:22 - 01:00:17:24
John Simmerman
Again. Victor, thank you so much for joining me once again on the Active Towns podcast.
01:00:18:00 - 01:00:19:08
Victor Dover
Thank you, John.
01:00:19:10 - 01:00:38:12
John Simmerman
And I just want to also say thank you all so much to all my active towns in supporting the channel financially via YouTube super. Thanks, YouTube memberships. Buy me a coffee, Patreon and making donations to the nonprofit again, I simply could not produce this content without your support. Thank you all so very much.