Produced by the
Preservation Institute

Overview

My Focus

The Key Change

Shattuck/Univ Corner

Berkeley Way/Shattuck

Berkeley Way Sidewalk

Walnut St.

Replacing the State Health Dept Building

For me, there is a strong symbolic resonance to replacing a modernist highrise with a fine-grained urban fabric of walkable streets. It is a rejection of modernist urbanism that reminds me of the demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project, shown above. But it is even better, because the modernist urbanism is being replaced by an urban fabric created in a piecemeal way, like traditional urban fabrics.

The Key Change: Restrict East Shattuck to Local Traffic

Shattuck divides into two branches between University and Center.  Restricting the east branch to local traffic and making the west branch two-way to carry all through traffic is the key to making the entire area more pedestrian friendly, the most important change needed to make downtown walkable. . 

Currently, it is unsafe to cross to the north-east corner Shattuck and University, because the northbound through-traffic on the east branch of Shattuck continues to flow through the intersection at the same time as pedestrians are crossing. 

This hurts businesses on the northeast corner of Shattuck and University, because:

• It discourages pedestrians from walking to that corner. People are much more likely cross University on the west side of Shattuck than on the east side.

• It requires a crossing to be closed to pedestrians, so pedestrians do not interfere with through traffic.

• It requires parking to be removed on the north side of University Ave., so aggressive through-traffic drives right next to the sidewalk, making that short stretch of sidewalk very pedestrian-hostile, as you can see in the picture below.

As a result, this short stretch of University Ave. always has more vacant storefronts than the surrounding streets. Notice, in the picture below, that the No Pedestrian Crossing sign is right between two vacant storefronts.

Putting all of the through traffic on the west branch of Shattuck will make Shattuck/University into an ordinary intersection, without all these pedestrian-hostile features. When the public health facility is built, the people using it should be able to walk on the east side of Shattuck across University Ave. to the center of downtown, without being discouraged by a dangerous crossing.

The downtown plan lets us restrict the east branch of Shattuck to local traffic.

A couple of people are promoting the misguided idea of making the west branch of Shattuck into a pedestrian-only street and shifting all the through traffic to the east branch, an idea that has no support in the SOSIP. This idea would make it much more dangerous for pedestrians to cross at University and Shattuck. Currently, northbound through-traffic conflicts with pedestrians crossing at that corner, but with this change, both northbound and southbound through-traffic would conflict with pedestrians crossing, making the intersection extremeley dangerous.

If either branch is converted into a pedestrian street, it should be the east branch. But I myself do not think a pedestrian street is needed here. If the east branch is restricted to local traffic and its sidewalks are widened to allow cafe seating for its many restaurants, that alone would make it into a very attractive street.