Designing the 21st Century Street Competition
September 2, 2008

Urban Life Lines

Our city streets, which have become the repository for all forms of transportation, decaying infrastructure, and neglected public spaces, can be the catalyst for change and provide solutions to some of the challenges our modern cities face.

In our proposal the solutions are multi-layered and as diverse as the people who live, work and move through these spaces. We identify the Urban Life Lines necessary for public life as three branches - interaction, circulation and infrastructure.

The interaction necessary to sustain community life is introduced back into the street by claiming valuable space for pedestrian activities, and relocating parking in locally designated structures. These new sidewalk spaces are programmed for street markets, gardens, play spaces, and meeting spaces, creating better neighborhoods for those who live there.

The rights-of-way for vehicular circulation must become more efficient, with smaller, cleaner vehicles, requiring less public real estate, and mass public transportation must demand revitalization and growth to accommodate the needs of population densities. New rights-of-way for bicycles and personal transportation alternatives are to be accommodated on the new city street.

We see the street as the place where new sustainable power can be generated and operated locally, above ground. Smaller scale, diverse, renewable modes of power generation provide a more accessible, efficient, and immediate solution to some of our energy shortfalls. The existing below grade services can be re-developed to include new sustainable technologies on the horizon, and new power and fuel generation which weans our dependency on gas, oil and coal.

The 21st Century Street can significantly contribute to the solutions of the 21st Century City.