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Bringing green walks back to the city
By Emma Rooksby
In conventional suburban developments on the urban fringe, streets take up to 35% of the total land area. But in Canada the country’s national housing agency, the Canada Housing and Mortgage Corporation, is introducing new street layouts to win back some of that land.
They are calling the design the “fused grid” and after its initial test it is now being rolled out across Canada to reclaim land for pedestrian and recreational use. The Corporation’s latest report, Canadian Housing Observer, released on October 22, says that the fused grid approach is being used in three Canadian municipalities, with other plans in the pipeline.
As the illustration above shows, the fused grid model employs elements of existing street patterns. It combines a continuous grid of larger roads for district and regional connectivity, with a discontinuous grid of loop streets or cul-de-sacs for neighbourhood safety.
The discontinuous grid is supplemented by a series of footpaths connecting the streets, thereby encouraging pedestrian use as well as creating a “fully connected pedestrian realm.”
The report noted that the fused grid approach “lowers land usage for streets; provides more safety, tranquillity and social interaction; reduces the area of impermeable surfaces and reduces infrastructure costs.”
According to the agency’s Senior Researcher, Fanis Grammenos, the fused grid street pattern was developed with the aim of retaining the best features of existing street patterns but without their disadvantages. Its focus is on balancing the needs of pedestrians with those of motorists.
“The fused grid is base on two premises,” Mr Grammenos says. “First, keep as many strangers as possible out of a neighbourhood and second, make it possible for people to form informal social networks.
“These two premises have been shown to work in previous literature such as Appleyard’s ‘liveable streets’ and Newman’s ‘defensible space.’
The first is accomplished by keeping out traffic (though not pedestrians) from a 16ha neighbourhood and the second by providing an open space connector through which pedestrian must travel to reach the corner store or bus stop.”
The agency is now researching whether the design is influencing travel choice, how much it has changed traffic flows, and whether it is more effective for storm water management.
