The grid is an urban planner's best friend. Cities like New York City and Chicago have a predictable block pattern that creates a sense of accessibility that makes the city familiar to residents and easy to navigate for tourists. The pedestrian experience depends on the human scale of the block pattern. Contrast your favorite city with a drive through the suburbs. What do you recall? Because car travel informs suburban development patterns, blocks tend to be much longer and sometimes irregularly shaped, making them much less accessible to pedestrians. This patent reimagines the basic building block of urban life as a concept that's easy to export. If only we were that lucky!
Depending on the city, parking lots and street spaces take up about 30-40% of the urban realm. Limited space and expensive land prices converge to make these compact vertical parking lots a common sight in Manhattan, but what if we could rethink parking and introduce automated vertical lots everywhere?
What if every city could close down its main arterial to traffic to celebrate communities and physical fitness every week? This patent draws on New York City's Summer Streets program and Bogota, Colombia's Ciclovia, which both incorporate sports, pop-up food stands and activities like rock climbing to reclaim streets from traffic in a way that feels like a street festival.
The pedestrian scramble (also known as the Barnes Dance) prioritizes pedestrian traffic flow over vehicles, and allows pedestrians to cross in any direction.