One must be able to walk along and get across roads without fearing for your life. Street trees create bulb outs and establish a canopy for walkers in Santa Cruz and Palo Alto. Communities with mixed-use, moderate to high densities and housing downtown were lively, thriving places with people everywhere. The single use, low-rise business parks were surrounded by big, busy and very unwalkable roadways.
People crave interaction, even just to watch other people.
Public space, whether it was the downtown plaza in Watsonville or Los Gatos or the bustling sidewalks of Palo Alto's main streets, has to be inviting, welcoming, safe and accessible for people rather than just for motor vehicles. Patrick Siegman's seemingly photographic memory of area building codes, zoning policies, traffic manuals, and permitting processes enabled us to realize both the tyrannical impact of codes that are inflexible and the potential for codes to enable creativity and innovation that result in more walkable and desirable development. Simple alleyways between buildings make parks and train stations and main streets more accessible, and even the alleys themselves can be made interesting with murals, small shops and services etc. Palo Alto's bike boulevard connects low volume residential streets and creates a wonderful, direct route through the heart of the city. This is reflected in the priority given to one street over another and in the choices that are made on the allocation of road space.