What makes a beautiful street?

What makes a street pretty or inviting? Threatening or tumultuous? Is it the captivating architecture or the clever use of green space? The site lines or the width of the sidewalks? Recently, OpenPlans.org asked the same question and on Valentines Day opened a project that would begin gathering data on what defines a beautiful street.

A screen capture of the Beautiful Street Project.

In a Hot or Not type inquiry, using two windows linked directly to Google Street View, you can decide which streets are better looking. Itemizing what makes one street more aesthetically pleasing than another will take some months of collecting data, but it's a really interesting question and an important one when planning and redeveloping cities, such as revitalizing the Queen City's downtown.


Out of curiosity, I recently picked three side streets off of Elm Street in Manchester and asked the same question, what makes these streets beautiful or plain? I chose Lowell, Amherst and Hanover and noted some of the details. I found myself less concerned with the quaint nature of the Palace Theatre's wonderful entrance but the weird, formless gaps in the other two streets.

Hanover Street, looking north at the Opera Block by Manchester Oblique.

Hanover Street, known as the "opera block" between Chestnut and Elm, is a great primer for any city planner. It is a somewhat ubiquitous opinion that Hanover Street is the most beautiful street in Manchester and is the one street that gives people the feeling that they are in a larger city than they really are. This effect can be best experienced walking westward on Hanover towards Elm Street. The combination of the Citizen's Bank building, on the corner of Elm and Hanover, and City Hall Plaza, sitting across the street, really help to define Hanover's space and gives you the sense that you're walking into a busy downtown. The definition of space is the foundation of creating a beautiful street and Hanover continues doing that by keeping the gaps between buildings to a minimum.

In Jane Jacobs' "The Death and Life of Great American Cities", the author makes the argument that circulation, the ability to draw pedestrians from one area of a city to another, is the most important mechanic in city planning and development. While the Opera Block only spans a mere quarter mile, it draws people up and down its sidewalks all day long and into the night with a mix of business and entertainment establishments, with living space to boot. The majority of storefronts on Hanover are under the same roof of one long, brick building creating a more uniform aesthetic and commercial experience.

A look at the consistent storefronts along Hanover Street by Manchester Oblique.

Vines slowly scaling the wall of Hanover Street pakring garage by Manchester Oblique.

The Opera Block's archway leading to a parking lot behind the building. A nice device in preserving access yet avoiding a potential alleyway. In the background sits the New Hampshire 9th Circuit Courthouse on the neighboring Amherst Street. By Manchester Oblique.

From there you can pick some of the more obvious details like the trees that line the wide sidewalks and the decorative lighting around the branches, making for a more whimsical night look. Even the parking garage behind the Citizen's Bank building is unobtrusive, camouflaged with vinery and darker cement.

In contrast, Amherst and Lowell Streets are both fine streets that have flourishing businesses but somehow lack the magical look of Hanover Street.

Amherst Street's entrance from Elm Street is narrow, including its sidewalks, and not as well lit at night giving the space a sense of unease rather than an inviting nightspot. Granted the latter half of the block between Elm and Chestnut are dominated by a courthouse and a parking garage, but there are jarring gaps between many of the buildings that make it feel like you're on the backside of downtown as opposed to walking down one of its lively side streets. If you're walking along the northern sidewalk and round the corner of Consuelo's Taqueria, you're faced with a strange, overly large, and often empty, side street that grants access to a parking garage. From there, you're forced to cross to the next sidewalk at an odd angel as Amherst Street actually widens to allow parking on both sides of the street. It sounds knit-picky but it makes for a dissonant pedestrian experience and give the street an asymmetrical quality.

The entrance to Amherst Street via Elm Street by Manchester Oblique.

While the 9th Circuit courthouse (the old Union Leader building) isn't without its historic charm, it's facade lacks a grand entrance facing the street and instead opts for a side entrance that catty-corners a tiny parking lock that creates a weird gap between the courthouse and the current nightclub next door, exposing the backside of Hanover Street. Lastly, on the south side of the parking garage facing Amherst Street, there is a ditch between the sidewalk and the parking structure to accommodate the sunken level in the garage. It's a kind of negative space left by the garage's construction and tends to be a reservoir for rubbish and weeds (cryptoforestry?).

A picture of the aforementioned ditch on the south side of the Vine Street parking garage. The tinted rectangles have been added to emphasize the space. By Manchester Oblique.

The gap standing between the NH 9th Circuit Courthouse and the current nightclub next door on Amherst Street by Manchester Oblique.

Lowell Street fairs better with few more accessible business facades (especially those in the Gauchos building), better lighting, two interesting looking apartment buildings, slightly wider sidewalks and greenery that defines the space a little better. But the street is also riddled with large gaps for parking lots. At one point before the Red Arrow, the planter of the adjacent parking lot protrudes into pedestrian space forcing the sidewalk to jut out into the street. If anything, Lowell Street harbors a lot of potential for development if the parking lots were to be sacrificed.

A picture of the interrupted walking path on Lowell Street by Manchester Oblique.

A picture of the 62 Lowell Street building that houses several businesses and updates the look of an older, classy look with simple, modern awnings by Manchester Oblique.

The entrance to Lowell Street via Elm Street by Manchester Oblique.

A picture of the Wellington Trade Center parking lot that spans the space between the Red Arrow and Wellington Trade Center Building.

This is, of course, a completely subjective analysis of these streets, but it is important to note the conscious and often times unconscious sensations flowing through our minds and bodies when moving through an urban environment. There are subtle borders, barriers, pathways, symbols and marginal spaces that help guide us through the city everyday. They're often convoluted and stacked on top of each other through years of building and rebuilding. Think about how often you might walk around a city park instead of cutting through its grassy meadows or why the Millyard feels so disconnected from downtown. What makes a street a "shortcut" as opposed to a "main drag"? A bypass instead of a destination?

What makes a street beautiful to you? Please, leave your thoughts in the comments.

Spontaneous Intervention

A group of urban activists paint an unauthorized "wikilane" cycle path in the middle of Mexico City. From CNN.

"Spontanious interventions: design for the common good" is the theme of the International Venice Architecture Biennale this fall. Their website describes it perfectly:

"In recent years, there has been a nascent movement of designers acting on their own initiative to solve problematic urban situations, creating new opportunities and amenities for the public. Provisional, improvisational, guerrilla, unsolicited, tactical, temporary, informal, DIY, unplanned, participatory, open-source—these are just a few of the words that have been used to describe this growing body of work."

It's direct action flying under the radar of proper channels. From urban farms and crowd-sourced maps to more extreme projects like guerilla bike lanes and grafting fruit tree branches to non-fruiting trees, the exhibition promises to be intriguing and surprising at the very least. But what I like most about the theme of "spontaneous intervention" is that it is focused on urbanism and making cities more sustainable and better places to live, as opposed to the gaudy, unrealistic and abstract architecture that has been the paradigm in years past. There is a real communal element to these projects that proliferate the idea that a city is more than just a large population of people living in a close proximity to one another; that residents want to love, change and take ownership of their neighborhoods, instead of filing their grievances with the local government and hoping solutions arise.

Does Manchester need spontaneous intervention? I could think of a few places to drop an unsolicited bike rack or go for a geocentric, augmented reality game (City of ManchQuest?) that forces people to explore the Queen City in tandem with online gaming. While I can't say painting an unsanctioned bike lane down the side Elm Street is a wise idea, the answer to the question should always be an emphatic "Yes".

Reading through some of these spontaneous interventions, I was reminded of a quote by a local author and high school teacher, Rob Greene. In response to the question on My Good Good Manchester, "What would make Manchester even better?" he said:

A common vision: Is it more important to have a thriving downtown or create a haven for box stores? Data-driven decision making. A focus on education at all levels. An Ethiopian restaurant. Manchester is one of those places that you never need to leave. If you want it or need it, you can generally find it here. With some effort we could be a place that creates generation after generation of smart, self-actualized people who stay here to do smart, self-actualized things.

A constant point of discussion in Manchester's improvement is drawing more businesses and consumers into the area, and the stereotypical solution is "we need to revitalize downtown." That is a very broad, vague and uninspiring solution; luring more people to the city with the promise of better consumerism. While it is important, I don't see many people moving just for the shopping and restaurants. It's the unspoken, intertwining undercurrents of creativity, intelligence and bustle that give a city its liveliness. That feeling when one stops in the middle of sidewalk on a busy morning and can sense important and interesting things going on around them. Smart people doing smart things.

Posters from the Inside Out campaign hanging in a store front. Via My Good Good Manchester.

I've often held the ideal that cities are not unlike people; they need to be smart and attractive. Have an air of confidence that says they don't need anybody but themselves to feel good about life. Nothing is more repellant than desperation, and building a stadium or latching onto the gravitas of a larger, more attractive nearby town has that stink to it. Manchester shouldn't want to be Boston's fat, best friend. The city and its people should want to do innovative, creative, necessary, unnecessary, whimsical and down-right thoughtful projects for itself. Spontaneous intervention can be the first small steps to a better Manchester.

Needless to say, I'll be keeping a close eye on the International Venice Architecture Biennale this year.

Benched

Driving down Bridge Street or jogging along its sidewalk near Trinity High School, you may have noticed something doesn't look right when you pass by the Derryfield Park. It's not a bad looking park; nice, grassy field, new playground and even a gazebo, but something is amiss. Maybe it's because it looks like there should be a bus stop every 50 feet along the sidewalk. 

The benches that line the park's outer edge, along Bridge Street, all face one the city's most heavily trafficked corridors instead of the nice park behind them. It's a weird decision in urban planning and the only conclusions I drew from it were that either the original parks planner thought the benches might be better utilized in winter if they faced south, melting the inevitable snow build-up, or that the homeless would be more conspicuous sleeping on them.

Curious, I sent out an email to Manchester's Parks Planner, Jessica Fleming. She kindly responded with a call and explained that she had asked the same question a few years ago when she took the job. When she asked around, the answer she received was that the benches were rest areas for walkers and joggers heading up the steep hill that the park sits on. But no one knew for sure, as any person could take the extra step to sit on a park facing bench, or the city could have settled on backless benches giving joggers and park goers the option to sit either way. 

There were no definitive conclusions, as the benches have been there for many years now, but Fleming mentioned that if the benches were to be replaced, they would probably face the park or be backless instead.

The slanted benches of Livingston Park.

Along with my inquiry into the Derryfield Park benches, I asked about the benches in Livingston Park that are slanted towards the ground. Once again, I thought it was a deterrent to keep people from sleeping on them, similar to the rash of anti-homeless benches springing up in Tokyo. Fleming explained that was not the case at all, and that they are sloped downwards from overuse. "It's one of our most trafficked parks and they're the wrong benches for the application," she said.

Manchester's stillborn college campus

In the northwest corner of Manchester lies a large plot of undeveloped land, the last barren parcel in the city that isn't a swamp or park. The Hackethill area is a mix of woodlands and protected wetlands that is a beautiful piece of space, and meandering through it are long abandoned roads, parking lots and sewer systems of a stillborn project that has spanned almost 40 years now.

In the 1960s, the University of New Hampshire opened a new branch of the University called Merrimack Valley College off of Hackethill Road. A large building, called French Hall, was constructed with all the necessary classrooms and administration offices. The college had minor success and a few years later the 830 acres of land behind French Hall were purchased with the idea of building a true campus in Manchester.

A map of the future development.

The development as it currently looks via Google Maps.

The development was slow moving, as things with universities tend to be, and eventually in the early 80s, a road was paved leading into the property. Parking lots were built, sewer lines laid and electricity was even run through out the entire development, powering only the street lamps that pepper the narrow roads and parking areas. In 1986, UNH Manchester opened a branch in the millyard and there were classes both on the "hill" and the "mill," respectively. In 1998, the university opted to consolidate their two Manchester campuses and sold back the land and French Hall to the city. French Hall has since been sold to the tech company, JPSA Laser. Since the late 90s, the campus that never was has sat deteriorating against the encroaching forest and elements.

The largest of the abandoned parking lots.

One of the many broken street lamps that fleck the parking lots and roads.

Weeds, grass and full grown trees sprout from every crevice in the pavement. Mold and moss cover sidewalks that never saw the hurried footfalls of students running to their next class. Fire hydrants sit rusting and storm drains choking with leaves. The sights are a little eerie, almost post-apocalyptic, but the land itself is beautiful. It's a reminder that in only a few short decades the Earth can easily take back what we have built. I couldn't imagine what the place might look like 100 years from now if no one decided to develop it. The city could make it a free form park and archeologists could study the deterioration of modern infrastructures and see how our civilization might survive a millennium.

A barely visible piece of sidewalk.

Sadly, the land was too valuable for such an endeavor and the city sold it to Danais Realty earlier this year for $2.8 million, which plans to develop it as the Northwest Business Park at Hackett Hill. It should be noted that there is a small group of people protesting the development, as several areas of the land are protected nature preserves. You can read more about their effort here.

More photos after the jump.

Micro rain forests on Elm St and harnessing EMF

"Flower on Elm" by N&D Images Flickr page.

Note: I had meant to inject these thoughts into the rail-trails post but they eluded me during the time of writing it.

With the rail lines being paved over in lieu of bike trails, I couldn't help but wonder what other transport infrastructures in the future would fall to the wayside, ripe for reuse. What if teleportation became possible or if the flying car finally made its debut? It depends on the paradigm shift in transportation, but if the automobile became outdated, there could be a plethora of abandoned space to be transformed. Think of the parking lots alone that consume 30 to 40 percent of a typical, American downtown or the 60 to 70 percent that surround malls and stadiums.

Grocery stores could fence off their antiquated parking structures, crush and remove the asphalt and plant gardens or build greenhouses, delivering fresh produce from the ground to the shelf in minutes. I-93 and I-95 could be rebuilt as tracks for high speed meg-lev trains, zipping from city to city in minutes instead of hours. Cities, no longer worried about a snow removal budgets or building and maintaining parking areas, could refashion parking garages into legit skateboard and BMX parks. Architects from all over New England could try their hand at designing next season's botanical garden that encompasses Elm St. between Bridge and Granite, creating a Brazilian inspired, micro rain forest in the summer or a desolate tundra in the winter. Dog sleds full of laughing children would pass by city hall every 30 minutes.

Smart urban design theory has relied on creating reflexive and proactive systems within cities, infrastructures that can be tensed and expanded upon, many with built in stopgaps to yield foreseeable development. In a post-automotive world, the American city has another chance to rebuild a set of veins and arteries (I don't see sporting a good walk to a local store or keeping a tightly knit neighborhood going out of fashion) but what about the endless sprawl reaching into the woods and deserts? The small towns and planned communities that were propped up on four wheels that never foresaw an end to the auto-transit age? Without significant revenue, their antiquated circulation systems may choke and die, never to be rebuilt or re-imagined. Town hall meetings might take place where seething groups of citizens demand that the roads to be repaved or planted over because they are "eyesores," while a tight-fisted opposition yells, "Why bother? No one uses them anyway?"

High voltage lines in Keene, NH from e5capeveloc1ty's Flickr page.

Another type of space that already seems under utilized are the endless, sandy and scrub brush ridden tracts that support our electrical infrastructure. Massive power lines, not unlike the proposed Northern Pass transmission line, conduct millions of high-voltage watts from power plants, across hundreds of miles of cable to power stations across the country. Outside of their intended purpose, the tracts serve as little more than fodder for four wheelers and snow mobiles, but is there a reason these swaths of wonderfully straight land can't be coupled with bike trails or high speed trains? Back in 2004, an artist, Richard Box, dug 1,300 florescent light bulbs into the ground below a set of high voltage lines as part of an installation. The bulbs lit up, sapping the wasted electromagnetic field (EMF) the lines produce. Being able to harness the excess EMF for something other than art installations and leukemia (supposedly after years of exposure) also seems like another obvious question.

"Light Field" by Richard Box.

The proposed Northern Pass transmission line, a 140 mile stretch of high voltage lines relaying electricity from power plants in Quebec into lower New England's power grid, could be a perfect chance to integrate new utilizations of the land to coincide with the development of the lines. Ideas?

South Mancherster rail-trail

The South Manchester Rail Trail

The New Hampshire rail-trails have been one of the most interesting reuses of space for me in recent years; the idea that the antiquated tracks of one form of transportation is being paved over for a seemingly timeless class of travel is intriguing. There's something romantic about traveling the same network of lines that millions had a 150 years ago on the crest of steam-powered locomotion. Images of coal covered engineers and young women in Victorian era dresses and fancy hats, swim up before your eyes as you sweat to the new Adele record on a road bike.

The rail-to-trail initiative has been around for over 25 years with over 1,600 stretches of rail road track converted into bike and pedestrian trails across the country. Manchester's recent contribution was the South Manchester Rail Trail, an attempt to connect the Millyard with the town of Londonderry using the old Boston and Maine rail line that was chartered in 1847 and officially abandoned in 2000. The idea that a company can abandon a piece of property that potentially spans entire states is baffling. What kind of paper work do you have to fill out for that? Do certain cities and counties charge fines for the pieces of track left in their lap?

Union Station at the corner of Granite St. and Rail Road Square, the last stop on B&M's Manchester to Lawrence line via Manchester Historic Association.

Time table for the Manchester & Lawrence division via Remnants of the Boston and Maine Railroad

The South Manchester rail trail is currently in development hell, with only the stretch between Beech St and Gold St paved (less than a mile). Unfortunately, a large portion of the line runs straight through the (MHT) Manchester Airport expansion and rail-trail groups are having trouble securing routes around the airport and into Londonderry. Bike trails have been notoriously underfunded in the past and are typically coupled with a start-stop construction schedule. After 20 years, the East Coast Greenway, a proposed bike path spanning the Eastern seaboard from Maine to Key West, is still less than 25% finished.

Despite what Google Maps says, the section of the South Manchester Rail-Trail connecting to the Millyard has not been built.

Despite the financial stumbling blocks and jerky production schedules, these are projects that should be lauded. Considering the country's rich history with railroads, it could be possible to connect enough rail-trails to create an expansive network of bike trails, allowing anyone with a bike and a map to travel anywhere in the nation for virtually free, with less fear of getting hit by cars. Who knows, maybe in the post-apocalypse, wise travelers will know to avoid the long stretches highways clogged with abandoned motor vehicles and opt for the old rail-trails. Fathers and sons hike across a quiet and desolate America, protecting the precious and rare trail maps that guide them. As a right of passage, the father asks the young boy to copy a piece of the map, with meticulous detail, each night next to a camp fire on the back of an old concert poster. One day it will be his own guide through the ancient, twisted necropolises of the American age.

If you want to help the rail-trail initiative in NH, visit nhrailtrails.org

The fenced off railroad trestle that leads into the Manchester-Boston airport.

Manchester Oblique

Recently, I came across several articles about London's underground and how urban spelunkers are exploring and mapping a labyrinth of abandoned tube tunnels, decommissioned pneumatic rail transit systems, secret government bunkers, lost catacombs and ostentatious swimming pools constructed by the city's super-rich. It was a fascinating reminder that London (along with a lot of Europe) has been building and rebuilding on top of itself for more than ten centuries. The city's ground is no longer a solid piece of soil or bedrock, but a porous Swiss cheese of concrete, steel and stone that is being drilled into and built over.

America is still new and has yet to reach these mature stages of rebuilding and structural transition. If you open Google Maps and set a course for the west coast, you can see cities like Seattle and Las Vegas are beautifully designed grids, fortified with modern urban planning. They almost look like circuits boards, with components that can be easily swapped in and out. Need a new museum? Just bulldoze the old Hyatt building flat, send away the rubble and build your new museum from scratch. Scroll east across the nation and the cities begin to garble with their squiggly lines and abstract borders. "The roads! They curve," a friend of mine once exclaimed returning to New Hampshire after living several years out west. Point the cursor towards New England and the map starts to look more akin to a map of Europe. New England is getting older, and over the last 50 years, its cities have stopped expanding outward and have started to re-utilize their own space. Building up, not out.

Manchester is one of these aforementioned cities, traversing a delicate stage of re-imagining the space that it claims. From rooting out the old mills to make way for businesses and homes, to paving over out-of-service rail road lines in lieu of bicycle trails, Manchester is on the cusp of a type structural change that most of America won't see for a long time. Manchester Oblique is an attempt to document and explore some of these transitions.

An oblique drawing is a two dimensional projection of a three dimensional object. I felt the term was appropriate as I intend to add extra dimensions and depth to the changing spaces we walk or drive by everyday, but never question. Two parts BLDG BLOG (architectural appreciation, conjecture and urban speculation) and one part My Good Good Manchester (hyper localized awareness and discourse), I hope to touch upon everything from Manchester's reuse of the mills to the effects of the city's watershed on local ponds.

I'll try to keep it as entertaining as possible.