Maria Florencia Rodriguez Winkelmann, B.S. Architecture ’25
When I moved to the States one of my first cultural shocks was related to transportation. Back home in Argentina, something simple like walking to the store to buy the daily bread for lunch would mean a connection with my neighborhood. It was normal to go by saying hi to neighbors. People knew me, I knew people. My home wasn’t limited to the boundaries of my house, but to where my entire community lived. When I moved to Southern California, I realized that a car was necessary to even buy milk for my morning cereal. The car became the means to get to every single activity; it is an intermediary that gets you from home to work, to the store, to the gym, to the park. In the process we miss the opportunity to experience our surroundings, connect with our community and the built environment, to connect with our home. So I started asking myself, what characteristics make a city more inviting for the people to prefer walking/biking rather than moving by car? Is it nice streets? Small blocks? Safe sidewalks? Good weather? Beautiful Architecture?The Patrick Martin Memorial Fellowship was my opportunity to explore different cities that embraced walkability. I wanted to explore different urban settings that were human centered rather than car centered, with the hopes of understanding what is the role of architecture in our preferred means of transportation, and how it impacts on our relationship with the built environment and the sense of community.
Housing Row in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
I picked Europe as my destination since it offers multiple cities that focussed either on pedestrians or bikers. Throughout my trip, I found some obvious, and some not so obvious, answers to my questions. Some of those discoveries were related to scale, safety, convenience, response, and cultural representation. But more than anything, you could easily observe when the city was designed around cars versus around humans.
Rome, Italy.
I feel the single most important factor for people to walk over to drive is convenience. It must be convenient for the people to go out walking. In order to do so, it is fundamental that people can access different programs on a walkable distance. Most of the cities I studied in Europe presented diverse neighborhoods that mixed residential units with storefronts that offered from food and clothing, to medicine and hardware. If you needed either to change a lightbulb, or to get some cat food, you could likely find both in a radius of five blocks.
Different Neighborhood Stores in Barcelona, Spain.
A human centered design also thinks about how to interact with people, while we have drive thru stores in the States, they offer “walk-thru” places such as coffee or pizza shops.
“Walk-Thru” Stores in Florence, Italy.
Scale: Smaller = More!
Related to mixed use, my following point is scale. In order to be able to fit such a diverse program in your neighborhood you must make everything smaller. When a store is reduced in size, it supplies for a smaller group of people. Therefore you will need more stores spread throughout the neighborhoods to supply the entire city with goods. In Southern California, we have the exact opposite dynamic: big stores that supply goods to multiple neighborhoods, therefore they are further away and you usually have to go by car. A good example is our typical Home Depot Store, known for their massive size. Barcelona’s version of a Home Depot or Lowe’s is called Ferreteria, which is a store that offers all kinds of tools and hardware, but in a store the size of a mall store. The example in the picture has a store front of only 9 feet.
The Gothic Quarters in Spain were developed while cars weren’t even imaginable. The City was designed for pedestrians only, and it remained that way. The passages are so narrow that cars wouldn’t be able to go through, creating a pedestrian paradise. The Gothic Quarters proves how everything must be small to make everything accessible with the human body.
Gothic Quarters, Barcelona, Spain.
Safety:
While convenience is very important, people must also feel safe walking around in order to do so freely. Bologna offers a unique solution to the sense of safety. The blocks are surrounded by a series of loggias or porticoes that protect the pedestrians with a colonnade from the cars. The level of the walk was usually higher as well, transforming the experience of walking around the city. Many blocks were so divided from the car level that it almost felt like they were not there. The tunneled architecture made you focus on what you had ahead, the storefronts, or the beautifully decorated ceilings, but never on the cars driving on the other side of the colonnade.
Loggia/Porticoes in Bologna, Italy.
In Madrid and Barcelona, we can appreciate a hierarchy of speed in the design of the cities. There was a proportionate distribution of spaces: when the streets were larger, so were the sidewalks. Avenues and larger streets have faster traffic, and larger sidewalks allow people to keep the necessary distance from the cars. Also, there was a line of trees and light posts or benches that would work as a barrier protecting the pedestrians in case of a car accident. The same line of trees also provides shade to the sidewalk, improving the thermal comfort of the pedestrians and offsetting the heat island effect of the city.
Barcelona, Spain.
Engagement: Come to me!
In bustling urban hubs there was a degree of engagement at the eye level. Architecture would respond to whoever was walking in the street. In Florence, for example, you could often appreciate how buildings were more ornamented at the street level than in their second or third story. Most of the ornamentation would not be appreciated from a car, but could improve the pedestrian experience, and the appreciation towards the architecture. Making a city beautiful is not important just for aesthetic purposes, but also as a representation of cultural heritage. Creating a stronger sense of community and engagement between the urban grid and its inhabitants.
Florence, Italy.
When people walk on the sidewalks, suddenly the facades come to life, often displaying whatever is happening inside. For example, in Rome I saw a few restaurants that would have a window so you could see the people cooking inside.
Pasta Store in Rome, Italy.
Another example of engagement is how stores start displaying their products on the sidewalks with the goal of attracting clients. If the street was car oriented, food would be saved inside so it wouldn’t be contaminated. Also, drivers have little capability of seeing what is happening in the facade of the buildings. However, in pedestrian oriented streets, markets take over the sidewalks, creating better communication between the inside and outside of the buildings.
Street Stores in Rome (left) and Florence (Right), Italy.
Adaptive Reuse: We Need Way Less Space Than Cars!
For old cities, like most in Europe, there are plenty of buildings that had to be adapted for newer programs. I never saw an open sky parking lot. Land in the cities is too precious to be used primarily to store cars. However, old buildings could store bikes! In cities such as Amsterdam, Ghent or Bruges, bikes dominate the streets. Bikes are not only less contaminant than cars, but also easier to store. Car parking lots require strong ventilation features, and usually occupy large spaces. Bikes, on the other hand, are easy to lift, stack, and organize in smaller areas. Therefore, cities like Amsterdam and Bruges repurposed old buildings to create bike parking lots. They do not need special ventilation requirements, do not contaminate in the same way, do not need as much space, so basically any building could be adapted to become a bike storage unit. These parking lots can store the means of transportation of more people in a smaller area, than if we were talking about cars.
Left: Bruges, Belgium. Right: Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Conclusion: Life in the City is Good by Foot!
When people come out to the streets, it creates a bustling city with tighter communities where we are less alienated to our own neighbors. Stores and restaurants start interacting with the streets to a level where they fusion together becoming one. People sit in the public realm, sharing the space, seeing and being observed by everyone, appreciating the architecture and interacting on a daily basis with our surrounding built environment. Stores become smaller, with more chances of being locally owned, therefore bustling the local economies, and creating more opportunities for its citizens. Walkability is not about just walking, but about being able to own your own city, to be the protagonist that shapes and enjoys the architecture, and that creates a healthier environment.
And who do you prefer to be the protagonist of your city, humans or cars?
