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The Copenhagenization of Nicollet Avenue

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The Copenhagenization of Nicollet Avenue The Copenhagenization of Nicollet Avenue Derek Holmer COPENHAGENIZATION OF NICOLLET AVENUE DEREK HOLMER Acknowledgments I would like to extend my sincerest thanks to my faculty advisor, Gayla Lindt, who has the powers of Wonder Woman. Without her calm demeanor and guidance, this project would have derailed long ago. Thanks are also due to my reader, Carrie Christensen. Her expertise, attention to detail, and encouragement helped keep my eyes on the bigger picture. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to Katherine Solomonson. Her role as Devil’s Advocate kept my project grounded from day one and allowed my argument to remain based on real issues facing American cities today. I am indebted to each of you. II III COPENHAGENIZATION OF NICOLLET AVENUE DEREK HOLMER Abstract This thesis investigates the potential for Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis to become a bicycle- and pedestrian-only corridor for a one and a half mile stretch from downtown south to Lake Street. This investigation begins with the imagined, but very possible, scenario that the K-Mart building that blocks the Nicollet Avenue corridor north of Lake Street has been removed. The avenue is examined through the lens of Copenhagenization, as outlined in Jan Gehl’s book Cities for People. These principles are most manifest along Nørrebrogade in Copenhagen, which serves as the primary precedent for this investigation. Key concepts and design elements from this two and a half kilometer (one and a half mile) Danish corridor are identified, analyzed, and translated into a mid-western American context at a scale not yet attempted. The current Minneapolis Bicycle Master Plan (2005) calls for no bicycles along Nicollet Avenue. This thesis demonstrates an alternative vision that builds on Nicollet Avenue’s unique identity of Eat Street leveraging Minneapolis’s nationally recognized bike system, resulting in a list of best management practices, and design principles for a new American identity that develops a sense of place fostered by public space, cycle, and transit infrastructure. IV V COPENHAGENIZATION OF NICOLLET AVENUE DEREK HOLMER Table of Contents Introduction 1 Part 1. The Framework: Copenhagenization 5 Part 2. Existing Conditions 17 Part 3. Best Management Design Practices 29 Conclusion 47 Notes 50 Bibliography 52 VI VII COPENHAGENIZATION OF NICOLLET AVENUE DEREK HOLMER Introduction Nicollet Avenue, in Southwest Minneapolis, is a typical American quasi-urban street (Fig. 1.1). It maintains a busy, yet quiet demeanor. Cyclists and automobile traffic share the same lanes, battling buses for space and rarely yielding when they pull out from stops. Parking creates a wall that separates the adequately wide sidewalks from the street traffic. Trees shade the walkways and provide a pleasant pedestrian environment along the sporadic yet quaint storefronts. Eat Street, as it is affectionately known from downtown to Lake Street, is walkable in 20 minutes, providing a connection between downtown and the Midtown Greenway, a bikeway built into a depressed former rail line. Established restaurants and cafes bring a regular crowd to the corridor, where customers can park in front of their destination, pay the meter for an hour or so, and then walk directly in the door. Some strolling occurs after dinner or lunch, but only until the end of the block, where traffic lights likely flash a red hand inferring, “Turn around, your stroll is finished.” Nicollet Avenue meets the status quo of standard cycle, pedestrian, and transit based traffic patterns. VIII 1 COPENHAGENIZATION OF NICOLLET AVENUE DEREK HOLMER Fig. 1.1: Nicollet Avenue looking south from 14th Street. Fig 1.2 (above): This K-mart store interrupts the ROW of Nicollet Avenue. Fig. 1.3 (below): Aerial Source: Photograph by the author. view of where reconnection would occur; the red line represents Nicollet Avenue. Sources: 1.2- Glen Stubbe, Minneapolis Star Tribune, 1.3 base- Google Maps, diagram by author. The current treatment of Nicollet is not representative of its status in Minneapolis. Eat Street is known throughout the city as foodie’s playground, with a collection of restaurants, cafes, and bakeries not found anywhere else. Thus, the design of Nicollet does not reflect its unique status. It does not facilitate active sidewalk cafes, interaction between bikers and pedestrians, or efficient transit options. In addition, this corridor has been identified by the city of Minneapolis as the locally preferred route for a new streetcar line, the city’s first in over 50 years.1 Couple these with the city’s cult-like bicycling culture and there is opportunity for a unique redesign of this street. Currently, Minneapolis’s Bicycle Master Plan calls for bike lanes on 1st Avenue and Blaisdell Avenues, one block on either side of Nicollet. No bike lanes are present or planned on Nicollet. This project investigates the transformation of Nicollet Avenue into a pedestrian, bike, and transit corridor, demonstrating an alternative vision to the Minneapolis Bicycle Master Plan and leveraging This project begins with the assumption that the Kmart store (Fig 1.2-3) that currently both the established bicycle culture and the Avenue’s identity of Eat Street to create a uniquely interrupts the right of way (ROW) of Nicollet north of Lake Street has been relocated based on a American public space. range of possible scenarios. Reconnection would present many positive opportunities in addition 2 3 COPENHAGENIZATION OF NICOLLET AVENUE DEREK HOLMER to new constraints. One of these would be an increase in automobile traffic as drivers use the Fig 2.1- Cover of Jan Gehl’s book, Cities for People. Source- Gehl Architects, corridor as a new pipeline into downtown. This increase in traffic would degrade the pedestrian gehlcitiesforpeople.dk experience of Eat Street, increase congestion, slow buses and the potential streetcar, and destroy what currently makes Nicollet a relatively successful street. This project investigates a preemptive solution to this problem, seeking to present an alternative that would resolve these effects before they negatively impact the corridor. This project is approached in three phases: (1) the first is the establishment of a framework; (2) followed by an analysis of the existing conditions; and (3) finally a proposal of a set of best management design principles. The framework is based on an analysis of the concepts of Jan Gehl in his book Cities for People (2010). This project extracts three concepts of Copenhagenization as the lens through which it views the Nicollet corridor. These concepts are manifested most clearly along Nørrebrogade in Copenhagen, which serves as the primary precedent for this project. Here, specific ways in which the city of Copenhagen redesigned the corridor to improve urban life are highlighted, examined, and applied as possible improvements for Nicollet Avenue. The existing Part 1. The Framework: Copenhagenization Jan Gehl is a global pioneer in urbanism. An architect by trade, he has practiced and taught conditions analysis examines the current state of Nicollet, in addition to the proposed relink in Copenhagen during the city’s four-decade shift from an auto- to anthropocentric focus. Streets between 28th and Lake Street which does not currently exist. Every other aspect of the corridor were returned to pedestrian and cycles that spurred an urban design revolution dubbed remains the same as it is now. Thus, a site analysis of existing conditions lays the foundation upon “Copenhagenization.”2 As an umbrella term, Copenhagenization consists of numerous theories, which design interventions can be based. Following is a program analysis of the current function focuses, and influences. The term is not Gehl’s alone, but his work fully embodies this style of and identity of the corridor. The Eat Street identity, Minneapolis bicycle culture, and the city’s urbanization. In his 2010 book Cities for People (Fig 2.1), Gehl presents his seminal ideas on what planning department are examined as established factors upon which to leverage improvements. makes cities flourish within the public realm. He crafts an argument for “life between buildings”3 Finally, recommendations for best management practices for the entire corridor are proposed. involving more than transport. He frames this work within several key objectives, three of which— Looking in-depth at the ROW, cycle facilities, paving strategies, street furniture, plantings, and lively, safe, and sustainable cities—pervade his ideas. These concepts, together with their programming, this final section presents a new vision for Nicollet that will allow its identity of Eat implementation along the Nørrebrogade corridor in Copenhagen, DK, will serve as the lens through Street to thrive. which this thesis approaches Nicollet Avenue. 4 5 COPENHAGENIZATION OF NICOLLET AVENUE DEREK HOLMER Fig 2.3: Street life on Broadway in New York City. Source: Gehl Architects, gehlcitiesforpeople.com Fig 2.2: Good edge condition along the Aarhus Å (River) in Aarhus, DK. Source: Photograph by author. Liveliness streets fall entirely into what Gehl refers to as the “edge zone.” Here is where “city meets building”4 Gehl’s first concept of Copenhagenization is the most encompassing: liveliness. This where direct interaction between pedestrians and facades dictates the liveliness of the space (Fig concept works under the knowledge that city life is a process which must be supported and 2.2). When the edge is neglected or—as occurred during the 20th Century in America—this theory encouraged by public space. Lively cities program public space as the stage upon which the theatre is inverted, space is obliterated, and the street becomes a series of buildings surrounded by empty of urban life unfolds. Streets are not simply traffic conduits; they are linear spaces within which space devoid of life. Gehl advocates a return to the tradition of considering urban life as the “life neighborhood life occurs. A lively public realm encourages social interaction, impossible when between buildings,” with the void deserving of equal attention, if not more, as the built form.
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