‘Streets For People’ Campaign Kicks off in Seattle

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Seattles Skyline

Known for its skyline and natural setting, Seattle is organizing to re-envision its streets as places for people.

‘What’s your street for?’ is the motto of Seattle’s new Streets for People Campaign.  Modeled in many ways after the ‘Open source’ NYC Street Renaissance Campaign that PPS helped to found, Streets for People’s approach to advocacy is to connect, convene and inspire a new conversation about how streets can best be used as public spaces for people.

The campaign will be coordinating with a broad range of local organizations, as well as with the city, on bike and pedestrian Master Plans, a Summer Streets program, Seattle’s new plan for light rail transit (LRT), as well as a Low Impact Vehicle Exhibition (aLIVE) which invites the public to submit installations for display and demonstrations during a one day exhibition.

PPS’ Renee Espiau traveled to Seattle to help launch the Streets for People campaign in February.  Espiau gave a presentation on PPS’s work and approach to generating demand and creativity for the higher use of our road space and how that placemaking approach translates into city-wide advocacy.  The event was covered by the Worldchanging blog.

In New York City, PPS partnered with The Open Planning Project and Transportation Alternatives to create the New York City Streets Renaissance (NYCSR) which has ignited a powerhouse of change for pedestrian oriented redevelopment in various NYC locations such as Gansevoort Plaza and Madison Square. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced plans to reclaim vast stretches of Broadway through Times Square and Herald Square which realizes dreams set early in the campaign.  Look out for more reclaimed pedestrian space and great streets in Seattle.

This momentum in Seattle further reflects the ripe Placemaking movement that PPS has participated in and chronicled over recent years.

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  • Laurie

    I love Seattle and it has a great waterfront, but the Pikes market area is the only place I remember having pedestrian access to street space. The rest of the city was side walk and streets and not especially pedestrain friendly as I remember it from a few years ago. This sounds like a great initiative.

  • Jen

    I can’t wait to watch this project unfold! One of the many things I love most about Seattle is its many neighborhoods, each with their own character, shops, activities, and parks, lovely parks!… Kudos to everyone working together to make the City an even safer, healthier, more physically and socially connected place. I live in Eugene right now and a group here is in the very early stages of planning a similar street movement, a cyclovia, to experience streets without cars and connect our parks for a day.

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  • Dennis

    Some of the things about Seattle’s streets that make it a city that is less than friendly for pedestrians:
    1. the numerous garage entries on downtown streets, accompanied by voice commands, flashing lights or other unpleasant sensory stimuli to warn people when a car approaches. The sights and sounds are unpleasant; these garage entries are also dead spaces, and many of the side streets in Seattle’s downtown core are nothing but garage after garage.
    2. “Sidewalk closed” signs that are up for months or years at a time while a building is under construction. Auto space is not surrendered, but pedestrian space is.
    3. The obsessive attention given by law enforcement in this city to pedestrians crossing against the traffic signal or at places other than intersections. This reinforces a notion that streets are not for people, but are for cars, people are relegated to specific areas outside the travelway, and that people cannot cross a street even when there is no opposing traffic. This denies people the sense of ownership of their streets. Jaywalking is probably illegal in every city in this country, but nowhere else have I seen it as vigorously enforced, and seen such submissive behavior on the part of pedestrians as I have in Seattle.

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    The campaign will be coordinating with a broad range of local organizations.