A little city planning trick in South Beach

Wrote Tuesday, 11/25/2008

South Beach district of Miami [Pictures to be added in the near future]

I'm NOT going to talk about how lucky they were that most of the art deco buildings were not destroyed before the decided to save them. Just some interesting street design.

• First. there are no parking meters. They are now using the electronic payment kiosks. Besides being easier to service and maintain, it is amazing how eliminating the parking meeters eliminates a lot of cluter.


• Continuing with the elimination of clutter. ALL signs, street lights and pedestrian lighting are moved to the beach side of the sidewalk--away from the road.

This works really well to make for a very uncluttered sidewalk. There is nothing in the actual side walk width. You don't have to dodge signs, garbage containers or parking meters. It actually looks "tidy." But this only works if you have space on the far side of the sidewalk to put all this stuff. If buildings are built right up to the sidewalk, there would be no place to put everything.

My one complaint. There is plenty of space her to move the sidewalk away from the road and provide a grass strip between the sidewalk and road. To me that makes a lot more sense--it gets the people further way from the cars and provides another green break in all the concreat.