How’s that temporary street redesign your city started this spring doing now?

This spring, hundreds of cities and towns across the country moved swiftly to allow restaurants, bars and shops to open temporary outdoor seating areas on sidewalks and in streets. How are those temporary street redesigns doing today? Are they still up and running, as the temperatures drop and the pandemic wears on? What lessons have we learned from them?

Earlier this summer, we checked in with the college town of Lawrence, Kansas, which had recently gone through a process of planning several street reconfiguration options and then implementing one. To recap, Lawrence initially swapped their angled downtown parking on their main drag, Mass Street, for parallel parking and used the extra space between parked cars and the sidewalk as additional room for pedestrians and outdoor dining.

The lessons we took away from the beginnings of that project included:

1. Act fast.

2. Be flexible.

3. Build in time and space for reassessment.

4. Check in regularly with the people involved.

I wanted to find out how Lawrence is looking today, particularly in light of lessons 3 and 4. Has the city reassessed since the program first rolled out? Are business owners and customers still happy with the outdoor seating arrangement? Will it stay up into the fall and beyond?

The initial redesign of Mass Street turned angled parking into parallel, creating a small strip of additional space between the cars and sidewalk.

To learn more, I spoke with Whitney Lang, an architect at Gould Evans, who grew up in Lawrence and lives and works there today. Gould Evans has been part of shepherding this street redesign in Lawrence from the beginning, facilitating the design process, negotiating approvals with city departments and more. 

To begin with, it was vital that this street redesign be fashioned in a temporary manner because that allowed the city to adjust things throughout the course of the summer as they received feedback from businesses and downtown patrons. Lang explained that the initial design where sidewalk space was expanded into a small strip of road next to parallel-parked cars created “this goofy sawtooth space” which was something of “a tripping hazard” (see the picture on the right).

Another issue that arose during the first months of the project was that the city wanted a uniform application of the street redesign along the whole downtown Mass Street corridor. While she understands the desire for a standardized approach, Lang says, that just didn’t make sense for downtown businesses’ diverse needs. 

In the end, the city developed a process by which individual businesses could apply to take over angled parking spaces in front of their store and use them as outdoor seating, leaving the remaining parking in place.  “What we have now are maybe 20 little parklets that restaurants and bars have put up along Mass Street,” says Lang. “In most of the cases, [businesses] have built a platform at the same elevation as the sidewalk.”  This eliminates the issue of the uncomfortable jump from sidewalk into street and allows for businesses that would prefer parking at their door (like barbershops, for example) to keep it.  

Although Lang maintains, “We don’t have a parking problem in Lawrence; we have a walking problem,” she understands that in a small Midwestern town like this one, most people expect easy parking options, and completely eliminating those or dramatically decreasing them might be a change for which residents and visitors aren’t ready. 

Last month, the Lawrence City Commission decided to extend the downtown streets program through the end of the year. (It was initially only planned through October 31.)  The Lawrence Journal-World reports, “The commission received dozens of emails and letters from downtown businesses and residents, all of which expressed support for extending the program, with some suggesting it should be a permanent option for downtown businesses.”

Lang agrees: “I think what’s in place now is the right solution… I don’t know why we wouldn’t make it permanent.”  And luckily, the climate in Kansas is mild enough that Lang expects outdoor dining to be a viable option in the coming months if restaurants can supplement with heat lamps.

The double-edged sword of temporary street layouts is that, while they allow adaptation over time, they’re not always the most aesthetically pleasing.  Cones, metal barriers and plastic barrels can make the street feel more like a construction zone than a welcoming dining area.  That was Lang’s perception of the first round of street changes in Lawrence.

But since the spring, these restaurant spaces have been adapted to create a sense of safety, comfort and belonging.  When restaurant owners have a chance to add their own personality and homey touches to a space, it can easily be transformed from some chairs in a parking spot into an extension of a cozy dining room. Take a look at these photos, taken this fall in Lawrence, to get a feel for that.

The story of Lawrence and its 2020 street redesign is one that will be familiar to many people who have watched similar processes take place in their own towns or even been part of making them happen.  The nuances of each situation may be different and the needs may vary.  The city of Oakland, for example, has done a very thorough job of adapting to the needs of its residents and being responsive to that feedback. You can read about that in an excellent recent article by my colleague Daniel.

The best processes for achieving positive impact and high return on investment follow the same basic structure.  It’s one we’ve been talking about at Strong Towns for many years now:

1. Humbly observe where people in the community struggle. 

2. Ask the question: What is the next smallest thing we can do right now to address that struggle?

3. Do that thing. Do it right now.

4. Repeat.

In the case of communities trying to survive this pandemic, one big struggle comes from business owners working to keep their doors open, keep their people employed and keep serving customers in a safe manner.  The next smallest thing that cities like Lawrence have chosen to do is step in and create outdoor seating options in quick, low-cost ways. Drawing from lessons along the way, they’ve been able to figure out a model that works for businesses and patrons, and now they can repeat that wherever and whenever it’s needed.

An incremental approach like this one has applications far beyond restaurant space.  We challenge you to think about how many other places it could be used. And then, go out there and get started doing them.

(All photos by Tyler Lindquist)

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