Duboce Triangle Neighborhood Association Transportation Committee

DTNA’s Transportation Committee approaches all of our work from the perspective of “Placemaking.” This means that we are first and foremost concerned with ensuring that our neighborhood’s streets are great places that we all want to use to walk around, shop, chat, sit, do business, pick up our dog’s business, etc. Creating the kinds of streets that we want to revisit again and again means thinking of all the elements that make a great street together so that our streets don’t become dominated by just one kind of activity.

Many transportation planning efforts focus on particular street users and safety. Placemaking takes all of that into consideration, but puts it in the perspective of whether it adds up to an overall successful place.

Prefer visuals? Check out these resources:

• Place Diagram - This diagram was created by Project for Public Spaces (PPS), which is an internationally recognized expert on creating places.
• London Place Audit - Gehl Architects, another international leader in placemaking, has done audits of many major cities and neighborhoods around the world. The firm has created a unique approach to figuring out what is actually going on on the streets, and how to shape those streets to be even more attractive to all street users. This document is just one example of their work; check out the end sections for the meat.

How does Placemaking apply to Duboce Triangle?

Duboce Triangle has some of the best places in the city on our streets, which is part of why we all love living here. The Transportation Committee wants to continue to build on this success. So we will be doing place audits on a regular basis to see whether we’re going in the right direction with the projects we work on. If you like the idea of volunteering with us to collect this data (basically, standing around chatting with other volunteers while looking at dogs and other street activity — snacks provided), please contact Kit Hodge. We’ll announce the dates of our volunteer days on the blog and make all of the information we collect available on this site.