Logan Square: restored access and revived prominence

摘要

Many of the world's great public spaces have been marginalized by continuous growth in automobile travel. This paper documents the recent successful effort to reestablish the accessibility and prominence of Logan Square in Philadelphia, one of five original public squares laid out by William Penn in 1683, despite modem traffic demands. In the 1920s, Logan Square was transformed into Logan Circle with the construction of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, a grand Parisian-style boulevard connecting the center of Philadelphia with Frederick Law Olmsted's Fairmount Park. Although Logan Circle retained its grandeur for several decades, with Alexander Stirling Calder's spectacular Swan Fountain as its centerpiece, the surrounding roadways were rebuilt after World War II to carry more traffic at higher speeds, leading to the ever-increasing isolation of the Circle's interior. At present, the difficulty of getting to the Circle on foot, together with the noise and speed of surrounding traffic, compromises its overall value. Recently, based upon evaluation of pedestrian and traffic needs, there evolved a recommendation for a revamped "urbanized" Circle that would incorporate two new coordinated pedestrian signals plus traffic calming (in the form of tightened geometrics). Although the number of lanes would be unaffected, they were to be narrowed and reconfigured for a slower, more controlled flow. Gap analyses and network simulation helped prove that the modified geometry and two new signals would have negligible impact on overall traffic capacity while vastly improving pedestrian safety and accessibility, leading to the acceptance of the proposal and its upcoming (Spring 2004) construction. As there are many grand public spaces in the world whose value and accessibility have been diminished by unsavory traffic patterns, the example of Logan Circle suggests that the reestablishment of prominence is not necessarily an automobiles-versus-pedestrians decision, but rather a question of how to accommodate both through well-balanced design.