The Core Idea

Whenever you have a limited pedestrian zone, and another, slightly distant, limited pedestrian zone, you're going to generate X pedestrians. If you connect them you'll generate 5-to-10X pedestrians. There's the incredible geometric relationship when you attach small systems into larger systems. The amount of pedestrians you generate is a geometrical outcome.

Jeff Speck, speaking to the Memphis Regional Design Center
about the walkability disconnect between
Autozone Park and Beale Street.

This was my favorite idea from Speck's talk, simple and powerful.

It should be at the center of all of Downtown's planning. It should be in every presentation that a Downtown leader makes.

Making walkable the spaces between Autozone Park and Beale Street, Beale Street and South Main, South Main and Main, and all of the above to the Bluff Walk and Tom Lee Park will produce the geometric outcome. And anything that disrupts the walkability, like the MLGW berm or the Main/Beale parking lot or the ill-advised Beale Street Landing surface parking lot, blocks that outcome.

Stop dreaming of the mythic East Memphis customer who would come Downtown if only there were convenient parking.

Start looking across the parking lot at the very many who are already here, at Beale Street, at Autozone Park, at South Main, at Tom Lee Park.

Plan how you will get them across the soon-to-be-formerly dull spaces, and how you will entertain the crowds that follow.

Jeff Speck's 12 Suggestions for a Great Memphis

1. Build Memphis for Humans, Not Just for Cars.
   
   
2. Stop Demolishing Your Economic Advantage
   
   
3. Plant Trees.
   
   
4. Organize Neighborhoods Around Schools, Around Neighborhoods
   
   
5. Fix Downtown First
   
   
6. Practice Urban Triage
   
   
7. Fix the 3rd Street Promenot
   
   
8. Fill the Main/South Main Knuckle
   
   
9. You Deserve an Urban Waterfront
   
   
10. Build the Missing Monument
    
    
11. Stop the Outer Loop
    
    
12. Put Cars Back on Main Street for $50k.
    

Made at Speck's fantastic Memphis Regional Design Center talk last Thursday. He was a self-described blunt instrument, a polite and funny blunt instrument.

Listen to it:

The entire talk (mp3).

Or, if you want it in smaller chunks:

The introduction (mp3).

General urban planning principles (mp3)

6 general suggestions for Memphis (mp3)

6 specific suggestions for Memphis (mp3)

Q/A (mp3)

Enjoy, learn, talk, act, then enjoy some more.

(by the way, thanks to Justin for lending me a recorder, and and Mike for paring the audio files to reasonable sizes. )