More pedestrians and less traffic could revive cities, downtowns

An urban designer comes to Michigan with ideas to revive cities along Woodward with paint... no, really... he says it starts with paint.

Excerpt:

City planners could revive Woodward Avenue with bike lanes, slower traffic, 100,000 new trees and big improvements at pedestrian crossings.

And that's just the start of a vision that consultant Dan Burden shared last week with local officials, road engineers and residents, as he led what he calls walkability audits in Pontiac, Birmingham, Royal Oak and Pleasant Ridge.

"I can't help you if your community wants to be auto-dependent," Burden told city and regional planners in Pleasant Ridge, over the roar of traffic entering I-696.

With a walk Friday in Saline, Burden ended 12 days of visiting Michigan downtowns and revisiting advice he has brought to more than 2,500 cities in North America during the past 15 years.

To attract "the creative class" that can jump-start a region's growth: "You start with paint. You put in bike lanes and get trees planted, and that brings the speeds of motorists down, and then the buildings start to come back, and with that, the tax base. That lets you redesign the streets," he said.

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