Bus stops are often dreary because they are set down independently, with very little thought given to the experience of waiting there, to the relationship between the bus stop and its surroundings. They are places to stand idly, perhaps anxiously, waiting for the bus, always watching for the bus. It is a shabby experience; nothing that would encourage people to use public transportation.
The secret lies in the web of relationships that are present in the tiny system around the bus stop. If they knit together, and reinforce each other, adding choice and shape to the experience, the system is a good one: but the relationships that make up such a system are extremely subtle. For example, a system as simple as a traffic light, a curb, and street corner can be enhanced by viewing it as a distinct node of public life: people wait for the light to change, their eyes wander, perhaps they are not in such a hurry. Place a newsstand and a flower wagon at the corner and the experience becomes more coherent.
The curb and the light, the paperstand and the flowers, the awning over the shop on the corner, the change in people’s pockets—all this forms a web of mutually sustaining relationships.
The possibilities for each bus stop to become part of such a web are different—in some cases it will be right to make a system that will draw people into a private reverie—an old tree; another time one that will do the opposite—give shape to the social possibilities—a coffee stand, a canvas roof, a decent place to sit for people who are not waiting for the bus.
Two bus stofs.
Therefore:
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Build bus stops so that they form tiny centers of public life. Build them as part of the gateways into neighborhoods, work communities, parts of town. Locate them so that they work together with several other activities, at least a newsstand, maps, outdoor shelter, seats, and in various combinations, corner groceries, smoke shops, coffee bar, tree places, special road crossings, public bathrooms, squares. . . .
gateway
Make a full gateway to the neighborhood next to the bus stop, or place the bus stop where the best gateway is already—main gateway (53); treat the physical arrangement according to the patterns for public outdoor room (69), path shape (121), and a place to wait (150) ; provide a food stand (93): place the seats according to sun, wind protection, and view—seat spots (241). . . .
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. . . throughout the neighborhood there are natural public gathering places—activity nodes (30), road crossings (54), RAISED WALKS (55), SMALL PUBLIC SQUARES (6 I ) , BUS STOPS (92). All draw their life, to some extent, from the food stands, the hawkers, and the vendors who fill the street with the smell of food.
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Many of our habits and institutions are bolstered by the fact that we can get simple, inexpensive food on the street, on the way to shopping, work, and friends.
The food stands which make the best food, and which contribute most to city life, are the smallest shacks and carts from which individual vendors sell their wares. Everyone has memories of them.
But in their place we now have shining hamburger kitchens, fried chicken shops, and pancake houses. They are chain operations, with no roots in the local community. They sell “plastic,” mass-produced frozen food, and they generate a shabby quality of life around them. They are built to attract the eye of a person driving: the signs are huge; the light is bright neon. They are insensitive to the fabric of the community. Their parking lots around them kill the public open space.
If we want food in our streets contributing to the social life of the streets, not helping to destroy it, the food stands must be made and placed accordingly.
We propose four rules:
1. The food stands are concentrated at road crossings (54) of the network of paths and cars (52). It is possible to see them from cars and to expect them at certain kinds of intersections, but they do not have special parking lots around them—see nine per cent parking (22).
2. The food stands are free to take on a character that is compatible with the neighborhood around them. They can be
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to increase industrial uses in certain areas. Within the process here defined, the city could not implement this policy over the heads of the neighborhoods, by zoning or the power of eminent domain or any other actions. They can suggest that it is important, and can increase the flow of money to any neighborhoods willing to help implement this larger pattern. They can implement it, in short, if they can find local neighborhoods willing to see their own future in these terms, and willing to modify their own environment to help make it happen locally. As they find such neighborhoods, then it will happen gradually, over a period of years, as the local neighborhoods respond to the incentives.
6. Once such a process is rolling, a community, having adopted the pattern health center, for example, might invite a group of doctors to come and build such a place. The team of users, designing the clinic would work from the health center pattern, and all the other relevant patterns that are part of the community’s language. They would try to build into their project any higher patterns that the community has adopted—nine
PER CENT PARKING, LOCAL SPORTS, NETWORK OF PATHS AND CARS, ACCESSIBLE GREEN, etC.
7. It is of course possible for individual acts of build-ing to begin working their way toward these larger communal patterns, even before the neighborhood, community, and regional groups are formed.
Thus, for example, a group of people seeking to get rid of noisy and dangerous traffic in front of their houses might decide to tear up the asphalt, and build a green street there instead. They would present their case to
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freestanding carts, or built into the corners and crevices of existing buildings; they can be small huts, part of the fabric of the street.
3. The smell of the food is out in the street; the place can be surrounded with covered seats, sitting walls, places to lean and sip coffee, part of the larger scene, not sealed away in a plate glass structure, surrounded by cars. The more they smell, the better.
4. They are never franchises, but always operated by their owners. The best food always comes from family restaurants; and the best food in a foodstand always comes when people prepare the food and sell it themselves, according to their own ideas, their own recipes, their own choice.
Therefore:
Concentrate food stands where cars and paths meet— either portable stands or small huts, or built into the fronts of buildings, half-open to the street.
Treat these food stands as activity pockets (124) when they are part of a square; Use canvas roofs to make a simple shelter over them—canvas roof (244); and keep them in line with the precepts of individually owned shops (87): the best food always comes from people who are in business for themselves, who buy the raw food, and prepare it in their own style. . . .
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