Streetmix is a collaborative process for communities and city planners to improve public spaces.
Design, remix, and share your neighborhood street at streetmix.net.
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A "section" is shortened way of saying "cross-section view", a type of 2D non-perspectival drawing commonly used in engineering and architecture to show what something looks like when you take a slice of it and look at it head-on. Similarly, a street section is a cross section view of a street, showing the widths and placement of vehicle lanes, bike lanes, sidewalks, trees, street furniture or accessories (like benches or street lamps), as well as engineering information like how the road is sloped to facilitate drainage, or the locations of underground utilities. Although sections can be simplified line drawings, urban designers and landscape architects have created very colorful illustrative street sections, removing most of the engineering particulars to communicate how a street could be designed to feel safe, walkable or habitable.
When city planners seek input from community meetings from the public on streetscape improvements, one common engagement activity is to create paper cut-outs depicting different street components (like bike lanes, sidewalks, trees, and so on) and allow attendees to reassemble them into their desired streetscape. Planners and city officials can then take this feedback to determine a course of action for future plans. By creating an web-based version of this activity, planners can reach a wider audience than they could at meetings alone, and allow community members to share and remix each other's creations.
The goal is to promote two-way communication between planners and the public, as well. Streetmix intends to communicate not just feedback to planners but also information and consequences of actions to the users that are creating streets. Kind of like SimCity did with its in-game advisors!
Streetmix can be used as a tool to promote and engage citizens around streetscape and placemaking issues, such as Complete Streets or the Project for Public Spaces' Rightsizing Streets Guide.
"Streets" + "remix" :-)
Streetmix started as a Code for America hackathon project in January 2013, inspired by community meetings like the one described above.
Streetmix is a Node.js based project. Set up your own by following these instructions!
Copyright (c) 2013-2017 Code for America and contributors. See LICENSE for details.