Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
It is important though to make a distinction between the infrastructure that exists and how new stuff is being built. The pendulum has swung back a lot from the 1960's-70's extreme when planners aspired to make everything car friendly.
A corollary to this is that some of the difference might just come down to relative ages of different cities. Calgary for example is almost all post-1970 development.
In that picture on the last page there used to be tall curved street lights that were identical to what you'd see along a suburban arterial, and they mostly illuminated the road surface. Recently they were replaced by more pedestrian-friendly lighting. The cross street (which is nearly useless for vehicle traffic) was also overhauled to make it more pedestrian oriented and the whole thing now officially functions like a crosswalk. That is how infrastructure in that area will be built in 2019 and onward.
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I'm thinking more about the strict road hierarchy and the treatment of arterial streets as if they were highways, with development facing away from them and as few street connections to them as possible. A lot of Toronto streets can be used as examples. Streets like Yonge and Bathurst gradually become less integrated with their surrounding development and street networks as you move north. It's an imperfect relationship because Toronto obviously didn't only start at the lake and sprawl north, but you know what I mean.