sato you is we are expecting the mayor here this evening. he should be here in 15 or 20 minutes. i'm sure he would like to say hello, so we'll take time to do that. i think after you hear the mayor, you'll understand he is completely dedicated to this cause. now, we know that there are some good things happening in this city in terms of design and space, the public realm and so forth as we all like to call it.

we're really at the very beginning of a process. we have worked hard in my time period. i've been here a little over a year, to put a serious focus on the public realm, the streets and public spaces and so forth. the mayor has been extremely supportive in all this. we have now got ourselves organized within the -- within city government. we have a director's group of the four t department that meets now frequently to undertake what needs to be done here and we're working with marshal foster, who is obviously supporting and representing the mayor in this process. we're taking now the first step. we're all committed to do this, in all four departments. our collectively funding a

citywide streetscape master plan, which we think is an important first step in understanding what needs to be done to our disappointingly sad looking streets that we have right now in the city. we really are behind the curve of so many other cities, and i'm sure you're going to hear from dr. dale and allen jacobs and what's happening elsewhere what we should be doing here. let me introduce yan dale. i think many of you know him. he is the director of the center for public space research and the school of architecture a at the royal danish academy in copeenhagen. there's a description i saw the other day about his life between buildings, which is a great title, life between buildings. i thought it was a apt way to introduce him. by the way, the three of us

probably represent about 320 years of planning, so we've got the crowd beat in this area, okay. [laughing]. >> the ziption of his book goes like this. this is the best source of understanding how people use public spaces in our city. published in many languages, it continues to be the undisputed basic introduction to the inner play between public space design and social life. dr. gail advocates a sense sybil straight forward approach to improving urban form, measuring urban spaces and making gradual improvements and measuring again. with all that, let's say hello to yan gail and get started with the program. [applause]

>> thank you very much for this nice introduction. i've been told that we have a quota, each of us, and jacobs and i. i'm afraid it will be the longest quota in my life. i'll do my very best. i realize that never in the history of mankind has so many people be assembled around such a small screen, but i hope you can -- we can manage anyway. i'll tell you and i'll show and tell and let's get started. and, neal, would you -- you can run that machine. you cannot? you can. okay. let me start us here. whenever cities have problems,

they make new departments for that problem. some point we started to have parks department when the cities were too overcrowded and unhealthy and another time we started to have traffic department. i'm very great at my traffic department. every city i know have a traffic department. it staffed with wonderfully professional people. they go out every year and make notes and count all the traffic they know everything. whenever there is a planning issue, they have all the information and they can make modeling and they can talk about the future. they know everything. and cars and traffic is very, very visible and ever present in the city planning. but do you know of nizzi who has a department for pedestrians and public life? do you know of nizzi who have any data and knowledge about what's going on in the city,

who's using it and how much -- what is in the winter going on, in the summer, whatever? and wherever there's a planning issue, the pedestrianing are invisible. all of us want them to have a jolly good time, but there's no knowledge and information and no systematic about how the people use their city. so they're invisible. to me, this is a great problem and i'm going to introduce to you that i've really think that the first stage a city like san francisco should do is to be sure to make the people visible who use the city so you know what you're talking about and can start to make a policy saying this is how it is, this is how we want it to be, how can we get from here to here instead of just having all the goodwill and traffic and engineers have all the data.

this little curve i have which tells everything, and i shall try to do it very fast. hundred years ago, it tells about a fantastic change in the use of cities in our industrializedd or post industrialized society. 100 years ago all the streets were full of people and all people out there had to be there. it was -- they were out there working, walking, carrying stuff or just thrown out of overcrowded flat by the parent, whatever. so the streets were teaming with life. quality was not an issue. they had to be there anyway. this is still something you can see in all the developing countries full of people in the streets because they have. today, the situation are very, very different. actually, in many cases, you can easily have a life without ever setting foot on the street or

ever being out in the public space. you can go to houston and see how they organize this. you can also go to a number of cities where you can see lively, wonderful people oriented cities, but now the people are not out there because they're forced to be there. they're out there because they need and want to be there. they're out there for, we call it, optional activities, for recreational activities. they may be out there to do a little bit of running or p romenading for the health. if these people weren't out there, the activity wouldn't happen. that's my start. let's go. a couple years ago i made this book which, i'm later on going to give to the mayor if he comes by, because we have eight empty

pages in the rear here for the next verg about san francisco is the best city in the world, but license plate [laughing] in this book -- in the world, we talk about public space in history. public space has always been the meeting place for people, where the individual meets his society. it has been the marketplace, the place where we exchangeory various things. it's been the spaces which connected the various functions in the city these three functions we can follow throughout the history of the city of mankind. we have today actually four different types of cities. we have the traditional city where everything, the meeting, the market and the moving is still being done in the same space, all of it be people and in great harmony and balance because it's all people and you

can see it in viennese, in many developing companies where everything is going on at the same time. then we have a lot of imbalance many the past history. we have the invading city and one function moving from one place to another started to take over spaces and push everything out. meeting was pushed out. market was pushed out. then what was left was all the cars and actually, there's no end to this. if you -- if nobody starts or stops this, it just gets worser and worser and worser. some cities have started to widen all the streets to solve the traffic problem. it just get a worser problem as types go on. the only thing to do is really put down your feet and say, if we're losing some important qualities by just letting

ourselves be invaded by these chance. then there's the next stage when people have given completely up and don't come out anymore. they are thorn with a wheel and spent their whole life in cars. the city is a big parking lot and you drive from everything to everything else and look for a valet who could take your car or whatever. we have seen now completely desserted cities. the top city is clarks daily mississippi where the blues were invented and the more i look at main street the more i can start out why they started to invent the blues down there. we have these completely empty cities. then we have -- what is happening is there's no quality at all and people have no reason to be on the streets. they don't go there anymore and this is what you see in these places. then we have a slight little

problem because you don't get enough movement in your day to day life and some people get a little bit oversized and you have to run for your life every lunchtime, at least every lunchtime because moving, bicycling, walking is not ever more in the history of man. it's been a part of life, now it's not. then you have the slight problem but it can be solved mainly mechanically by taking the escalator up to the finance center or to -- fitness center or go to if parking structure so you can get fit until next day in atlanta, georgia. we have started to see now one city after the other putting down their feet and say, hey, we are losing out of the human element in our city. the city was always the meeting place of people and now we are being forgotten and being chased

by cars and squeezed on too small sidewalks and it gets worser every single day. these cities have decided to turn it around. it's normally some vision narrow -- visionary people who starts to put down feet and say we must turn this around. it's so valuable cha what can happen that we cannot just sale our city to invading cars. we have the reconquered city where it tries to strike a balance between meeting place, marketplace and motoring. if i shall characterize these cities, they are willing to put certain concerns to vehicular traffic and we have realized the importance of having public life in the period where it got more and more endangered species.

it's more important with the more spread out diverse population. there's a number of reasons why public life and the excess of meeting other people are extremely important in our society. we've come to realize as the public spaces were squeezed and public life was sweezed out of society. so we are trying to win back and gain back the city for the people, not all the space, but some decedent space for the human activities. again, we can see here these cities are exactly those cities who have understood this change in public space, that today you have to love people or they won't come. if you love and provide for them, they will come. in this book of ours, we start then to talk about the best cities in the world. the ones which have turned around some important histories

of cities which have become much better and in this particular book at that time, it was 2001. we pointed out barcelona, copenhagen in europe. there was some new things going on in the world, portland, brazil, australia, and if i were to write this today i would include bogata. i will tell you two stories and i know you cannot see the images. i'll tell you about my hometown of copehagen.

when you wake up, it's a little bit better than yesterday. that is a fantastic thing to live in such city. also you realize all the nice things which has happened has happened small stepst long haul towards better city, all the time with some goals of having a better balance of meeting, makt and motoring. the city of cope enhagen is fortunate. all the houses are 200 years old. that's a good vintage, by the way. lockheed was not destroyed by the planners in the '60s or the '70s. it has more or less survived,. it's easy to take a medieval and turn it into a nice city.

you need a sign at either end of the street. all this started in '62 when the first major street, one of the first main streets in europe, copenhagen and there was no tradition for public life and it would be a failure and a disaster. they did it and it was an instant success. all the business men protested and we never heard from them ever more. [laughing] >> they still are very happy now. they're supporting our study of street life in copenhagen. all the squares were parking lot, all the squares are not people lot, people places. they are taking the last thousand parked cars out of downtown now and putting them in structures.

they have had the policy to take two percent of the parking out of down tawn and traffic engineer who is a very special person who thinks the purpose of traffic engineers are to keep traffic down and low and out and he had this idea at first they say come park they don't woman. he has a point. he takes the cars out, two percent every year, and he would say if it do it slowly nobody would knowledge. gradually, as the city becomes berlt, people find other means to get into the city. so one street after the other was changed. altogether, it's been a fantastic change in the downtown. now it is spreading to all the outlying neighborhoods and this whole issue of public life and spaces is not anymore something only for the old medieval.

it's all the city and neighborhood get their squares and promenades so the idea of meeting is spreading out. another part of copenhagen, history of copenhagen has been the decision to do whatever you can to invite people to do more bicycling. it start misdemeanor the oil crisis period in the 1970's where they decided to make everything and they've done it ever since. what is happening is that we have a citywide network now of proper bicycle lanes, not something painted on streets or little signs saying bike route, but proper lanes with kushs -- curbs, here and here where all generations can bike side by side. it is a proper system where you

can transport goods and kids. you have pedestrian bicycle crossings and special stop lights at the cross where the bike light comes out ten seconds before the cars are green. the bikes are across before the cars start thinking about getting across. this has made it very safe the bike if copenhagen from one end othe other. what has happened is that we now have just in the last 15 years, bicycling has doubled and every year it goes up. we now have the motor split that 36 percent of everybody commute to work on bike and 23 percent commute to work with cars and five percent on foot, whatever. it's unique in the world that we have so little traffic because of the bicycles.

furthermore, it's healthy and good for sustain ability, whatever. we're proud of this and show how car traffic is going steadily down as bike traffic is going up in leaps and leaps. we have problems if copenhagen also and the reason is there was this poll showing the major problem, whichmost people pointed to, was the awful congestion of the bicycle lanes over the years, traffic engineers have been more smart in handling traffic. they can handle it now with fewer and fewer lanes and they have put in bicycle lanes, taken parking out, put in medians and whatever, and widened sidewalks and nearly all the major streets are now one lane either way and

then some ways in which you can turn and stop and whatever. it makes the whole traffic picture much more peaceful. so one street after the other you can find and again, it's the city traffic engineer who went around and he said if you see a congestion, what can you do? go out and add a new lane then you have a wider street and three months later you have a new congestion and wide street. so what he did was go out and say there's a congestion let me remove a lane right away then you have a real bad congestion in a couple weeks then three weeks later there's no congestion and you have a narrower street. [laughing]. >> this has been done gradually gradually gradually over 20 years and it has worked wonders. there's many things done to make it more comfortable for pedestrians. copenhagen is one of the few

cities which have studied the pedestrians and know exactly how the public life has developed and we have been able to feedback from the university of the city how all this improvements to the public environment have actually resulted in more and more people using more and more of the spaces, walking more, more and more walking is being done, more and more time is being spent in the city. people 20 years ago if you ask people why you going to the city, they would say go to cities to shop. now we have done the same thing and they say i go to the city to go to the city. don't you shop? sometimes i shop. main purpose of going to the city is going to city to meet other people in society and to have fresh air and exercise and whatever you can do in a fantastic city. we have also seen how the season is being wider and wider now.

in the beginning you could have no sidewalk because the climate was so bad. now the chairs come out march and go out in christmas and we have limited to november and january's february and two days in march which is quite, but it shows it is very important for people this public life and they will do whatever they can with carpets and blankets and coal fires to extend the people season in the city like this one. we found in copenhagen, and many of the other cities which have turned around and decided to do something for people, is that people would like it very much and furthermore, it's very good economy for the city. it's good economy also in the competition between cities that you have the image of being a very fine city. and the latest news, my friends,

are that they've just decided to widen all the bicycle path and take further traffic lanes away. the other thing is one of the first cities in the world, they have now a department for public space and public life. and they have a citywide public space plan and no exactly where they would like to go with the public spaces. [applause] there's no more time, so i'll -- the extra time i'll use to tell about medical -- m. in melbourne is a big city,

3 million. great streets, wide streets. it's a little sad city center, 25 years ago it was empty and useless city center. melbourne was called the donut. they decided to do whatever they can to turn a sad office-dominated city center into a lively vie brandt 24 hour period like city center in australia. they decided this in the '80s. we studied how the city was used and put for recommendations of the improvement. in melbourne they took over recommendations and carried them out. in ten years later we've been involved in coming back to melbourne and seeing how it is

fathering and i -- fairing and i'll tell you what is found. number of (inaudible) in the city up ten times to 1,000 to 10,000. 67 percent more students. more -- a lot of pedestrian lanes and wider sidewalks. they really have a policy that in this city of streets, we walk. and they have widend all the sidewalk, stepped up the quality. they made squares. they made a fantastic federation square because they had no square in city streets. no new building must have close wall to sidewalk because if you are to walk in the city, you cannot accept blank walls. they say in the old buildings you have to open up. the new ones never go in before you can prove that you can do something for the city.

they say if you are to walk, you need first class street furniture and they made a fantastic series of street furniture. they think you should have enjoyment when you walk around, so they see the city as a gallery for contemporary art and change it all the time and have ins sthrawtions and whatever. -- installations and whatever. they see light as a fantastic enjoyment of the city. half the time the city is out. it's dark by the way. they have put granite on all te sidewalks and more than half of them, and every year they put more granite in. they put in 500 trees every yer and one by one the streets become wonderfully green streets

because if you are to walk, you should walk in shade and hear the birds and whatever, it should be a green city. and this is one of the streets in melbourne and one of the cable cars in melbourne they have there, whatever they're called, modernized. what has been the outcome of all this? that's what we have found out because we started to study how the city was used. we can come back and prove with hard data what has happened in you really are sweet to people and try to invite them to use the city to walk. they are now 40 percent more pedestrians in melbourne on weekdays. in the weekend there are twice as many and three to four times more people who sit and stand and listen to music t whole city center has come alive. the aws strail i can't answer aws strail i