Carfree redesign web site

This free write is dedicated thinking about the possibilities for a carfree web site that provides a tool to allow people to resdesign their own city or neighborhood to be carfree. I've already thought a little bit about this, but I'm hoping that this writing will bring up some new ideas or at least organization for the site. So, the primary idea is to introduce people to the topic of carfree cities and let then access or create a sub page that represents their city or neighborhood. The user interface of this would be a bit tricky. It's tempting to simply follow the Craigslist model and list everything on the side column. The last thing I want to do is an annoying hierarchies of places. Maybe Bret can lend me some ideas about this. The next issue is what do I actually give people as far as design tools. Do I take Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language and actually make component objects for them to drag around? That sounds awful. Or do I just give them a simple drawing program to sketch over a map. That sounds awful too. Maybe I'll just have to sit down with Bret and try to come up with some ideas. It may be easier once I actually read the Alexander books. I don't want to compartmentalize the process or make it too sterile. But I don't want it to be completely free-form either.

Let's talk about the ideal situation and then go from there. Ideally you would enter a virtual 3D space where you could walk around the place of interest. All cars and roads would be blanked out. Leaving just dirt or some form of the native vegetation. The transit would remain if it was rail or anything else non-paved (streetcars would stay.) The built forms would remain too. The ideas isn't to demolish buildings but to figure out what to do with the existing street network. There could be some allowances for going between buildings for paths, but I don't think this is very realistic or needed. Now imagine that once you had these empy road space you could begin to redesin. It's not enough to just have tools to build carfree spaces and transt. We also need to modify storefronts, pulling them out with dining outside. So it does seem that we need to feature certain things, like a plaza object, a streetcar, tables and chairs for outdoor dinineg. But I don't want to limit people. Again in the ideal world you would just be able to walk through this space and wave a wand with those things in mind. It almost needs something like the Google Sketchup library but without the difficult of actuly putting things down. The other option is to do map-based, but I don't think that's compelling enough.

The question is do we need this at all? Do we need regular people to be able to come and redesign. Why not just have people do things in Sketchup or whatever tool they want and submit them? I think that might be a better way to start up. simply exist as a repository for design ideas and offer advice about how to do it. Such advice would be: Walk down your street of interest and make an issues map. Try to determine how car traffic could be circumvented and reduced. I don't know. It's all pretty tricky. I should also encourage car reduction steps. Showing a street car introduction, lane reduction, parking consolidation, parking remove, street surface update. "What are the steps?" is the question. I also need resources about how to get in the press, contact politicians, work with business. Maybe this is less technological than I think.