This free write is dedicated to a very dear and pressing topic to me. How do we visualize the street changes that are needed on streets across North America? I was walking on College Avenue in Somerville from Davis Square, a red line subway location to Tufts, my graduate school campus, and beyond for a few blocks. I've fantasized about a proposed remodeling of this street as my thesis project--at least others have told me it should be a thesis project. As I walked down the long stretch of College that flanks Tufts' southeast side, I couldn't help seeing the street that I wanted in its place. I actually saw Montpellier, France. I saw the streets not of asphalt but of a tannish tone, made of smooth paving stones. I saw the street as a grand boulevard of pedestrians, even though it is only about 50 feet wide. I saw the glistening rails down the center where the streetcars swish by. I imagined the trees that already line the sidewalks being larger and arching over the entirety of the width to cool the street. The cement sidewalks melted away because they weren't needed. The whole thing was a sidewalk, or more simply a walk. The parked vehicles likewise ceased to be; no vehicles would barrel up and down the street. The place turned into a European paradise.

I've been thinking mightily about how to empower people to revisualize their streets. I don't think there is some simple tool that I can put on the web to enable one to redesign their street. LIkewise I don't have the power to redo a lot of neighborhoods myself and create a 3D walk-through. The main reason I don't is that I don't live in these places, so how can I say how to redo them? I have to give people a reference model though, so that they can see what I see when they look at their streets. How do I develop imaginations? Where's the pair of googles?

The software engineer in me wants to find a software solution, and I don't doubt that therein lies a bulk of the solution. The dreamer in me wants to write stories and draw pictures. There must be a solution that transcends both these perspectives.

We can't give Americans Europe, partly because many of them would reject being recast as Europe. I don't want to give them Main Street either, because that isn't a carfree street with streetcars.

I'm reminded of the game Roller Coaster Tycoon. You'd design an amusement park and the people would infiltrate its paths and attractions. We used to cause mayhem to the people by building dysfunctional roller coasters that launched them into the lagoon. We'd block the entrance to the park so that people couldn't leave. It was fun to see what they did when they were blocked. That's how I feel about College Avenue. I want to be God and just block it to see what all those cars would do. I want to see how many more pedestrians and bikers would use a street blocked to cars. I want to see who would get on a streetcar that passed ever five  minutes and moved them a mile in just a few minutes. SimMyCity, that's what I want. Will Wright, are you listening? But this is all just basic transportation simulation, so it mustn't be sufficient.

But back to visualizing, what do I do? Do I walk around Davis Square with a clipboard and some pretty pictures? I'd be laughed at by most people, were I to suggest that College Avenue should change. Or , more likely, I'd be met with apathy and disinterest. Who even thinks about these things anyway? Well, I think there is something to be said for the use of filter books. in the movie, A Talking Picture, the professor shows her daughter how ancients sites use to look with a book of plastic overlays over the present day site. That's what I imagine doing in Sketchup--take the orignal sight and then start folding down the overlays. That would most closely match what goes on in my head as I walk down College Ave.