8.2. Terminated Vista

Aus Pattern Language Wiki

At the ends of the Street As Room, there is a need to close off the street, and not let it vanish into infinity.


08 2 01 Terminated Vista.jpg


Problem-statement: People need to see landmarks, both to find their way, and to feel a sense of enclosure and spatial definition in the city. This need is particularly acute at the visual ends of streets and paths.


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Discussion:: Evidence shows that pedestrians are not comfortable walking down long straight streets with endless “vanishing point” perspectives ahead. This experience seems to be disorienting as well as lacking in a sense of enclosure, which in turn is essential to make the street more attractive to pedestrians.¹ Drivers and riders in vehicles also benefit from the identification of wayfinding landmarks.


One of the best ways to handle this need is to interrupt the street with one or more structures along its axis, creating “terminated vistas”. These can be buildings or parts of buildings, natural features, or other landmark elements. The streets can wind around the structures (as in the photo at the beginning of this pattern) or change angle, or simply terminate in a T-intersection.


Jane Jacobs (1961) described this challenge most insightfully in her classic book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, in Chapter Nineteen, “The Uses of Visual Order:”


“[If] a street goes on and on into the distance, with the intensity and intricacy of the foreground apparently dribbling into endless amorphous repetitions of itself and finally petering into the utter anonymity of distance, we are also getting a visual announcement that clearly says endlessness… The general effect is bound to be chaotic… Therefore a good many city streets (not all) need visual interruptions, cutting off the indefinite distant view and at the same time visually heightening and celebrating intense street use by giving it a hint of enclosure and entity. Bridges that connect two buildings up above a street sometimes do this service; so do buildings which themselves bridge a street. Occasional large buildings (preferably with public significance) can be placed across straight streets at ground level — Grand Central Terminal in New York is a well-known example. Straight, “endless” streets can be interrupted and the street itself divided around a square or plaza forming the interruption; this square can be occupied by a building. In cases where vehicular traffic can actually be dead-ended on straight streets, small parks could be thrown across from sidewalk to sidewalk; the visual interruption or diversion would be provided here by groves of trees or by small (and, let us hope, cheerful) park structures. In still other cases, a visual diversion need not extend across a straight street, but can be in the form of a building or group of buildings set forward from the normal building line to make a jog, with the sidewalk cut underneath.”2


Jacobs also referred to the argument of Kevin Lynch, author of the classic Image of the City,3 that a city needs to create “imageability” through its landmarks, and through the relationship of its paths and nodes. Jacobs also noted that sometimes geographic interruptions can serve the same purpose, such as the hills of San Francisco.


08 2 02 Terminated Vista.jpg
The hills of San Francisco serve as natural terminated vistas, enhanced by added monuments like Coit Tower. Photo by Erica Chang via Wikimedia Commons.


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Therefore:

Plan streets to have periodic visual interruptions by introducing buildings, natural features, or other monuments along their axes, with the streets either going around, changing angles (“deflected vista”), or terminating in an intersection. Make the monument distinctive and memorable, perhaps indicating the kind of human activity taking place there.


08 2 03 Terminated Vista.jpg


Use Local Symmetry and Human-Scale Detail to assure that the terminated vista will be appealing and memorable…




¹ For a more detailed discussion of this and many other aspects of walkable street design, see Dover, V., & Massengale, J. (2013). Street Design: The secret to great cities and towns. New York: John Wiley & Sons. For further research findings on the topic, see Clemente, O., & Ewing, R. (2005). Identifying and Measuring Urban Design Qualities Related to Walkability. Final Report prepared for the Active Living Research Program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Princeton NJ: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Available on the Web at https://drum.lib.umd.edu/bitstream/handle/1903/21519/ewingclementehandyetal_walkableurbandesign_2005.pdf?sequence=1


² Jacobs, J. (1961). The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House.


³ Lynch, K. (1960). Image of the City. Boston: MIT Press.



Mehaffy, M. et al. (2020). TERMINATED VISTA (pattern). In A New Pattern Language for Growing Regions. The Dalles: Sustasis Press. Available at https://pattern-language.wiki/.../Terminated_Vista



SECTION I:

PATTERNS OF SCALE


1. REGIONAL PATTERNS

Define the large-scale spatial organization…

1.1. POLYCENTRIC REGION

1.2. BLUE-GREEN NETWORK

1.3. MOBILITY CORRIDOR

1.4. 400M THROUGH STREET NETWORK

2. URBAN PATTERNS

Establish essential urban characteristics…

2.1. WALKABLE MULTI-MOBILITY

2.2. LEVEL CITY

2.3. PUBLIC SPACE SYSTEM

2.4. BIOPHILIC URBANISM

3. STREET PATTERNS

Identify and allocate street types…

3.1. URBAN GREENWAY

3.2. MULTI-WAY BOULEVARD

3.3. AVENUE

3.4. SHARED SPACE LANE

4. NEIGHBORHOOD PATTERNS

Define neighborhood-scale elements…

4.1. STREET AS CENTER

4.2. PEDESTRIAN SANCTUARY

4.3. NEIGHBORHOOD SQUARE

4.4. NEIGHBORHOOD PARK

5. SPECIAL USE PATTERNS

Integrate unique urban elements with care…

5.1. SCHOOL CAMPUS

5.2. MARKET CENTER

5.3. INDUSTRIAL AREA

5.4. HOSPITAL

6. PUBLIC SPACE PATTERNS

Establish the character of the crucial public realm…

6.1. PLACE NETWORK

6.2. WALKABLE STREETSCAPE

6.3. MOVABLE SEATING

6.4. CAPILLARY PATHWAY

7. BLOCK AND PLOT PATTERNS

Lay out the detailed structure of property lines…

7.1. SMALL BLOCKS

7.2. PERIMETER BLOCK

7.3. SMALL PLOTS

7.4. MID-BLOCK ALLEY

8. STREETSCAPE PATTERNS

Configure the street as a welcoming place…

8.1. STREET AS ROOM

8.2. TERMINATED VISTA

8.3. STREET TREES

8.4. STREET FURNISHINGS

9. BUILDING PATTERNS

Lay out appropriate urban buildings…

9.1. PERIMETER BUILDING

9.2. ARCADE BUILDING

9.3. COURTYARD BUILDING

9.4. ROW BUILDING

10. BUILDING EDGE PATTERNS

Create interior and exterior connectivity…

10.1. INDOOR-OUTDOOR AMBIGUITY

10.2. CIRCULATION NETWORK

10.3. LAYERED ZONES

10.4. PASSAGEWAY VIEW



SECTION II:

PATTERNS OF MULTIPLE SCALE


11. GEOMETRIC PATTERNS

Build in coherent geometries at all scales…

11.1. LOCAL SYMMETRY

11.2. SMALL GROUPS OF ELEMENTS

11.3. FRACTAL PATTERN

11.4. FRAMING

12. AFFORDANCE PATTERNS

Build in user capacity to shape the environment…

12.1. HANDLES

12.2. CO-PRODUCTION

12.3. FRIENDLY SURFACES

12.4. MALLEABILITY

13. RETROFIT PATTERNS

Revitalize and improve existing urban assets …

13.1. SLUM UPGRADE

13.2. SPRAWL RETROFIT

13.3. URBAN REGENERATION

13.4. URBAN CONSOLIDATION

14. INFORMAL GROWTH PATTERNS

Accommodate “bottom-up” urban growth…

14.1. LAND TENURE

14.2. UTILITIES FIRST

14.3. DATA WITH THE PEOPLE

14.4. INCREMENTAL SELF-BUILD

15. CONSTRUCTION PATTERNS

Use the building process to enrich the result…

15.1. DESIGN-BUILD ADAPTATION

15.2. HUMAN-SCALE DETAIL

15.3. CONSTRUCTION ORNAMENT

15.4. COMPLEX MATERIALS



SECTION III:

PATTERNS OF PROCESS


16. IMPLEMENTATION TOOL PATTERNS

Use tools to achieve successful results…

16.1. FORM-BASED CODE

16.2. ENTITLEMENT STREAMLINING

16.3. NEIGHBORHOOD PLANNING CENTER

16.4. COMMUNITY MOCKUP

17. PROJECT ECONOMICS PATTERNS

Create flows of money that support urban quality…

17.1. TAX-INCREMENT FINANCING

17.2. LAND VALUE CAPTURE

17.3. EXTERNALITY VALUATION

17.4. ECONOMIES OF PLACE AND DIFFERENTIATION

18. PLACE GOVERNANCE PATTERNS

Processes for making and managing places…

18.1. SUBSIDIARITY

18.2. POLYCENTRIC GOVERNANCE

18.3. PUBLIC-PRIVATE PLACE MANAGEMENT

18.4. INFORMAL STEWARDSHIP

19. AFFORDABILITY PATTERNS

Build in affordability for all incomes…

19.1. INTEGRATED AFFORDABILITY

19.2. COMMUNITY LAND TRUST

19.3. MULTI-FAMILY INFILL

19.4. SPECULATION TAX

20. NEW TECHNOLOGY PATTERNS

Integrate new systems without damaging old ones…

20.1. SMART AV SYSTEM

20.2. RESPONSIVE TRANSPORTATION NETWORK COMPANY

20.3. AUGMENTED REALITY DESIGN

20.4. CITIZEN DATA