“A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars; it’s where the rich ride public transportation.”
Created in R, Illustrator, and Powerpoint, my 2016 data analysis and visualization of Indego bike-share data looked at the effectiveness of Indego fare products, the utilization of bike-share stations, and the availability of the system across time.
Currently occupied by a parking structure set for demolition, the two blocks at the center of this infill development plan add new vitality to downtown New Brunswick with programming for residential, retail, shops, services, and restaurants.
The redeveloped area on the quarter block to the upper-right is the current site of another parking structure that is considerably old.
This hypothetical infill development and programing plan makes room for people to live and recreate on the former site of two parking structures but still within a short distance of four other structured parking decks.
The structured parking to the bottom-left is combined with a full-size grocery store and state-of-the-art gym, both existing and ready to serve a new infill community.
As a exercise for Graphic Communications at the Bloustein School, this hypothetical infill development creates new urban environments at the foot of New Brunswick station.
It includes three distinctive urban outdoor “rooms,” bounded on three sides each, with a U-shaped residential building creating the foremost room and leading to the great lawn beyond it via an archway.
The last image gives a street-level perspective from the New Brunswick train station entrance.
For Introduction to GIS at the Bloustein School, I focused on Elizabeth, NJ as my topic area. The first and second maps visualize the land uses within quarter-mile and half-mile radii of the Elizabeth rail station. The second map includes a table showing the percentage of each land use.
The first map shows a grey-scale LU map behind a color-designated LU map that has been clipped to a half-mile buffer. In the second map, the percentage of land use falling under each type was calculated using the selection statistics function within the colored LU layer.
Twelve Bloustein Students produced a Complete Streets concept plan for the Fairmount Neighborhood of Newark, NJ for the Urban League of Essex County.
This photosimulation of S.
Orange Avenue reimagines the
wide street with a median, two
travel lanes (down from four),
a bike lane in either direction,
and one parking lane (down
from two) nearer the viewer. The
median retains a turning bay to
accommodate left-turning traffic.
The sidewalk receives much- needed resurfacing and attractive pedestrian-scale lighting.
The Main Street Bridge in Milltown, NJ presents an unaccommodating pedestrian environment, with narrow sidewalks and no separation from fast-moving traffic.
For the class Graphic Communications at the Bloustein School, I reimagined the roadway in two alternative ways.
In vision alternative 1, the roadway gains a much wider sidewalks, a bicycle lane, and attractive pedestrian-scale lighting.
One through traffic lane is removed and combined with the left-turn lane that leads toward the viewer.
In vision alternative 2, the roadway is reimagined with a cobble-stone pedestrian walkway and a grass median with trees acting like a linear park beside the walkway. Benches fill out the space and give it a true function as a park.
The two center left-turn lanes are removed on the length of the bridge. The two travel lanes are shifted to the farther side of bridge to give maximum room to pedestrians.
For the class Graphic Communications at the Bloustein School, I developed this base map as a planning tool for a hypothetical community workshop.
The base map focuses participants on the areas of opportunity it highlights and engages them in the planning process with minimal bias toward a particular conclusion. It is purposefully open-ended in its use.
The base map begins a conversation about the primary and secondary study areas around the New Brunswick train station to build on the city’s strength as a transportation hub.
The planning factors thumbnail diagrams and opportunity & constraints map illustrate the key factors in improving transportation safety in downtown New Brunswick.
The planning factors thumbnail
diagrams show pertinent
dimensions to planning decisions,
one dimension at a time.
The opportunity & constraints map identifies four key intersections with modal conflicts, either between cars and other cars or cars and pedestrians. The green signal icons present options to help remediate these conflicts, by adding signalization, changing signal phase timing, or adding a leading pedestrian interval.
Finally, a flyer invites New Brunswick residents to the community workshop to addresses changes to the New Brunswick General Plan.
Public outreach is an important part of planning for future development and community investment, and advertising workshop events in an inviting and enticing way helps forward that cause.
Neilson Street in downtown New Brunswick is wide and hostile to pedestrians crossing it.
These street section design alternatives show two possible alterations to the roadbed and sidewalk that could help address pedestrian safety and provide bicycle infrastructure.
Design Alternative 1 reimagines Neilson with two 5’ bicycle lanes, separated from the parking lane by 2’ striped buffers and protected from moving traffic by parked cars.
Design Alternative 2 removes one lane of parking to make room for a median to calm traffic by reducing lane width and adding vertical elements to narrow perceived street width.
Cyclists in Alternative 2 are positioned next to moving traffic in order to remain visible during right turns at the many cross-streets.
These block development alternatives for the class Graphic Communications at the Bloustein school provide context and options for hypothetical development in a residential area of New Brunswick that is just a short distance from the downtown.
The existing detached single-family houses contrast with
denser potential development in the form of townhouses with
interior circulation for parking
or two multi-story apartment
buildings, with apartments on
either side of an interior corridor,
set on top of podium parking,
which has access at the middle of
the block.
For the class Site Planning and Design at the Bloustein School, teammate Heather Martin and I produced a new vision of the Civic Square Plaza in New Brunswick.
Our chief concern was cost; so, nearly all of the modifications we proposed were additive and would require very little demolition.
At the front of the plaza we replaced the heavy and uninviting walls with industrial glass to visually bridge the plaza with the sidewalk. This has the added benefit of increasing personal safety. Two "floating" bleachers are added to the front steps to increase seating and give a semi-wall to the front to create a place to lean against and look back into the plaza.
The left side of the plaza gains a pergola and much needed cafe seating; while the right side receives a grass lawn around the existing statue.
In the middle of the plaza, we proposed a large, two-level serpentine bench that also contains three planter trees. It has conversation nooks and creates two different spaces in what is now a barren and open plaza.
