Would you like an easy—and highly visual—way to get clients and community groups thinking about ways to combat sprawl? Call up the Sierra Club's Web site, and you can instantly show a client six examples of "transformed" communities that apply a number of antisprawl features, including mixed-use building infill, street trees, and public transportation systems. All examples show clear, easy-to-grasp transformations that are not Disneyfied outside the realm of reality: The streets still have gas stations and some cars in the way.

The six examples are:
• East Fourteenth Street, in Oakland, Calif., redesigned by Ed Blakely, which in Step One adds infill buildings and street lamps and resurfaces the road. Step Two sees the addition of street trees, bike paths, and light rail.

• Denver's Colfax Avenue, redesigned by Space Analytics and Urban Advantage, will be familiar to this year's AIA national convention-goers (in fact, you can make out the convention center in the distance). It adds mixed-used development in Step One, and wider sidewalks, crosswalks, street lamps, and street trees in Step Two.
• Hercules, Calif.'s main street, redesigned by Dover, Kohl and Partners and Fehr and Peers, which adds mixed-use development in Step One and infill storefront buildings in Steps Two and Three.
• Hercules is the star of another project also redesigned by Dover, Kohl and Partners and Fehr and Peers. In this example, an area crossed with an overpass has its lane widths reduced, sidewalks widened, and crosswalks added to it in Step One and buildings placed at its sidewalks and landscaping added in Step Two.
• Kendall Drive, Kendall, Fla., redesigned by Dover, Kohl and Partners and DPZ Architects, gives the town a light-rail system in Step One, street trees in Step Two, and street-oriented, mixed-use development in Step Three.
• San Pablo Street, El Cerrito, Calif., redesigned by Dover, Kohl & Partners and DPZ Architects, gets a new look through the addition of street trees in Step One, buildings at the sidewalk's edge in Step Two, and light rail in Step Three.

All graphic transformations are provided by Steve Price, of Urban Advantage. These images could get your community thinking and talking about some of their own ideas for your own Main Street.

The Sierra Club's Sprawl site also features a series of essays entitled "Sprawl Hurts Us All," which enumerate the detrimental effects of unchecked growth and offer some solutions under the banner of "Smart Growth." It links to a number of Sierra Club reports as well as articles written by outside sources. For more general information, visit www.sierraclub.org/sprawl.

Copyright 2001 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved.