A photoshop project to contemplate

[heatherkay]

There was an interesting article on io9 today (http://io9.com/5542098/photos-from-an-a ... s/gallery/) with some photo manipulations of LA to shrink the streets to European standards.  For example:

Before


After


Anybody with skillz want to try this out on KC streets?  I'd love to see the results.

[ComandanteCero]

It would be a pretty simple trick.  Just take two photographs at the proper distance from each side, and then stitch them together.  So let's say you have a 4 lane street, and you want to see what it would look like if the street were 2 lanes (while maintaining proper perspective).  You just take a picture one lane out from the right side looking towards the horizon, take another picture one lane out from the left side looking towards the horizon, go home, cut off the extra stuff beyond the one lane in each photograph, stitch together and voila - two lane street in proper perspective.

In terms of what this exercise gets at though, getting the right urban proportions, building height is obviously a big factor.  6th Avenue in midtown Manhattan is a pretty wide street, but the height of the surrounding buildings is such that you still get a sense of enclosure.  Similarly, Grand through the Crossroads feels positively suburban because of the pitiful height of most of the buildings (and the surface lots) relative to the width of the street, but it feels pretty urban once you get into the CBD (of course... with the continued demolitions it's starting to get kind of lame in there as well).

If you can't build tall buildings then have smaller streets.  That's why the Crossroads, or the Rivermarket, don't really need 15 story buildings to feel urban.  5-6 story buildings on either side of a 2/4 lane street is more than enough to get a sense of enclosure.  In fact you can have TOO much enclosure if the buildings are too tall for a given steet's width - you start getting that creepy no sunlight/bottom of a canyon feeling.