1/ This is a short, mostly visual thread about a great piece of urbanism: Turin's multiway boulevards.
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2/ multiway boulevards are one of the most interesting invention of 19th c. city planning, a first attempt to create thoroughfares to facilitate circulation in growing "paleo-technic" metropolis
In Italy, Turin is the city that designed its growth around them more than any other
3/ taking various shapes, width and configurations, most of them have an important feature: planted medians sepatarating through traffic of trams/cars from side local acces lanes intended for local slow traffic, parking.
4/ one of the most interesting is Corso Francia, a very long straight line connecting the city center with the distant Rivoli castle. Baroque Le Nôtre-sque large scale landscape at its peak.5
5/ despite its monumental lenght, corso Francia has a very nice, intimate neighborhood street feeling, especially the section redesigned after the construction of the metro line that run under it.
A greened median separtes the 2-lane*dir carriageways
6/ the tree-lined medians are used for parking and other functions as bike racks or bus stops, accessible from the side access roads, where speed is limited to 20km/h + a slightly raised bike lane and large stone paved sidewalk protected with bollards
7/ side streets intersections with access lanes are treated with traffic calming features like raised intersections, pavings and other safety design features
8/ metro access are simple and well integrated into the street design, with safe raised crossing across the central car lanes at main squares and other nice fixtures.
9/ tree canopy is so ubiquitous and pleasant that one forgets about architecture: all kinds of buildings spanning more than 100 years integrates without much contrast or "harm to the neighborhood character"...
10/ The outer section of corso Francia didn't get the same treatment (no $$$) and it shows (more cars, narrower sidewalks).
Other boulevards are too wide, like the one built atop the passante city rail tunnel, and it feels like a slightly nicer urban freeway with coll lights.
11/ multiway boulevards are a good element of design for modern cities and north-american urbanism knows them already quite well, see Allan Jacobs's "The Boulevards Book".
But remember that it's hard to get them right by design and that the Devil is in the details.
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