In Crete, Researchers Combat Congestion, Redesign Public Space for Traditional Villages Date: July 18, 2000 By: Marianne Kunnen-Jones Contact via colleague's phone: (513) 556-1824 Photos by: Lisa Ventre Archive: Research News Hersonissos, Crete -- Motor-scooters and cars zigzag through the crowd of tourists thronging in and out of the shops, cafes and nightclubs. Narrow sidewalks cannot accommodate the hundreds and hundreds of people who line the streets trying to enjoy their Cretan vacations. Fumes from the speeding motorists fill the night air along the sea front. By evening's end -- or should we say near dawn -- some of the tourists will be so drunk, they can't stand up. The scene is something like "the Panama City of Europe," as one University of Cincinnati student describes it. The human and vehicular traffic congestion along this stretch of prime sea-coast property in Hersonissos, Crete, represents just one of the problems that a team of UC faculty and students are trying to solve during UC's Sustainable Development Group project this summer. Students working with Brenda Scheer, associate professor of urban design and planning, David Scheer, an adjunct faculty member in architecture, and Kiril Stanilov, assistant professor of planning, are concentrating on these issues. The team is designing a terminal for parking cars and other vehicles on the western edge of town to keep them from entering the main strip. "You would park your car and then take a shuttle or taxi to get to your hotel," said David. The concept is similar to one used at Williamsburg in the United States, where no cars are allowed to enter the historic town. Traffic counts the students conducted for an 18-hour period between 7 a.m. and midnight showed that the main strip funnels about 9000 vehicles per day. The team also is designing a pedestrian pathway and a new traffic circulation plan with some proposed new streets. But there is an obstacle that may prevent any changes to the grid or the construction of a terminal. National laws in Greece will not permit construction in areas where archaeological remains have been discovered, until a thorough investigation can be made. "They may not have time and money to excavate so that may be one thing we can't get around," David said. There are pitted holes along the strip where preliminary archaeological studies have been conducted. Pieces of the foundations of Roman houses can be seen in the area. Hersonissos was once a Roman town; there is a 1,750 year-old-fountain right outside one of the strip's many jewelry stores to prove it. The team also is designing a pedestrian pathway along an eight-block stretch of the main strip, that if implemented, would limit the traffic to people only or vehicles at only certain times of the day. One challenge facing the team is that the city maps available to them are outdated and do not contain all the kinds of information their profession is used to having to get the job done. No maps of the outlying villages in the municipality are available and there is not even a map for tourists to use to get around. So one of the team s first projects was to create the maps they needed. Traffic circulation, building footprint, land use and property line maps they have created have been done using GIS (geographic information systems) programming. The end product will be left behind for the city to use and the UC team will train their Greek colleagues to use before leaving on July 24. Another downtown design project the team is concentrating on this summer is a public square at what is called the "point." Hersonissos, which in Greek literally means peninsula, juts out into the Sea of Crete at a point with a dramatic rocky tower. An old church built along side the rising stones stands at the edge of a plaza that is underutilized. A new history museum will be created in an abandoned restaurant there soon and the current space provides a sort of psychological barrier to the pedestrian traffic, David said. The president of the village of Gonies (pronounced "goh nyez"), when he heard about the UC team working within his municipality, asked for some help with redesigning two public squares in his town. One is the main square in this small village; the other is a capped well that used to be a central gathering point for women in the village, but because of more modern plumbing, it no longer provides that social link. So David Scheer and student assistants Mike Brachat and Sean Bender drove up into the hills to take measurements of the public squares on Friday morning. They could not get the job done without two local villagers taking time to come outside to investigate what they were doing and offer them raki, the family-made but potent traditional drink. A third citizen went to the store to buy beer and Coke to offer them, because that villager said he did not like raki. When the measurements were completed, the team was obliged to sit at a taverna while Gonies village president Manolisi Borboudakis lavished them with Greek wine and Greek appetizers, made by his wife, the taverna's cook. According to David, the70-by-35-foot main square offers a haphazard intersection of streets and a shape created by accident as different buildings and businesses were constructed around it. The community design team is creating a streetscape with trees, lighting, benches and small walls to create a more defined sense of place. Working nearly the whole weekend, the team is under pressure to complete their drawings and models in time for a public presentation scheduled for July 20. In addition to the Scheers, Stanilov, architecture and urban planning major Brachat and urban planning major Sean Bender, architecture student Susan McClure serves on the community design team. Also working with the team have been a surveyor and architect on the staff of the city of Hersonissos.