What If We Built Our Streets as Places?

The Project for Public Spaces gave an exciting presentation (see post above)at the CarFree Cities Conference this summer.  Pages 58 and 59 of the presentation point out how bad cul-de-sac neighborhoods are for getting from A to B and the loss of capacity with the same amount of road money.  The "Sprawl Factor" positive feedback loop that brings more traffic and wider roads and more traffic and wider roads can be found on page 72.  This is happening locally.  Look at the Williamson expansion to 4 lanes: wider roads, but no bike paths to get people out of their cars, just more lanes for cars.  As the cars speed up, no need to treat the area along the road as places, why bother when you see it at 45 mph.  Why can't cars take I-95 north-south, while slowing traffic on Williamson and adding bike lanes?