BKV Group connects a new development with an old idea.

“We have a lot of owners who want to immediately establish where private property is and boundaries, put up fences and things. This is the exact opposite. They don’t want anyone to be able to know where public stops and private begins. They wanted to blur those lines and make everybody comfortable walking everywhere.”

—Brady Halverson

Woonerfs are a Dutch urban design concept that raises the stakes on the idea of shared space. Without sidewalks, curbs, lanes, or other traditional apparatuses of street design, successful woonerfs must send sensory cues to drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians to be mindful of each other. At Piazza Terminal, a new mixed-use neighborhood development in Philadelphia, Brady Halverson, the director of landscape architecture at BKV Group, says they also had to think about aboveground and underground utilities, as well as a very proximate water table. They could be less focused on permitting because woonerfs are already part of the city’s approved street types, particularly in historic areas. Here, the design connects two existing streets and brings the public into the otherwise semi-enclosed space of the new blocks.